Americans use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to address their own functional limitations, according to a new study, with 73.9 percent of such people turning to manipulative and body-based therapies such as massage.
This study compared the use of CAM to treat health conditions with CAM use for general wellness or disease prevention among adults with and without functional limitations, according to an abstract published on www.pubmed.gov.
Among the results:
• Massage therapy was used most often to treat conditions that limited functional ability (53.4 percent)
• Overall use of CAM treatment was higher among adults with functional limitations than among those without (61.4 percent versus 41.8 percent)
• Adults with functional limitations were more likely to use three of four CAM groupings: biologically based therapies (47.9 percent versus 29.5 percent); manipulative and body-based therapies (73.7 percent versus 54.1 percent); and mind-body therapies (39.3 percent versus 17.4 percent).
“Use of complementary and alternative medicine among USA adults with functional limitations: For treatment or general use?” ran in Complementary Therapies in Medicine.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services, Public Health Surveillance Program Office, Division of Behavioral Surveillance, Atlanta, Georgia.
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