Alternative Medicine Assignment

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Complementary Therapies in Health Care Question: Select a common condition or complaint (something that could prompt a visit to a medical General Practitioner). Compare and contrast possible biomedical and complementary approaches to this condition or complaint, including: * diagnosis, * treatment/s, * prognosis and * referrals to other practitioner/s. Critically analyse advantages and disadvantages of an 'integrative' approach to your selected complaint or conditions. Introduction: Today people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis want more options in their pain and health care management. This is because of their concerns about the side-effects of current conventional medicines. Traditionally biomedicine’s philosophy is to treat pain for rheumatoid arthritis through body management approaches such as drugs, fusion of joints and/or an operation. People’s interest in incorporating and using complementary and alternative medicine approaches with their conventional medicine is increasing because of its holistic approach which emphasizes wellness and health maintenance through acknowledging and integrating the body, mind, and spirit of a person as well as all their environmental factors of their health through affirming the centrality of a person’s attitudes and choices in their own health and illness. Rheumatoid arthritis: There is no cure for rheumatoid arthritis and it is a chronic long lasting, progressive and disabling autoimmune disease that causes inflammation, swelling and pain in the joints as well as the tissues around the joints and other organs (Cush et al 2010). It is often painful and disabling, and usually requires lifelong pharmacological management (Hochberg et al, 2008). People are usually diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis between the ages of thirty and fifty, but it can affect all ages (AIHW: 2005). In rheumatoid

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