Clinical InvestigationCharacteristics and Health Perceptions of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Users in the United States
Section snippets
METHODS
We obtained approval for this study from the Institutional Review Board of Howard University, Washington DC, and downloaded the publicly available de-identified data of the National Cancer Institute's 2007 Health Information National Trends Surveys (HINTS). The detail of HINTS 2007 has been published.3 In brief, HINTS was a survey containing questions about health-related information. The 2007 iteration was conducted between January 2008 and May 2008. Two modes of data collection were used:
RESULTS
The weighted total population estimate, N = 220,549,842. Overall, the mean age of the participants in this study was 45.7 years (95% confidence interval: 45.6-45.8 years), 51.2% were females, 69.6% non-Hispanic whites, 11.3% non-Hispanic blacks, 12.8% Hispanics, 29.7% were obese, 21.5% were current smokers, 82.7% had health insurance and 14.1% were born outside the United States. Of the 7,503 participants in this study, 1980 (25.1%) respondents used CAM in the previous 12 months. When compared with
DISCUSSION
In this study, we evaluated the demographics, lifestyle characteristics and health perceptions of nationally representative adults in the United States with respect to CAM use in the previous 12 months. Our study suggests that approximately a quarter of U.S. adults used CAM in the previous year; however, about one half of CAM users do not inform their doctors. It is very important for care providers to be aware of this and make direct inquiry about the use of CAM from their patients during
CONCLUSIONS
Approximately, a quarter of U.S. adults engage in CAM use and approximately half of CAM users do not discuss their use with their doctors, making it imperative that care providers should endeavor to constantly inquire about the use of these unconventional therapies directly from their patients.
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2022, Comprehensive PharmacologyUtilization of complementary and alternative medicine for the prevention of COVID-19 infection in Ghana: A national cross-sectional online survey
2021, Preventive Medicine ReportsCitation Excerpt :In relation to the findings on sex, this study observed that female participants had a higher chance (41%) of using CAM than males during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar results have been documented for females being more likely to use CAM than males (Egede et al., 2002; Alwhaibi et al., 2015; Laiyemo et al., 2015; Alwhaibi and Sambamoorthi, 2016), which are congruent with our findings. Plausible reasons for this observation are that women are more motivated to use CAM because they tend to adopt more preventive healthcare approaches, as well as have more health needs that may not be sufficiently satisfied by conventional healthcare systems (Zhang et al., 2015; Kristoffersen et al., 2014).
Prescription patterns and characteristics of users of Chinese herbal products in the US: Analysis of a teaching center prescription database
2018, Journal of EthnopharmacologyCitation Excerpt :While we do not have statistics on reporting adverse effects to TCM prescribers, studies have shown patients under-reporting to their physician. Rates range from 47.6% (Laiyemo et al., 2015) who did not report the use of CAM to 66.6% (Gardiner, 2006) who did not report the use of dietary supplements that could potentially interact with prescription medications or cause adverse reactions. Other work has found that of the roughly 60% of respondents who used herbs, more than half (35–44% out of the 60%) also used prescription or over-the-counter medications but did not tell or share their herb use with their health care providers (Blendon et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 1998; Gardiner et al., 2007; Leung et al., 2001).
Public Health and Preventive Medicine Meet Integrative Health: Applications of Competency Mapping to Curriculum Education at the University of Michigan
2015, American Journal of Preventive MedicineCitation Excerpt :Women, college-educated people, and former smokers are more likely to use CAM, and almost 50% of CAM users do not inform their physicians about this use.6 CAM users, however, are more likely than non-CAM users to report their health as excellent,7 revealing provocative population health dilemmas. The knowledge base of physicians has continued to lag behind the public uptake of CAM.
A comparative analysis of complementary therapies use among patients attending diabetic clinics in Taiwan: 2007 vs. 2023
2023, BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
Dr. Laiyemo is supported by a grant award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the National Institutes of Health (Grant KL2TR000102 and UL1RT000101).
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.