For decades now, unconventional medicines have been taking hold throughout the West, indicating a population increasingly sensitive towards itself and the environment that surrounds it. A sort of subtle revolution, which underlines the man’s better awareness, which begins to understand that it is not the body that becomes ill, but something deeper, whose final manifestation is the illness.
This is where alternative medicines and their success come into play.
They are many, some more valid, others less. Undoubtedly, the most widespread are those exclusively of medical prerogative, such as homeopathy, mesotherapy and acupuncture, followed by pranotherapy, naturopathy, ayurveda and many others.
Although effective, synthetic medicines have had in recent years an improper and extremely excessive use. Just think of the indispensable antibiotics, but their excessive use generates dangerous side effects. All this has led the individual to reflect, and to take back his life, rather than let it be managed by the chemical industry. But this is not the only engine that has promoted this revolution. At the base there is the man who is changing.
A big difference between allopathic and alternative medicines is the strong attention that the latter have towards the preventive dimension of health. A return to the past, where the good doctor goes back to being the one who had few patients, not because he was not able to treat, but because he was able to make them stay healthy. Here is the need for a new doctor-patient approach, where it is not the disease or the sick organ that is being treated, but rather the person.
The authentic doctor-patient relationship is back in vogue, where a visit lasts much more than ten minutes, where the anamnestic connection investigates family history, personal history, daily life style, personal tastes and much more. All indicators of an individual path which, if altered, leads to different pathologies. This is where alternative medicines involve man in his entirety as a complex of body, mind and spirit, where an alteration of the body is only the end result of an altered process that is generated in the spirit.
A very important factor to take into consideration is the healing time. Often a natural therapy requires much longer treatment times, not because they are less effective, but because, if properly performed, it determines a more or less visible inner change, which removes the pathogenic noxa responsible for the disease.
However, a special attention is required. Just as there are individuals who are not suited to this type of alternative medicine, as a mental disposition of distrust determines upstream the failure of the therapy, at the same time there are many swindlers, who exploit the individual suffering to get money.
Furthermore, the combined use of traditional and non-conventional medicines should not be underestimated, as it often happens in the treatment of cancer pain through acupuncture.
The success of unconventional medicines in recent years derives from various factors including the ability to give answers that the official medicine is not able to give and that of giving moral support to the patient rather than a medicine, since it gives back to the individual the possibility of being himself his own healer.