Different path: Herbal remedies leading type of alternative therapy

While therapies like herbology and reiki meditation have been used to treat medical conditions for thousands of years, these and other alternative medicines are being included more and more in mainstream health care.

In a report released last week by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the National Center for Health Statistics, 38 percent of adults and about one in nine children are using some form of complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM.

CAM is a group of diverse medical practices that are not considered part of traditional medicine. Complementary medicine is used in addition to conventional medicine, and alternative medicine is used in its place.

Jim Fatz, an instructor at the Center for Integrative Bodywork in Sycamore, called the new study "a big step forward" in legitimizing CAM into the medical system, citing that the NCCAM often lacks funding for such comprehensive studies.

"It's really come a long way," said Heather Vandeburg, a practitioner of acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine and deep-tissue massage at Whole Body Health in Sycamore. "Even since I've become a practitioner [in 2004] a lot of people are becoming more open to the idea. A lot more studies are coming out, reassuring people that this is a real medicine and it's valid."

The study was done by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is based on a 2007 survey of more than 23,000 adults who were speaking about themselves and more than 9,000 who were speaking on behalf of a child in their household.

The report showed that since 2002, CAM use in adults has risen by more than 2 percent. For the first time, children's use was included in the findings.

Herbal remedies were the leading type of alternative therapy for both adults and those under 18. One of the study's authors, Richard Nahin of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, cited the lack of rigorous scientific testing in declining to call such widespread use by children harmful or beneficial.

Unlike federally regulated medicines, herbal remedies don't have to be proven safe or effective to be sold.

But some doctors are troubled that parents may be giving children alternative therapies in place of proven clinical treatments, said Dr. Wallace Sampson, an emeritus clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University.

"The reality is none of these things work, including some of the more popular ones. They're placebos," said Sampson, who was a founding editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine.

Children are more likely to use alternative therapy when their parents do, the study showed. This doesn't surprise local CAM practitioners, who said they often treat children whose parents have tried a therapy, or know someone who has.

The approach of acupuncture and acupressure is that people have energy channels – called chi – and various points of the body can access different channels and organ systems along those channels, Vandeburg said. Children can be much more responsive to this approach, she said.

"Their energy is much more exuberant and much closer to the surface," she said.

While acupuncture, or using needles at the various pressure points, is more commonly known to access the energy channels, other objects – like magnets, lasers or hand pressure – can be used.

Pat Faivre, a practitioner at Acupuncture Health Center, treated a 3-week-old girl Wednesday morning at her DeKalb office with electrodermal testing, which measures acu-points onto a computer to see whether the infant was having a bad reaction to food she ate.

Because of studies showing the prevalence of CAM use and its effectiveness, both Faivre and Vandeburg said they're not only getting more interest from patients, but also from doctors.

KishHealth System's pain clinic has recently organized an Integrative Health Network, a collaboration of area practitioners that gives patients easier access to both traditional and nontraditional pain treatments.

"We know that the things we can do with medication are not the only things that can benefit those patients," said Shar Baker, coordinator of Kishwaukee Hospital's Pain Management Clinic. "We can give medications and send them over for acupuncture or a specialized massage, physical therapy or any other entities that we think will play into the patient's plan of care."

While the hospital has worked with outside practitioners throughout the clinic's eight years in existence, they're still in the early stages of a fully integrated network, she said.

"There are very few pain management clinics that have really gotten their integrative groups pulled together," Baker said. "We can serve as a model once we get ours up and going."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.