Received 13 November 2003 Revised version received 13 November 2003 Accepted for publication 27 November 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T he popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is considerable: the one year prevalence of CAM usage is 42% in the United States and 20% in the United Kingdom. As it turns out, at first glimpse, there are very few difference...

BACKGROUND Clinical practice and randomized trials often have disparate aims, despite involving similar interventions. Attitudes and expectancies of practitioners influence patient outcomes, and there is growing emphasis on optimizing provider-patient relationships. In this study, we evaluated the experiences of licensed massage therapists involved in a randomized controlled clinical trial usin...

Purpose Body awareness attending to, and identifying the inner sensations and overall state of the body and its changes in response to emotional and environmental shifts is often viewed as an outcome of CAM use. Emerging evidence suggests that mind-body awareness may be an intermediate outcome that contributes to CAM-related outcomes. Qualitative and quantitative work indicate that provider emp...

BACKGROUND Since CAMbrella is a networking project funded by the European Commission explicitly to build and sustain a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research network in Europe, communication and dissemination play a large role and form a work package of their own. The present article gives an outline of the communication and dissemination work in the CAMbrella consortium. The int...

Against the background of studies about the domestication of complementary and alternative medicine into biomedical settings, this article studies how biomedicine is integrated into holistic settings. Data from 19 in-depth interviews with Dutch holistic general practitioners who combine complementary and alternative medicine with conventional treatments demonstrate that they do not believe that...

We approach the phenomenon of endocrine covfefe through a medical student’s prism. The etiology of endocrine covfefe is multifactorial. Self-styled endocrinologists, practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), fitness gurus, manufacturers of non-proven “medicinal” products, and misguided laypersons; all churn out their own version of endocrine fables and myths. The pathogenes...

BACKGROUND This study explored consumer perceptions of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and relationships with CAM and conventional medicine practitioners.A problem detection study (PDS) was used. The qualitative component to develop the questionnaire used a CAM consumer focus group to explore conventional and CAM paradigms in healthcare. 32 key issues, seven main themes, informed t...

BACKGROUND Treatment effectiveness holds considerable importance in the association between service quality and satisfaction in medical service studies. While complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use grows more prominent, comprehensive evaluations of the quality of medical service at CAM-oriented hospitals are scarce. This study assesses the quality of medical services provided at a CAM...

Regulatory T (T(reg)) cells maintain dominant control of immune responses to foreign materials and microbes. Appropriate T(reg) cell suppression of immune responses is essential for the maintenance of efficacious defensive responses and the limitation of collateral tissue damage due to excess inflammation. Allergy and infection are well studied and frequent afflictions in which T(reg) cells pla...

BACKGROUND Evidence indicates that people who reside in non-urban areas have a higher use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) than people who reside in urban areas. However, there is sparse research on the reasons for such differences. This paper investigates the reasons for geographical differences in CAM use by comparing CAM users from four geographical areas (major cities, inner ...