Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 28, 1993 TAG: 9301280124
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
SURVEY FINDS USE OF ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE SURGING
One-third of all Americans seek relief from aches and pains outside mainstream medicine, spending $14 billion a year on such therapies as relaxation techniques and herbal cures, a survey suggests.While that money is only one-sixtieth of the total spent on all kinds of health care, the researchers estimate that Americans actually pay more visits to providers of unorthodox treatments than they do to primary-care physicians.
The work suggests that Americans often bypass conventional medicine when they want help for backaches, headaches, stress and other complaints for which doctors too often lack the skills - or the time - to cure.
"Some of these treatments are probably quackery," noted Dr. Edward W. Campion. "Some of them are just the American version of the health spa."
The most common of these therapies are, in order, relaxation techniques, chiropractic, massage, imagery, spiritual healing, commercial weight-loss programs, macrobiotics and other lifestyle diets, herbal medicine, megavitamins, self-help groups, energy healing, biofeedback, hypnosis, homeopathy, acupuncture and folk remedies.
The level of use of unconventional therapies revealed by the survey is far higher than experts had thought. And because some of these therapies can be risky, the researchers recommended that doctors routinely ask about them when taking medical histories.
The study was based on a nationwide telephone survey of 1,539 adults. It was directed by Dr. David M. Eisenberg of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and is published in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
The study found that 34 percent of Americans said they used at least one unconventional therapy in 1990, and one-third of these went to providers' offices for their treatments.
The typical patient is a well-educated, well-off white American, age 25 to 49, most likely to live in the West.
Among other findings:
Those who said they had seen providers made an average of 19 visits per year. The cost of one session averaged almost $28.
In all, Americans made 425 million visits to these people in 1990, compared with 388 million visits to all family doctors, internists and other primary-care physicians combined.
The cost of all this unconventional treatment adds up to $13.7 billion a year. People pay for three-quarters of it out of their own pockets.
By comparison, Americans last year spent $839 billion, about 60 times more, on all kinds of health care.
Backaches are the No. 1 reason for alternative therapies, cited by 36 percent of those seeking help. The other most common complaints are anxiety, headaches, chronic pain and cancer.