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Office Hours: |
Monday 8a-6p
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 8a-6p
Thursday 8a-6p
Friday 7:30a-2:30p |
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What is “Mainstream
Healthcare” Now?
According to a recent survey conducted for and published
in “American Demographics” January 2001 issue by the
research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres Intersearch, 70% of
Americans have tried or are currently using what the
study called, “alternative medicine”. These types of
numbers beg us to ask some questions. First, why is it
called an alternative if more than half the people are
using it? Secondly, why is it called alternative
“medicine” when none of the types of care in the study
are, or use medicine?
According to the survey, 44% of the general public
utilizes some form of “faith healing” or prayer. This
was the most popular approach as found by the study.
According to the study, chiropractic or massage was the
second most popular with 33% of the population using
these. These numbers verify previous studies done by
other researchers also showing the large increase in
utilization of chiropractic services over the past
decade.
The study goes on to point out that women are more
receptive than men to using the “alternatives” as named
by the study. There were also some large regional
differences noted in the survey. Americans from the
Western US were 16% more likely to visit a chiropractor
than was the rest of the country. Southerners were more
likely to practice faith healing than the rest of the
nation, and Midwesterners were the least likely to use
any of the alternatives named in the survey.
The type of illness that a person suffers also has an
effect on what type of care they will seek. The survey
showed that when asked a hypothetical question, people
who said if they were diagnosed with a medically easily
treatable disease would be less likely to try an
“alternative”. On the other hand those people said that
if they were diagnosed with a complex, potentially fatal
illness, they would overwhelmingly inquire about
alternative care. In this scenario almost double, or 60%
of those surveyed said they would seek alternatives when
faced with such a serious health concern. On the other
hand only 11% said they would seek out alternative care
if they felt they were in overall good health.
Age also played a role in the determination of usage of
alternatives. The age group from 35 to 54 was constantly
more likely to use alternatives than the age group 18 to
34. With each of the alternatives named in the survey
differences ranged from 5% to over 10% more for the
older groups. With these types of ever increasing usages
it is probably time that we stop referring to these as
alternatives and start calling them other forms of main
stream health care.
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