COMPLEMENTARY SELF-CARE STRATEGIES FOR HEALTHY AGING

This article will focus on complementary or self-care both in terms of collaboration with the primary care physician and individual exploration of self-care practices. Definition of these terms is first necessary to create a common language for examining the controversial and often misunderstood options of alternative health/ self-care. The move to self-care in this country implies a growing need for the individual to be seen as a whole and part of a greater environmental and social system. An astute and sensitive health practitioner can help in guiding choices for self-care practices and in setting goals with the individual desiring to take greater responsibility for his or her health. Inherent in the concept of care are notions of personal responsibility and self-care, both of which are implied by the individual actively seeking other ways for heating. The introduction at the National Institutes of Health of the new Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), the very successful Bill Moyer's PBS TV series and national best-selling book Healing and the Mind, and a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine attest to the growing interest in therapies and practices not typically provided by the medical community (Eisenberg et al., 1993). For consistency; this article will use Eisenberg's definition of unconventional as those medical practices not commonly taught at medical schools or available at hospitals in the United States. Since unconventional, “alternative,” and unorthodox” are pejorative terms, the more positive word complementary; as used in the United Kingdom, is preferred. In the United Kingdom, the aim of complementary medicine is to broaden medical alternatives by viewing long-standing therapies like acupuncture, osteopathy, and homeopathy not as alternatives to orthodox medicine but as therapies to work alongside it. A brief description of these practices will suffice to suggest how they may be used to augment or expand conventional medical care. Complementary practices include Chinese medicine, acupuncture, acupressure, Ayurvedic medicine, yoga, homeopathy, herbal medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic, massage therapy, cxercisc, martial arts, relaxation techniques, imagery, lifestyle and dietary change, biofeedback, hypnosis, traditional Native American medicine, spiritual healing, and self-help groups. The common thread linking many of these is a view of the body and health that is radically different from that of the present Western medical paradigm. This view is expressed in the term 'holism, in which the health of the whole individual is considered in a context that brings together body, mind, and spirit. Many of these other views and practices of healing are energy-based in contrast to the “matter-based medicine of the West. The new quantum Einsteinian physics hypothesizes that matter is energy and provides a scientific framework for a strategy of medicine that includes healing the energy of' the system as well as the physical