Why I would recommend complementary or alternative therapies: a physician's perspective

The successes of science and technology have created new health challenges. The use of various complementary therapies by patients reflects a response to one of those challenges, which is the need we all have to tell our stories, find meaning, and seek healing relationships. Although several alternative medical systems are conceptually incompatible with conventional medicine, the therapeutic modalities associated with them can be evaluated by standard clinical investigative approaches. These approaches, however, are intrinsically more difficult to apply in some cases because of the nature of objectivity and reductionism in complex, relationship-centered therapy, and because it is hard to study something that, by design, works slowly, mildly, and individually.