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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alternative medicine | 2/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:16:46.424743+00:00 | kb-cron |
Complementary medicine (CM) or integrative medicine (IM) is when alternative medicine is used together with mainstream medical treatment in a belief that it improves the effect of treatments. Several medical organizations differentiate between complementary and alternative medicine including the UK National Health Service (NHS), Cancer Research UK, and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the latter of which states that "Complementary medicine is used in addition to standard treatments" whereas "Alternative medicine is used instead of standard treatments." For example, acupuncture (piercing the body with needles to influence the flow of energy) might be believed to increase the effectiveness or "complement" science-based medicine when used at the same time. Significant drug interactions caused by alternative therapies may make treatments less effective, notably in cancer therapy. Some mainstream academic medical centers have integrative or functional medicine departments, including the Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University, UCLA, UC San Francisco and Northwestern University. In contrast, other medical practitioners are unconvinced by these practices. For example, surgical oncologist, David Gorski has described integrative medicine as an attempt to bring pseudoscience into academic science-based medicine with skeptics such as Gorski and David Colquhoun referring to this with the pejorative term "quackademia". Robert Todd Carroll described integrative medicine as "a synonym for 'alternative' medicine that, at its worst, integrates sense with nonsense. At its best, integrative medicine supports both consensus treatments of science-based medicine and treatments that the science, while promising perhaps, does not justify." Rose Shapiro has criticized the field of alternative medicine for rebranding the same practices as integrative medicine. CAM is an acronym for complementary and alternative medicine. The 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Report on Traditional and Complementary Medicine states that the terms complementary and alternative medicine "refer to a broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country's own traditional or conventional medicine and are not fully integrated into the dominant health care system. They are used interchangeably with traditional medicine in some countries." The Integrative Medicine Exam by the American Board of Physician Specialties includes the following subjects: Manual Therapies, Biofield Therapies, Acupuncture, Movement Therapies, Expressive Arts, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Indigenous Medical Systems, Homeopathic Medicine, Naturopathic Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine, Chiropractic, and Functional Medicine.
=== Functional medicine === Functional medicine (FM) is a form of alternative medicine that encompasses many unproven and disproven methods and treatments. It is a rebranding of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and as such is pseudoscientific, and has been described as a form of quackery. In the US, FM practices have been ruled ineligible for course credits by the American Academy of Family Physicians because of concerns they may be harmful. Functional medicine was created by Jeffrey Bland, who founded The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), which is based in the US state of Washington, in the early 1990s as part of one of his companies, HealthComm. IFM, which promotes functional medicine, became a registered non-profit in 2001. Mark Hyman became an IFM board member and prominent promoter. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist at Wayne State University, has written that FM is not well-defined and performs "expensive and generally unnecessary tests". Gorski says FM's vagueness is a deliberate tactic that makes functional medicine difficult to challenge. In an analysis for the Office for Science and Society at McGill University, Jonathan Jarry writes "Test enough people and you get a lot of false positives, which generate anxiety, more invasive tests, and sometimes unnecessary treatments." Proponents of functional medicine oppose established medical knowledge and reject its models, instead adopting a model of disease based on the notion of "antecedents", "triggers", and "mediators". These are meant to correspond to the underlying causes of health issues, the immediate causes, and the particular characteristics of a person's illness. A functional medicine practitioner devises a "matrix" from these factors to serve as the basis for treatment. Treatments, practices, and concepts are generally not supported by medical evidence. Patients of functional medicine practitioners may also be told to undertake unnecessary diets that can limit food choices. Jonathan Stea writes that functional medicine, integrative medicine, and CAM "are marketing terms designed to confuse patients, promote pseudoscience, and sow distrust in mainstream medicine." In the 1990s, integrative medicine started to be marketed by a new term, "functional medicine". FM practitioners claim to diagnose and treat conditions that have been found by research studies not to exist, such as adrenal fatigue and numerous imbalances in body chemistry. For instance, contrary to scientific evidence, Joe Pizzorno, a major figure in FM, claimed that 25% of people in the United States have heavy metal poisoning and need to undergo detoxification. Many scientists state that such detox supplements are a waste of time and money. Detox has been also called "mass delusion". In 2014, the American Academy of Family Physicians withdrew course credits for functional medicine courses, having identified some of its treatments as "harmful and dangerous". In 2018, it partly lifted the ban, but only to allow overview classes, not to teach its practice. The opening of centers for functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and George Washington University was described by David Gorski as an "unfortunate" example of "quackademia" — that is, a quackery infiltrating academic medical centers.
=== Other terms ===