The doctor is in. So is the yogi.
A sharp shift in health care is taking place as more than a third of American adults now supplement or replace mainstream medical care with acupuncture, meditation, yoga and other therapies long considered alternative.
In 2022, 37 percent of adult pain patients used nontraditional medical care, a marked increase from 19 percent in 2002, according to research published this week in JAMA. The change has been driven by increasing insurance reimbursement for clinical alternatives, more scientific evidence of their effectiveness, and increasing patient acceptance.
“It’s become part of the culture of the United States,” said Richard Nahin, the paper’s lead author and an epidemiologist at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a division of the National Institutes of Health. “We’re talking about using it for general wellness, stress management, sleep, energy, immune health.”
And for pain management. The use of yoga for pain management rose to 29 percent in 2022 from 11 percent in 2002, an increase that Dr. Nahin said partly reflects efforts by patients to find alternatives to opiates and the influence of the media and social media.
“It’s so much in the public domain,” he said. “People hear acupuncture, meditation, yoga. They are starting to learn.”
The change also affects doctors. Dr. Sean Mackey, chief of pain management at Stanford Medicine, said a growing number of studies have validated alternative therapies, giving even traditional clinics like Stanford’s more mind-body therapies and other non-drug tools. He said acceptance of these ideas has grown particularly among younger people, while patients of previous generations may have seen these options as very out there.
“Our parents and grandparents would look at them and say, “What, you’re kidding me.”?”
At the same time, Dr. Mackey said, the growing prominence of treatments can be a “double-edged sword” because they don’t always provide the relief marketed.
“My advice to people when they’re pursuing it is to do these things for a trial,” he said. “But if it doesn’t provide long-term lasting benefits, don’t keep doing it.”
The JAMA article drew its data from the 2002, 2012 and 2022 National Health Interview Surveys, which were conducted in person and by telephone. The researchers used the data to assess the use of seven complementary health care approaches: acupuncture, chiropractic care, guided imagery, massage therapy, meditation, naturopathy, and yoga.
Meditation as a health treatment has risen sharply, to about 17 percent of American adults in 2022, up from about 7.5 percent two decades earlier. Dr. Nihan said low cost was a factor: “How much does it cost to do meditation and yoga?” Such activities vary greatly in price depending on whether they are done at home or in classrooms.
For some people, the alternatives seem to prove superior. Jee Kim began the path of traditional medicine in 2022 when he was dealing with insomnia and anxiety from a breakup. His primary care doctor in Boulder, Colo., prescribed drugs that Mr. Kim was initially using but found they had intolerable side effects.
“I got serious about yoga and meditation,” she said, eventually finding a better solution. “I tried the pharmaceutical route, but I wanted tools that I could go back to. I knew it wouldn’t be the last difficult transition in my life.”
Mr. Kim, 49, a political consultant and former college tennis player who still plays avidly, also credits yoga with helping to avoid injuries, so much so that he has become an occasional yoga instructor himself. “It’s a pillar of my physical and mental health and at work,” she said.
Dr. Jennifer Rhodes, a psychiatrist in Boulder who specializes in treating women dealing with hormonal changes, said “the majority of my patients use adjunctive intervention like these for stress management,” referring to the research treatments.
He said he embraced the idea, but cautioned that drugs could also be vital.
“Have acupuncture and massage,” she said. “But it’s not fair to ask someone who has severe depression or anxiety and isn’t functioning to keep them busy until their nervous system calms down.”
