Use of complementary medicine is greater in middle age

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Middle-aged adults are more likely than older people to turn to complementary medicine, according to a new survey.
You might expect that older adults are the most likely to turn to complementary medicine, because their health tends to be poorer. In fact, a new survey from Wake Forest University School of Medicine reveals that complementary medicine is more popular among the middle-aged. They carried out their survey on a group of more than 30,000 adults and asked if they had used any of 28 different systems of complementary medicine in the last year.

Middle-aged adults were more likely to use these complementary approaches than either older or younger people. It may be that older people have not been exposed to complementary medicine when they were younger - as it has only become popular in recent years. They may also accept any ailments as normal signs of aging and be less motivated to seek help from complementary therapy. The survey also showed that there was no difference between ethnic groups when it comes to use of complementary medicine - even though, like older adults, they have higher rates of illness and may even have different beliefs about modern medicine.

Source
Journal of Health and Social Behavior March 2007

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