ok sooo.....

i actually started off trying to list alternative medicines until i realized there are simply far too many of them to go through one by one.
regardless, what they all have in common is that they don't actually work.

ok, in a way they do, in that you feel better.
it should be pointed out however that this isn't anything to do with the actual physical effects of these therapies, acupuncture doesn't align energies in your body, nor does reiki, nor do crystals and nor do magnets.
at the very best depending on the alternative practice in question it provides a relaxing enviroment and maybe a massage or something similar, the rest is psychological.

my point is that 'alternative' medicine is pretty much a made up term.
there is only two things in this respect.
medicine that does work, and medicine that doesn't.

if crystals did in fact work, doctors all over would use them, they're actually not too snobbish to adapt new techniques.
the simple fact is that such things do not work and are therefore not admissable in a hospital and its unethical to lie to patients to that degree.

if such therapies, everything from feng sui to urine therapy, help you then that is fine, but i think we should place a higher value on the truth rather than relying on misinformation and bad science that manipulates our view of how the universe actually works.

Totally off topic (I've no opinion on alternative meds)

But it seemed funny that the thread title "There's no such thing as "alternative medicine".

was in fact in the alternative medicine section. for a moment it looked like a denial of reality.

sorry. it just looked superfically funny to me..

Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science is an entertaining and informative read with a good section on dismissing alternative therapies.

Pity he writes for the Guardian though.

alot of research has gone into how these therapies work.
the common idea is that researches have snubbed these ideas and not bothered to see if they work.

in actually millions of dollars and decades of work have gone into finding out what medicine actually works.
this is going back to the begining of actual medicine when people started to differenciate old medicine which was percieved to work through very much the same process as modern alternative medicine is percieved to work now.
practices like bleeding patients and the bogus precoursers to homoepathy. people wern't stupid back then.

the psychological aspect i really don't wish to throw out there as a weak blanket argument along the lines of 'its just in your head'
because it really is more amazing and powerful that that.
in a way it does make these therapies 'work' in that positive results come from them. the key thing is that the reasons for these positive effects are certainly not because of the therapies themselves.
which i think create a distorted view of the world.

'natural' cures are much more effective than 'alternative' medicine.

I guess it's too bad I have the Master Attunment in Usui Reiki then . Tell me, what do you actually know about alternative medicine? Have you been around it your entire life? Have you ever had any training in it? The answer is probably no. In which case, you really have no idea what you're talking about.

I myself can prove (in person) that Applied Kinesiology does work, even under double blind tests. Of course, you've already made up your mind. But honestly, if you don't know anything about it (which you don't), don't say it's not real. You sound no different than those Christians who "know" God is real. Of course, you can believe Reiki doesn't work. That's fine. But you cannot say it doesn't, because you simiply don't know.

Of course you can provide links to the relevant medical research journals proving your claims.