Some definitions:
Mortality: Death due to a disease.
Morbidity: Bad effects of a disease not amounting to death.
I classify diseases according to whether they have "low mortality and low morbidity" or "low mortality and high morbidity" .
High mortality diseases are left out of the discussion because they are usually treated at the hospitals.
The low morbidity is also left out of the discussion because people don't seek treatment for such conditions.
So our discussion centers on high morbidity conditions with low mortality - such as Panic attacks and Anxiety, overweight people, various skin condition like acne etc.
Many of such conditions are not treated successfully by conventional allopathy (doctors and medical science). And in many cases the side effects of the drug become the source of morbidity.
Therefore patients are always on a look out for alternative therapies - Yoga, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Hypnotherapy etc.
And since these conditions have low mortality, the alternative therapies are not monitored and tested. Thus publishers often launch products in these categories of disease without any danger of retribution.
Whether these products are useful or not is never known until a patient tries it out for himself. Thus a patient is becomes a sort of a guinea pig who doles out money for being experimented upon.
Mind you I am not saying that alternative therapies are all bad. Many people are cured of their diseases trying out these therapies. Many people report benefits in the form of alleviation of symptoms.
All I am trying to point out is that the mechanisms of these therapies, their actual benefits, their side effects are not known and that one should be careful while trying out new therapies.
Personally, I am a fan of Yoga as an alternative therapy for various diseases and as a general enhancer of quality of life and fitness levels.
If you are interested in learning about various therapies, here are the links:
Yoga
Aromatherapy
Regards,
Dhritiman Chakrabarti
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