The World Health Organization has long acknowledged that approximately 80% of the world’s population relies on traditional, complementary, or alternative medicine for some part of their healthcare needs. This figure includes people from both developing and developed countries, including those from highly educated, urban populations in places like the United States, United Kingdom, China, South Korea, Japan, and others.
Naturally, this raises a curious and seemingly paradoxical question: if such a vast majority of the global population uses traditional medicine, why are hospitals still so crowded? Shouldn’t the reverse be true, with traditional clinics overwhelmed by demand and modern hospitals seeing far fewer patients?
This apparent contradiction is resolved when we look more closely at what the 80% figure truly represents. It does not mean that only 20% of the population uses conventional medicine. Rather, it means that the overwhelming majority of people turn to traditional medicine at some point, often for minor ailments, chronic conditions, or wellness maintenance, alongside their use of conventional care. Most people do not exclusively choose one system over the other, but instead navigate between both as circumstances require.
The key reason hospitals remain crowded is because they serve as the default destination for serious and acute medical needs. Emergencies such as strokes, heart attacks, trauma, or infections demand institutional care, advanced technology, and skilled intervention. Regardless of whether a person regularly uses herbal medicine or practices yoga for wellness, when an emergency strikes, they head to the hospital. Therefore, hospital traffic is not solely driven by conventional medicine users, it is a reflection of the severity of conditions being treated.
Moreover, hospitals are overwhelmed not just by emergencies but by the rising tide of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune conditions. These illnesses, often rooted in diet, lifestyle, and stress, require ongoing management through tests, monitoring, and pharmaceutical prescriptions.
Conventional medicine, rather than addressing their root causes, often manages symptoms over the long term, necessitating frequent hospital visits. In other words, hospitals are crowded not because they are popular, but it is crowded by the same patients coming back in the next appointment for the same medicine for refill or the medicines giving at higher doses, or the old medicine substituted by another type as the older one is no longer effective as the disease becomes more chronic and out of control because all these 'medicines' are actually chemicals that does not cure anything except control the disease or the symptoms. Hence the hospitals are crowded by the same patients coming back over and over again with new patients coming in with the same disease to snow-ball larger and larger crowds over time since drugs do not cure any disease unless the root causes are removed.
Unfortunately doctors are not trained in lifestyle medicine or how to teach patients the correct ways to live through protective nutrition and lifestyle modifications. They are only interested prescribing drugs called 'medicines' that are actually chemicals made in the factory of drug companies that they call it as 'scientific medicine' or 'modern medicine' to counteract the symptoms of the disease - termed as 'allopathy' vs 'homeopathy'
Another very strong reason why most people these days, especially among highly educated people including medical professionals, scientists and health-conscious populations, is their uneasiness, misgivings and distrust when they now realize - with the easy accessibility of the Internet, Google, fast AI Chats to search - only to discover the so-called "medicines" used in allopathic modern medicine are actually made from petrol and petroleum chemicals first revolutionize by John D Rockefeller - see link below. They become very wary of this - especially using chemicals - especially made from petrol and petroleum products to treat chronic lifestyle diseases that never cured them.
Hence, most of them, including medical doctors themselves - including many of my former medical colleagues, and other scientific professions now turn to traditional and plant-based or natural medicine.
https://scientificlogic.
In contrast, traditional medicine, often practised at home or in outpatient settings, remains largely invisible in hospital data even though it is widely used.
Another contributing factor is that traditional medicine is usually practised outside institutional healthcare settings. It takes place in community clinics, private homes, herbal shops, and wellness centres, not in the large centralized facilities that are typical of hospitals. This decentralization makes traditional medicine less visible, while hospitals, being centralized and publicly funded, appear overburdened and congested.
Additionally, urbanisation and insurance coverage tend to favour hospital-based care. In cities, people have easier access to hospitals, and health insurance typically reimburses only allopathic treatments. This drives patients, even those who might otherwise prefer natural remedies, into the hospital system, further inflating demand.
It is also important to note that many people first seek help from traditional medicine. Only when symptoms worsen or traditional remedies prove insufficient do they turn to hospitals. This pattern makes hospitals appear to bear the full weight of healthcare, even though much care is taking place quietly and effectively elsewhere.
The truth is that most of humanity uses both systems, traditional medicine for long-term wellness and mild conditions, and conventional medicine for acute care and technological diagnostics. They are not competing paradigms, but complementary streams in the broader river of human healing.
Hospital crowding is not evidence of traditional medicine’s failure, but rather a symptom of modern healthcare systems structured around disease management rather than prevention. As chronic illnesses increase in prevalence, and as lifestyle-related disorders continue to dominate global health statistics, hospitals will remain burdened unless we integrate natural, preventive approaches into mainstream care.
The solution lies in building bridges between both worlds. Traditional medicine can offer powerful tools for prevention, recovery, and long-term vitality. Conventional medicine, with its technological strengths, excels in crisis intervention. Together, they form a complete and intelligent healthcare model, one that humanity sorely needs.
Let us then move forward not with rivalry between these systems, but with wisdom that recognises the strength of both. In doing so, we reclaim medicine not only as a science, but as an art of healing that honours both tradition and innovation.
No comments:
Post a Comment