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More Americans Practicing Yoga, Meditation To Control Pain, but Supplements Still Lead Alternative Therapies

Although herbal supplements continue to be the most used complementary health approach in the United States, more Americans are rolling out their yoga mats to improve their health and manage various conditions, particularly pain, according to a new national survey.

The practice of yoga has approximately doubled since 2002, with 21 million adults and 1.7 million children reporting that they practiced yoga in 2012. In addition, nearly 20 million adults and 1.9 million children had chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation and 18 million adults and 927,000 children practiced meditation.

“One important finding [of the survey] is how often people turned to complementary practices for management of pain, and the growing interest from Americans in mind and body approaches, particularly for pain management but also other symptoms,” said Josephine P. Briggs, MD, the director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), in Bethesda, Md. The high rates of use might be related to a growing body of research that shows that some mind and body practices can help manage pain and reduce stress, according to Dr. Briggs.

“The mind–body approaches, including osteopathic manipulation and yoga, are part of Americans’ strategies to manage pain,” she added.

The National Health Interview Survey is a large, in-person, annual survey of Americans conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Center for Health Statistics. Every five years, the survey looks at the use of alternative and complementary health approaches. The results reported this week were responses from 34,525 adults and 10,218 children to the survey in 2012. The researchers compared these results with surveys conducted in 2007 (23,393 adults; 7,103 children) and 2002 (31,044 adults; no children).

Overall, 33.2% of adults and 11.6% of children used complementary health approaches in 2012, the survey found.

Natural products (dietary supplements other than vitamins and minerals) continue to be the most common complementary medicine used by Americans, the study found, although the use of certain supplements has increased and the use of others has decreased. According to the study, 17.7% of adults and 4.9% of children aged 4 to 17 years used natural products.

Specifically, Americans' use of fish oil, probiotics, prebiotics and melatonin increased between 2007 and 2012, but their use of glucosamine/chondroitin, Echinacea and garlic decreased.

The survey also found that Americans do not always disclose their use of natural products to their health care providers. Therefore, it is very important for health care providers to ask their patients about complementary product use, Dr. Briggs said.

“It is certainly important for primary care providers to ask their patients about the use, most particularly about the use of dietary supplements, because some dietary supplements do modify the effects of pharmaceuticals—sometimes augmenting, sometimes diminishing—so it is very important for doctors to ask their patients,” Dr. Briggs said.

“The other thing we learned from these surveys is that, by and large, complementary approaches are used that way. They are not used as an alternative instead of proven therapies, but as a complement to conventional care,” Dr. Briggs said.

Source: www.painmedicinenews.com