Is alternative medicine better than traditional Western medicine?
Alternative medicine can sometimes be an alternative to something that works. It’s often called alternative because there are no empirical, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies to see if it works. In a placebo study, the active medication or treatment is compared to not using it but taking a “placebo” or something that looks like a real medicine. This is needed because the brain has a “placebo response” center that reacts in a calming way if you think you are doing something to calm your brain down. You might then experience a decrease in anxiety, not because the medication or alternative medication is doing anything, but because the brain thinks something is being done to it!
So a certain kind of counseling might be used in one group, and in another group people go into the counselor's office and talk to the counselor about how the weather is and what’s going on in the world. Or they might just sit in the waiting room for an hour and go home. Then the active treatment group is compared with the group that didn’t get any treatment. If a treatment isn’t compared to a non-treatment, you really don’t know what the treatment is doing. People can get better just because they want to get better or they think they’re doing something for themselves when they are not.
One study of Freudian psychoanalysis was compared with a group that just came into the doctor's waiting room, read magazines, and left. A year later, people who rated the mood issues in both groups, found both were about the same. So there was no measurable difference between the two groups, one that did the Freudian psychoanalysis, and the other group that did not do that. Similar studies have found a difference, compared to placebo, in psychotherapy that involves changing your thoughts, changing your actions, developing better communication strategies, learning meditation, and other strategies. This is called cognitive behavior therapy. It works.
So it is worth it to see if there’s any science behind the treatment being offered. You can ask your therapist or doctor what that science is, what the studies are, and where to find them. It can often be hard to locate those studies. If you use the application, “Google Scholar,“ there you can type in, the question and it will search the world's scientific database. In general, the journals are reviewed by Ph.D. or MD-level people who weeded out poorly done studies. You can search the internet for the question, “What is a scientifically valid study” to see what are the basics on this issue.
Why go to that trouble? Your mental health is at stake. Also, you can waste lots of money and years of your life by focusing on treatments that “feel good” but don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working. For example, I have seen many people with OCD who didn’t get better with supportive counseling. Supportive therapy doesn’t work for OCD according to scientific studies. Behavioral therapy is the only approach that works. I’ve seen people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder lose their jobs and relationships because of their anxiety. They often see a therapist and then for psychiatric medication, they see their primary care doctor who doesn’t give them enough of the right medication to fight the PTSD. One person going through this is doing much better now, on prazosin for nightmares, sertraline for anxiety and obsessions, and aripiperazole for depression that “broke through” the sertraline. Primary care doctors are good doctors and mean well, but they lack specialized training in prescribing psychiatric medications.
A simple Google search on a topic will get you all sorts of websites that claim all sorts of things, showing the world is full of “snake oil salesman.“ Since this is your mental health at stake, it’s worth taking a little time to look into if a certain treatment really has good results for it. There are entire marketing companies that work to promote all kinds of “alternative” mental health treatment. They are in business because the marketing works. The alternative treatment doesn’t work. You go to their websites and you see they don’t refer to any scientifically valid studies. And yet these alternative treatment approaches are thriving. Why? People are desparate for help and don’t know what scientifically valid studies are, and why they are important (they tell you what works and what doesn’t.)
People, educate yourself!
Even traditional medicine can sometimes be offered in ways that are alternative. In the 1900s, the seizure medicine “Topamax,“ was suggested to help with bipolar disorder. In fact, studies came out and showed it didn’t do any good. Also, there were studies showing that fish oil capsules when taken regularly at a certain dose, reduced the risk of heart disease. Millions of people then took these capsules, thinking they were doing something good, ingesting omega-3 fatty acids from capsules. I was one of them. Bottles of fish oil capsules lined grocery store shelves. Then a study came out showing it wasn’t any better than taking a placebo. I quit taking those pills. Still, some people use those capsules thinking they’re doing some good. But studies now show that getting omega-3 fatty acids from a natural source, such as wild-caught salmon, is a much better way to get this done. I’m cooking up some salmon today. You can look it up yourself in Google Scholar if you are interested.
Some alternative medication really works. In the 2000’s the US federal government gave emergency approval for the use of psilocybin mushrooms for the treatment of medication-treatment-resistant depression. Many studies have shown it works quite well, and sometimes within a week. Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland led the way in this new, effective, and alternative treatment. Several hours of lectures were devoted to this topic at the annual meeting of psychiatrists at the Neuroscience Education Institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2023.
Other alternative medications that work include herbal tea for calming mild anxiety. Caffeine gives a small boost to attention and mental energy. I’ve found espresso made Italian machines such as Delonghi, boost focus and don’t upset the stomach if the coffee is mixed with a little almond or oat milk. Legal marijuana can sometimes help with insomnia, but can also cause a lack of motivation and impaired memory, so I don’t recommend it.
When you’re doing something to take care of yourself and feel better as a result, I think that’s great whether you’re using traditional or alternative medication. In part, you're activating the placebo response area in the brain. It feels good to take care of yourself! So if you’re using alternative medication for that more power to you. The problem is you don’t want to do that if, in fact, you’re letting a mental health problem get worse and worse. For example, if your depression and anxiety are getting better, you are using skills you learned in counseling, and you are drinking chamomile tea at night. Keep drinking that tea. Keep doing that counseling. But if the depression gets worse, tell your therapist and or psychiatrist within a week and ask what you should do.
Always question alternative medication and look at the studies. Even though studies have been done and published, and Google Scholar finds them, they can be from flaky journals that don’t have rigorous ways of weeding out phony studies. I once talked to a person who did marketing for alternative medication clinics. I told her about Google Scholar and how easy it is to research to see if there are valid studies showing a certain treatment works. She had no interest in hearing about that! None! She just wanted to market the alternative clinics. She complained about how the government is restricting what kinds of words can be used in marketing alternative clinics. Well, yeah, at a certain point it becomes false advertising.
So buyer beware. Lots of companies have a vested interest in having a study, showing a certain medicine works because then they can charge a lot of money for it and make a lot of money. There’s nothing wrong with making money as long as you are doing something that works. You probably are already aware of this anyway. Big Pharma and Alternative Pharma can trick you. They often promise a quick fix for your problems. Beware of those empty promises! Do your research, and sometimes nothing beats talking with a psychologist or psychiatrist with lots of experience in the topic you are interested in. They then can tell you what they have seen work for patients over many decades in their experience.