Complementary
When alternative and conventional medicine work side-by-side to give us the best chance at success.
This, again, often takes two different paths. The first and most common is when a problem has become large enough that you have sought help for it. This means that you’ve received a diagnosis and are undergoing treatment, typically pharmaceutical. There are a lot of good reasons to seek treatment though the conventional model, especially when dealing with conditions where the symptom itself can be destructive to the body. Good examples of these are high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. In the case of high blood pressure, the standard treatment is effective for lowering the blood pressure but offers no insight into or aid in the repair of what caused the blood pressure to elevate it in the first place. This is a good time to use the antihypertensive as a stopgap to buy some extra time so we can safely work on the underlying problem. The goal is to resolve the root issue so that you’ll find less and less need for the pharmaceutical support until, hopefully, we’re back to keeping healthy people healthy.
The other way complementary treatment is beneficial is when the conventional treatment seems necessary, but the treatment itself is destructive to the body. A mild example of this would be surgery— let’s say a knee replacement. You know you need it and there is little to no chance of the joint repairing itself at this point. There are many things that can be done leading up to the surgery to get you as strong as possible beforehand, as well as many recuperative interventions so you can heal as thoroughly and quickly as possible.
A more serious example of when concurrent care is appropriate would be with an oncology or cancer diagnosis. For those who undergo chemotherapy and/or radiation, the treatment can be almost as difficult as the disease. This is a time where Oriental Integrative Medicine can be used to reduce the side effects of the conventional treatments to help improve the quality of life during treatment while improving and reducing recovery time.
This is also a chance to start looking into why that particular problem came to pass, and start to safeguard against it happening again.