From Complementary to Integrative Medicine and Health: Do We Need a Change in Nomenclature?

Within the last 25 years, a strong worldwide movement driving the integration of safe and effective traditional practices and self-care techniques into mainstream health care has developed. The reason for this relates to a strong dissatisfaction with conventional medicine and its one-sided focus on high-tech interventions and pharmaceutical drugs for the management of established diseases. A more comprehensive approach to individual needs regarding health shall be provided through diagnostic and therapeutic methods by a nonconventional ‘Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)’. This term has been used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, for a long time. Thereby, the wording ‘Complementary Medicine’ was embossed internationally – also in German-speaking countries – and established as a concept using non-mainstream methods in combination with, not in place of, conventional medicine [1]. In contrast, the term ‘Alternative Medicine’ has become more or less uncommon in the nomenclature of this concept. The labeling ‘Naturopathy’ – as a German ‘feature’ based primarily on the Kneipp model – has never stopped being used in Germany, due to its long history. Anyhow, the German health care system and public also adopted the term ‘Complementary Medicine’. In Switzerland, it has even become part of the constitutional law. The understanding of the concept goes along with the NIH definition and refers to all additional non-mainstream practices outside naturopathy. Since 1994, charismatic persons like Andrew Weil (University of Arizona) pushed the term ‘Integrative Medicine’ in the USA and beyond [2–4]. Weil’s vision focusses on the idea that everyone is responsible for their own health: ‘It is up to you to learn how to maintain it and to protect your body’s potential for self-healing as you go through life. No doctors, no treatments, no system can do this for you or force you to do it on your own’ [3]. Thus, health promotion and preventive medicine have become fundamental features of ‘Integrative Medicine’. Its concept encompasses all aspects of lifestyle, seeks to optimize the individual’s innate healing capacity in case of illness, and emphasizes the patient’s participation in maximizing personal health resources and protecting factors [2, 4]. This salutogenic approach is complementary to the concept of conventional medicine with its pathogenesis-oriented practice and theory. Using complementary approaches to foster health and wellness in terms of empowering people to keep themselves healthy and to address self-healing resources corresponds exactly to this salutogenic draft of ‘ComplePublished online: April 17, 2018