Medicine, like scientific inquiry, is necessarily dynamic. As our understanding of health and disease continues to grow, medicine as we know it will change. Alternative therapies and perspectives that are coming to light will be illuminated by modern methods of inquiry applied to pre-modern healing systems. At the same time, patient demands and cultural concerns about health and healing influen...

The Indian traditional medicine (TM) has a rich heritage of science healing humans and animals. While so much attention is being paid to regulation of biomedicine (BM) practice and research, the same is desirable for TM too. The existing guidelines and regulations related to natural products/herbal formulations should be implemented to integrate BM and TM in a meaningful way for patient-centric...

Today’s medicine is in the midst of an undeniable crisis. Calls to reform healthcare are in the forefront of economic and political discussions worldwide. Economic pressures reduce the amount of time physicians can spend with patients contributing to burnout among medical staff and endangering the patient iatrogenically. Politicians are getting involved as the public is calling for more afforda...

With the significant and continuous growth of the research and application of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) all over the world, the demand for medical information services has been increasing correspondingly. However, the barriers of accessing and utilizing non-English literature, and the barrier of language have blocked English speaking clinicians and researchers of CAM from obt...

OBJECTIVE A comprehensive systematic review of economic evaluations of complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) to establish the value of these therapies to health reform efforts. DATA SOURCES PubMed, CINAHL, AMED, PsychInfo, Web of Science and EMBASE were searched from inception through 2010. In addition, bibliographies of found articles and reviews were searched, and key researchers wer...

Background: Integrative Medicine (IM) is an emerging field in paediatrics, especially in the USA. The purpose of the present study was to assess the attitudes and beliefs of Youth Health Care (YHC) physicians in the Netherlands toward IM in paediatrics. Methods: In October 2010, a link to an anonymous, self-reporting, 30-item web-based questionnaire was mailed to all members of the Dutch Organi...

BACKGROUND There is significant overlap with many concepts emphasized in integrative medicine and current educational priorities within medical school education such as cultural sensitivity, doctor-patient relationship, and physician self-care. Although the concept of Integrative Medicine is just beginning to gain recognition in academic medical institutions, the recognition of Complementary an...

Difficulty initiating and/or maintaining sleep is a common issue. Patients experiencing insomnia symptoms frequently self-treat their symptoms with sleep medications. However, there remains concern regarding the short- and long-term health impacts of sleep medications. This article discusses the evidence supporting integrative approaches to insomnia treatment, including cognitive-behavioral the...