Popularity of complementary and alternative medicine in Japan: a telephone survey

To obtain information on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in Japan.

Nationwide, random-sampled and population-weighted telephone survey.

The survey was conducted by a telephone survey company in April 2001. The sample size of respondents was 1000. Using a region-, gender- and age-weighted sampling table, professional operators called respondents with random-digit dialling. Respondents were asked questions about their use of CAM in the past 12 months, out-of-pocket expenditures on CAM and orthodox Western medicine, reasons for the use of CAM and so on, as well as general socio-demographics.

The percentage of respondents who had used at least one CAM therapy in the past 12 months was greater than those who had used orthodox Western medicine (76.0% (95% CI: 73.4-78.6) vs 65.6% (95% CI: 62.7-68.5). The percentage of use for each CAM therapy was as follows: nutritional and tonic drinks (43.1%), dietary supplements (43.1%), health-related appliances (21.5%), herbs or over-the-counter Kampo (17.2%), massage or acupressure (14.8%), ethical Kampo (Kampo prescribed by medical doctors) (10.0%), aromatherapy (9.3%), chiropractic or osteopathy (7.1%), acupuncture and moxibustion (6.7%), homeopathy (0.3%), and other therapies (6.5%). Regarding the reasons for the use of CAM, 60.4% responded that 'the condition was not serious enough to warrant orthodox Western medicine', and 49.3% were 'expecting health promotion or disease prevention'. Average annual out-of-pocket expenditures of all the 1000 respondents for CAM were half as much as those for orthodox Western medicine (19,080 yen (95% CI: 15,824-22,336) vs 38,360 yen (95% CI: 30,439-46,280)).

CAM is very popular in Japan and the expenditures for them are not negligible, although there is still an overwhelming dominance of orthodox Western medicine with regard to cost, variety of indications, and severity of conditions.