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Middle-Aged Adults Most Likely to Use
Complementary Medicine
By
Katherine Kahn, Contributing Writer
Health Behavior News Service
Even though older adults generally have poorer health, middle-aged
adults are most likely to turn to complementary and alternative
medicine, a new study shows. The study also found that adults of
different races or ethnic backgrounds use these self-care methods in
similar proportions.
“You’d expect that older adults and ethnic minorities would be the
greatest users of complementary and alternative medicine because
they tend to have more illness and relatively less money and often
hold different beliefs about medicine. But, in fact, they don’t,”
said lead author and sociologist Joseph Grzywacz, Ph.D.
The study, by researchers at the Wake Forest
University School of Medicine and the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, appears in the most
recent issue of the Journal of Health and Social
Behavior.
The study included data on 30,785 adults from a
national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Participants, with an
average age of 45, were about evenly divided between
men and women. About 22 percent were
African-American or Hispanic, while 4 percent were
non-Hispanic Asians.
People were asked if they had used any of 28
complementary or alternative therapies in the past
year. Researchers organized these therapies into six
categories: alternative medical systems,
biologically based therapies, body-based methods,
mind-body interventions, energy therapies and
self-prayer.
Researchers also asked participants whether they had
any ailments such as bodily pain, chronic conditions
or difficulty performing everyday activities due to
illness.
Grzywacz and colleagues found that self-prayer, biologically based
therapies, and mind-body interventions were used more frequently
than other forms of complementary and alternative medicine.
Middle-aged people reported using complementary and alternative
therapies more often than either older or younger people. Older
participants were the least likely to use these forms of medicine,
with the exception of self-prayer, which was most commonly used by
those 65 years and older.
Although there were no significant differences among racial and
ethnic groups in how individuals used complementary or alternative
medicine, Grzywacz said this may be related to the types of
questions posed: “[It] could simply be that we didn’t measure the
more culturally appropriate kinds of complementary and alternative
practices that different ethnic groups may be using.”
Grzywacz suggested that older adults may use these forms of
treatment less because they are less likely to have been exposed to
them when younger. He said it’s possible that older adults perceive
bodily ailments as normal signs of aging that don’t necessarily
require treatment. Conversely, middle-aged and younger participants
may be more likely to seek any treatments that may improve their
health.
Andrew London, Ph.D., from the Center for Policy Research at
Syracuse University, takes those speculations one step further. The
results that show middle-aged adults as most likely to use
complementary and alternative medicine could in part be a reflection
of baby boomers’ approach to health, he said. “The baby boomer
generation was countercultural. They questioned authority — and
medicine is a form of authority.”
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