WHEN a medical crisis hits, people want to know that someone smart in a white coat can prescribe Prozac to boost their mood, perform heart surgery to open their clogged arteries, or administer chemotherapy, radiation or surgery to cure them of cancer.
But growing numbers of Americans are also eager to experiment with alternative therapies. They take herbs to boost their immunity, meditate to calm frayed nerves and seek acupuncture to combat nausea and pain. Two 1998 studies reported that 42% of Americans use alternative medical therapies to treat their conditions -- and that, in 1997, Americans made an estimated 629 million office visits to complementary therapy providers. A 2002 government survey found that 36% of adults use some form of complementary and alternative medicine, and if megavitamin therapy and prayers for health are included in the list, the number rises to 62%.
A natural tension has long existed between these two kinds of medicine. Western medical practitioners have been wary of the sometimes wacky-sounding, often-untested therapies in alternative medicine's toolkit. Alternative medicine practitioners have typically operated outside the conventional system, with consumers paying out of pocket.
But over the last 10 years this wall has started, partially, to erode. Aided by federal funds, an increasing number of alternative therapies have been put to Western-style clinical tests, separating ones that seem beneficial, such as acupuncture for relief of pain, meditation to reduce hypertension, or ginger to relieve nausea -- from the chaff that appears ineffective. And conventional practitioners have come to appreciate the effect of the mind on chronic pain, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, anxiety and depression -- even the progress of disease.
About a decade ago, doctors began to be trained in what health guru Dr. Andrew Weil dubbed "integrative medicine," a new kind of doctoring that combines Western medicine with the best, most evidence-based alternative therapies.
Creating such centers -- and making them cost-effective -- has proved challenging.
Yet today there are an array of such clinics in Southern California. And the interest is growing. A 2003 survey by the American Hospital Assn. reported that 16% of hospitals, including medical facilities at Harvard and Duke, featured integrated medicine centers -- double the number available in 1998.
