“Yes it’s a common treatment, but currently there’s no research to support its use”.
 
This is a statement that I have heard far too often and has become one of my greatest frustrations. All too often I hear allopathic doctors, pharmacists and other health care practitioners repeat this claim when faced with alternative therapies. To me it seems that this declaration is the standard reaction when a practitioner is asked about a treatment with which they are unfamiliar. This common response is especially unfortunate because it is frequently the furthest thing from the truth. When looking at clinical trials alone, pubmed lists over fifty-one thousand hits for complementary medicines. This number doesn’t even include all of the reviews, meta-analyses and laboratory research that has been done in the field of alternative medical research. Acupuncture for example, which I have frequently heard cited as having no supporting evidence, has over thirty clinical trials including thousands of patients for the treatment of osteoarthritis alone. There are over twenty trials for the use of acupuncture for post-operative nausea and over fifty for acupuncture and chronic pain. Similarly vast amounts of research can be found on interventions such as fish oils, CoQ10, Ginkgo and hydrotherapy. It’s time that we got the message out to the medical community; there are an incredible amount of alternative therapies with strong supporting evidence based in well-performed studies. There is a plethora of research for complementary medicines and it’s about time that people stopped hearing that there isn’t. With hard work, some good campaigning and a bit of luck, hopefully one day soon we can change this statement to “I’m not sure what the research says, but I’ll go find out”.