What Is CAM
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)
Today, millions of Americans are using one or more health promotion, illness prevention or healing practices that are considered complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This trend has become apparent since the late 90’s. It was estimated that US population suggest a 47.3% increase in total visits to alternative medicine practitioners, from 427 million in 1990 to 629 million in 1997, even exceeding total visits to all US primary care physicians in the same year. (David M. Eisenberg, JAMA)

Many American hospitals are offering CAM educational programs to help patients and physicians integrate alternative therapies into their heath care. For example, the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has been providing since 1999; MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas offers Complementary/Integrative Medicine Education Resources (CIMER) program to integrated CAM in cancer treatment, clinical trials, education programs and cancer prevention.

Research showed CAMs integrated with the standard treatments to manage symptoms may increase quality of life and sense of well-being, improve treatment efficacy, is ultimately superior to a single-model approach to health and wellness. This integrated approach will lead to safer, faster and more effective healthcare.

“CAM Forms of treatment that are used in addition to (complementary) or instead of (alternative) standard treatments. These practices generally are not considered standard medical approaches. Standard treatments go through a long and careful research process to prove they are safe and effective, but less is known about most types of CAM. CAM may include dietary supplements, megadose vitamins, herbal preparations, acupuncture…..” (National Cancer Institute, 2006)
  “…Herbal therapy is considered to be the most popular alternative therapy used in the United States…” (American Academy of Family Physicians, 2006)
For more information, please go to

National Institute of Health (NIH)
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/whatiscam/
National Cancer Institute
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cam-cancer-treatment/Patient/page1
White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy
http://www.whccamp.hhs.gov/fr1.html
American Academy of Family Physicians
http://www.aafp.org/fpm/20010300/37comp.html
Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine
http://www.cancer.gov/cam/index.html
Journal of American Medical Association
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/280/18/1569
American Association of Oriental Medicine
http://www.aaom.org/
Office of Dietary Supplement (ODS)
http://grande.nal.usda.gov/ibids/index.php
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/1979.cfm
MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Texas
http://www.mdanderson.org/departments/CIMER/
Alternative Nature Online Herbal
http://www.altnature.com/index.html
American Herbal Pharmacopoeia
http://www.herbal-ahp.org/
American Botanical Council
http://www.herbalgram.org/
Herb Research Foundation
http://www.herbs.org/index.html
Natural Medicines
http://www.naturaldatabase.com
International Journal of pharmacognosy
http://sun.swets.nl/sps/journals/ijp.html
American Herbal Products Association
http://www.ahpa.org
American Herbalists Guild
http://www.americanherbalistsguild.com/
Herb Research Foundation
http://www.herbs.org/index.html
Alternative Nature Online Herbal
http://www.altnature.com/index.html
American Herbal Pharmacopoeia
http://www.herbal-ahp.org/
Botanical.com
http://www.botanical.com/
Center for Botanical Dietary Supplement Research in Women's Health
http://www.uic.edu/pharmacy/research/diet/content/scont_about.htm