Why Patients Use Alternative Medicine

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Abstract
IN 1993 Eisenberg and colleagues1 reported that 34% of adults in the United States used at least 1 unconventional form of health care (defined as those practices "neither taught widely in U.S. medical schools nor generally available in U.S. hospitals") during the previous year. The most frequently used alternatives to conventional medicine were relaxation techniques, chiropractic, and massage. Although educated, middle-class white persons between the ages of 25 and 49 years were the most likely ones to use alternative medicine, use was not confined to any particular segment of the population. These researchers estimated that Americans made 425 million visits to alternative health care providers in 1990, a figure that exceeded the number of visits to allopathic primary care physicians during the same period.