6. Higher standard of health
For many years, health was seen as "the absence of disease" by conventional medical doctors. The common philosophy was: If you are not sick and you do not need to go to the doctor's office or the hospital, then you must be healthy. In years past, people would go to their conventional doctors for an annual check up and be given a clean bill of health. An individual's health was assessed by the results of the physical examination. Little, if any, consideration was given to lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, or personal or psychological issues. Minimal concern was generally given to the emotional, mental, spiritual, and social aspects of the person.

In contrast, alternative medical systems have long been founded on the premise that health is a dynamic process that most consider more than just the absence of illness. Other factors ranging from the strength of a person's "vital energy" to how happy the person is in his or her personal and professional life are also considered. The "whole person" is evaluated when determining one's state of health and well-being. In most alternative systems of healing, a person's physical, emotional, mental, and psychosocial health, his or her diet and lifestyle, as well as the person's religious and spiritual concerns are all carefully addressed when assessing health and well-being.

Fortunately, with the advent of the holistic health movement over the last two decades, a growing number of conventional doctors are now recognizing that health is more than the absence of disease.

3. My friends and family are skeptical about the merits of alternative medicine. How do I help them feel confident in my decision to use alternative medicine?
To many people, alternative medicine is still suspect. Some of this is warranted. Not all of what is labeled alternative medicine can be assumed to be good medicine. So the concern and skepticism of your friends and family is only natural. The problem is that most people who are skeptical of alternative medicine base their caution on outdated information, facts that are only partially true, or complete misconceptions. Of course, there are those who would never even consider that alternative medicine has merit, regardless of what the facts are. ("Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up!")

Let's look at the roots of the bias against alternative medicine: A great deal of this distrust can be traced directly to the beliefs and opinions of the conventional medical community. Since conventional medicine enjoyed an unquestioned confidence from the public for almost five decades, the public accepted the critical views about any treatments not part of conventional biomedicine. As a result, in time conventional medicine's beliefs became the public's beliefs.

According to the "Chantilly Report" to the NIH on alternative medicine, one conclusion the public reached regarding conventional medicine is that it is the "one true medical profession." This originated through the "long-standing belief held by many conventional medical practitioners that they should be the only one representative voice for the whole of medicine."14

Another result is the public now places an unrealistically high level of confidence in conventional medicine's high-tech diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Many presume that if procedures are "high-tech," they must be very effective. However, evidence points to the opposite conclusion: High-tech is not always effective.