Medicinal & Aromatic Plants
Open Access

The Future of Medicine: Traditional Medicine

Stela Dureva^{* *}Correspondence: Stela Dureva, Department of Natural Products, Leiden University, Leiden, Leiden University, Netherlands, Email:

Author info »

Commentary

Traditional medical holistic systems, like as TCM, KM, and Ayurveda, offer unique integrated approaches to health that are rarely experienced in their completeness in the West. Half of the articles in this issue are written by women. The articles are from Asian countries, mainly Korea. Integrated approaches like these are frequently utilised as alternatives to Medical practise in the West. The scope of laboratory, experimental, and clinical trial research was astounding, with 16,000 delegates mostly from Korea, China, and Taiwan. The conference, which began in 1976, drew speakers from all over the world, including the United States, Russia, New Zealand, Norway, Egypt, Australia, India, and Austria. The Korean Medical Association organised a round table workshop with editors from four prominent complementary and integrative medicine journals, including The European Journal of Integrative Medicine, as part of the conference (EJIM). After formal presentations on recent trends and experiences, a debate took place and information was exchanged about the rapidly growing literature in this field. The scope of various journals in the field were discussed as well as the importance and responsibility of authors to submit their articles by taking into account the focus, scope and scientific community they wish to target and a plea to ensure that preferably, a native English speaker should check their article before submission. Please note, the aims, scope and audience for EuJIM have been recently redefined and are given at the end of this editorial.

In addition to inpatient and outpatient facilities, the School of Korean Medicine offers a noteworthy purpose-built clinical trials centre. The Korean Institute of Oriental Medicine (KIOM) was founded in October 1994 under the Ministry of Health and Welfare and remains Korea's only government-funded oriental medicine research institute (currently under the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology). In 2011, it was designated as a WHO collaborating facility for traditional medicine. On September 17^th, 2012, we attended the first International Clinical Practice Guidelines workshop on Traditional Medicine at KIOM. Lessons learned were discussed, and comparisons were made between KM, Kampo medicine, Western medicine, and current

Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical standards in order to establish a cohesive strategic approach that might be used in the future. The hospital offers both inpatient and outpatient facilities, as well as Western medical diagnostic equipment including MRIs, and delivers nonsurgical interventions and integrated care to over 900,000 patients each year. There was also the chance to see patient consultations and treatments, including a technique unique to the hospital called motion style acupuncture treatment (MSAT), which is utilised for patients with acute muscular skeletal disorders and has amazing outcomes. Pharmacopuncture, bee-venom acupuncture, China manipulation, herbal treatment, and exercise and physiotherapy therapy are some of the additional techniques employed. There are 11 Jaseng hospitals in Korea and four in the United States, as well as a Spine and Joint Research Institute.

Patient safety is a major problem, as herbal and conventional pharmaceutical interactions are frequently unknown and unreported. There was no significant difference in prothrombin time in stroke patients who received a herbal complex in addition to their warfarin in a retrospective study. Given the widespread usage of warfarin, more study is essential. Too often, what happens in clinical practise is not represented in research design, thus gathering preliminary, feasibility data is crucial, and it can also assist other researchers in structuring their studies. Flower et al. used a prospective case series technique to see if Chinese herbal therapy can help with recurrent urinary tract infections. A CHM practitioner and researcher watched 13 patients in order to investigate pragmatic, ordinary CHM delivery in order to gather preliminary data for a clinical trial. It describes a feasibility study that used both quantitative and qualitative data collection methodologies to evaluate a conventional 8-week Mindfulness BSR programme for women with metastatic breast cancer. There are signs that this self-help method may help with fatigue and depressive symptoms. Some of the concerns to be resolved before to launching any trial are the length, type, and timing of the intervention, acceptability and appropriateness of the intervention to patients, ease of recruitment, adherence to the intervention, and loss to follow up. This study focuses on these critical concerns as well as the likelihood of patient acceptance.