WHAT IS EVIDENCED-BASED MEDICINE?

Evidence-based medicine is about making use of the best available information to answer questions in clinical practice. We use evidence-based studies to verify the effectiveness of all pharmaceuticals. In addition, we can also ask simple questions like does adding Turmeric to your diet helps or improve your health. Traditional medicine systems such as Ayurveda have always advocated that Turmeric is required for good health, but modern medicine wants to see the evidence demonstrated through scientific experiments and clinical trials.

Family physicians often only use evidenced-based medicine for treating their clients, as they can formulate safe treatment plans for their patients. As medical doctors have minimal exposure in their training program to Complementary and Alternative Medicine systems, it follows that as a starting point the MD’s can only be guided to implement them in their daily practice through researching the evidence.

However, this does not mean that non-evidenced based medicine and therapies do not work. Evidenced-based medicine places randomized controlled trials (RCT) at the highest level and case series or expert opinions at the lowest level. I am sure my ex-colleagues who are work in best research facilities around the globe will agree that science cannot measure how some of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine systems work, so this makes it very difficult to verify its effectiveness.

Furthermore, we all know that many medical doctors and their spouse and children use non-evidenced based medicines and therapies when the conventional medicine treatment has no effective solutions. Why would they even consider using this if there was no value in Complementary and Alternative Medicine?