Introduction:
Complementary medicine is not most people’s first choice. My pain started when I was 15: nobody knew what was wrong or how to fix it (I didn’t get a diagnosis or explanation for well over a decade), and after all the doctors threw up their hands, we were grasping at straws. My mother, bless her, dragged me to everything she could think of to help me, even stuff like hypnosis that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve tried (and retried) many more options. Some of them helped; most of them didn’t. The majority of complementary treatments I’ve tried have been an expensive way of pissing money away. But there ARE things that can really, truly help. Everyone is different, and everyone’s pain is different. But here’s what helped me– and what didn’t.
What is complementary medicine?
To put it simply, it’s a treatment that you use in conjunction with conventional medicine. Just as alternative medicine is used as a replacement / alternative for conventional medical treatment, complementary medicine complements the treatment plan your doctor has in place. The term “integrated health” is sometimes used to describe a holistic approach where conventional and complementary approaches are used together in a coordinated way. Out-of-pocket spending on these approaches for Americans age 4 and older amounts to an estimated $30.2 billion per year, according to the 2012 NHIS— almost 10% of OOP spending on healthcare. Money is a huge concern when discussing complementary health: while insurance may cover some of these treatments, most of them are going to be coming from your pocket.
I have been in constant pain since I was 15 because of a chiropractor. Please, please, please do not go to a chiropractor. And if you do, look up their education and training, and even then do not let them crack your neck. (There’ll be a post about that too, eventually, but I wanted to say it here first.)
I’ll just put this out at the very start: I have a very low tolerance for woo. If it helps you? Godspeed! I’m not going to pooh-pooh the idea of finding help wherever you can. But I write about and am a big fan of science so I do like a treatment that’s supported by research.
Just how many types of complementary medicine are there… and which ones work?
I used this list of complementary therapies as a guide. Turns out, I’ve done a round 25 of these damn things. Here are some I’ve written about so far:
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