Support  |  Login

Why Choose a Career in Alternative Medicine?

According to world-renowned economist Paul Zane Pilzer, the wellness and self-improvement market is expected to reach one trillion dollars by the year 2010. These millions of people spending billions of dollars to further their wellness represent a new and growing economic sector. Today, for example, this sector spends over $70 billion annually on vitamins and food supplements. These “baby boomers” from the ages of 40 to 60 represent the first generation in history that refuses to blindly accept the aging process. They are also a powerful economic force; they represent only 28 percent of our population—yet this group and their spending represents 50 percent of our economy.

In 2000, wellness in America was already a $200 billion industry. Only a handful of years later, it had already doubled to become a $400 billion business. By the year 2010, as Mr. Pilzer stated, it will have become the next trillion-dollar industry. In the last decade, many of the people who had achieved new wealth made their fortunes in computers. In the first decades of this millennium, many more will be making their fortunes in wellness.


Is there a demand for alternative health practitioners?
Consider this: Twenty years ago, most of us had never even heard of acupuncture; but now, this "alternative" therapy and others like it have become mainstream. The alternative health market is growing—at a brisk rate of 7.9% a year. In fact, nearly half of all Americans are now using alternative therapies, and they're spending a great deal of money—a whopping $30 billion a year—for treatments like acupuncture, yoga, massage and homeopathic therapies. And the market is still growing.

Traditional healthcare is largely centered on products and services provided reactively to people after they contract an illness, ranging from a common cold to cancerous tumors. Traditional medicine seeks to either treat symptoms or eliminate disease. Complementary and Alternataive Medicine (CAM) is more centered on products and services provided proactively to healthy people—that is, those without an existing disease—to make them feel even healthier and look better, to slow the effects of aging, or to prevent diseases from developing in the first place. Dissatisfaction with the current state of health care is on the rise, driving more and more people to seek safe and effective alternatives.



Does the US government recognize complementary and alternative medicine?
It would seem the federal government is serious about alternative healthcare. So much so that in 1998 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) added a new branch called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the Federal Government's lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine. NCCAM's current annual budget is $125 million.

NCCAM, along with the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) released new findings on Americans' use of complementary and alternative medicine. The December 2008 study revealed that in 2007 approximately 38 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 years and over and approximately 12 percent of children use some form of CAM. Adults in the United States spent $33.9 billion out of pocket on visits to CAM practitioners and purchases. One third of the total out-of-pocket costs that adults spent was on practitioner visits, which translates to $11.9 billion. Put another way, 38.1 million adults made an estimated 354.2 million visits to practitioners of CAM.


What are the Experts Saying About the Future of Alternative Medicine?
The concept of alternative medicine is not new. In fact, Thomas Edison once said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."

Today, more and more traditional medicine practitioners are embracing an integrative approach to healing. David M. Eisenberg, MD, Director of the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies and the Osher Institute at Harvard Medical School says, “I am a great advocate for what I see as a triangular relationship...the MD, the patient, the alternative provider in an open circle of communication.”

Eisenberg contends that consumers, particularly those between 30 and 55, are powering the growth of alternative medicine. According to Eisenberg's 1997 testimony before the U.S. Senate, one out of every two boomers uses non-conventional therapies, and what boomers seem to favor is the safe, noninvasive nature of alternative treatments.

Dr. David Edelberg, founder and former chairman of the integrated medicine clinic, WholeHealth in Chicago, says that most users of alternative medicine don't want to give up their conventional health care. "When we opened our center, we found people weren't giving up their family doctors, they simply wanted physician-supervised alternative medicine. They wanted a center that had two toolboxes," says Edelberg.

And it would appear that more and more conventional doctors are coming around to accepting alternative therapies. "More papers are appearing on alternative medicine in conventional medicine journals; there's a National Institutes of Health division on it; and they themselves are experiencing it,” says Edelberg. “We regularly have doctors coming into our clinic for chiropractic or acupuncture or sending their patients over...Cardiologists are taking antioxidants and vitamins, and psychiatrists are beginning to realize that St. John's wort actually works."

Dr. Roger Jahnke, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, chairperson of both the Qigong Department at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) College of Oriental Medicine and the National Qigong Association, and author of "The Healer Within,” says that the real news about the growth of alternative medicine in the West is a shifting of responsibility from the doctor to the patient. He says the key is that we're finally realizing how the client, the customer, the patient can also do something, which amounts to not only better health care, but also genuine prevention. "In fact,” says Jahnke, ”if you do something in a timely way, you might not need to be a patient at all."

And some say that the next breakthrough in alternative medicine involves adding quantum science to the mix. According to Dr. Amit Goswami, a quantum physicist who was featured in the film “What The Bleep Do We Know?!” and is Professor Emeritus of physics at the University of Oregon’s Institute of Theoretical Science, has no doubt that quantum medicine is the medicine of the future. “Quantum physics has changed all the equations involved in healing,” says Goswami. “With quantum physics, all experiences can be included. In this way, the mental and the physical can work in parallel when mediated by consciousness.”

It would appear that alternative medicine is no longer on the fringe of health care, but rather is the next quantum leap in health and wellness. And that spells good news for those of us who choose to step up and build careers as alternative health practitioners. To find out more about how you can develop your own meaningful career in the medicine of the future, simply click the link below to speak to an academic advisor.

Speak to an Academic Advisor >> Click Here
The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. Most people believe that aging is universal but there are biological organisms that never age.
--Deepak Chopra, MD

Login Form