Fancy a Watsu cuddle or a Hawaiian Lomi Lomi? As complementary medicine booms in Britain, Sandy Mitchell salutes our weird and wonderful holistic healers
The doctor will see you now. So in you scamper, nod a quick "Hello", stick your tongue out, say "Aah", endure intimate prods, wee into the pot and remember, as you are swept out of the room after a bare five minutes, to be grateful for the nice doctor's time and a scrawled prescription. That is a typical visit to the GP's surgery for most people.
But more and more of us, especially those of us who are in our 30s or early 40s, enjoy the wildly different experience of seeing a practitioner of complementary medicine, or holistic therapy. We turn to them because we feel we will get empathy and plenty of time to describe
our list of ailments or difficult moods.
We have become wary of swallowing endless pharmaceuticals, yet we are not at all put off by strange Chinese herbs, "healing hands", or men in sandals wielding fistfuls of acupuncture needles. In fact, Middle England is now so mad about alternatives to conventional medicine that it splashes out a whopping £1.6billion a year on "unproven therapies" - nearly as much as it spends on organic shopping.
But the growth of holistic therapy and complementary medicine is about as welcome with doctors in general as the Ebola virus. At best, they are dismissive. Colour therapy? You're having a laugh. Iridology? Crystal-light-bed therapy? Ha, ha, ha.
When a House of Lords scientific committee investigated complementary medicine (CM) a few years ago, it predictably highlighted the lack of proper evidence for the efficacy of treatments. And it didn't stop there: it also warned darkly about unregulated quacks and the dangers of seeking CM treatment in place of conventional diagnosis.
None of this bothers the CM practitioners much.
"I am not sure how much credibility these pointy-heads have," snorts Dr Michael Dixon, a trustee of the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Integrated Medicine and a visiting professor in integrated health at the University of Westminster. The efficacy of complementary treatments, he insists, simply cannot be measured by standard scientific "double-blind" tests in a lab.
He is equally unfazed by the most common accusation: that CM only produces a placebo effect. "Sometimes, perhaps, the treatments may be symbolic and just appeal to people's imaginations," he says. "In practice, we are pragmatists. If something works, that is fine." Some 90 per cent of CM and holistic therapy is paid for privately and can be fearfully expensive. If you decide to give it a go, you will want to ensure that you see the best of the bunch.
The doctor will see you now. So in you scamper, nod a quick "Hello", stick your tongue out, say "Aah", endure intimate prods, wee into the pot and remember, as you are swept out of the room after a bare five minutes, to be grateful for the nice doctor's time and a scrawled prescription. That is a typical visit to the GP's surgery for most people.
But more and more of us, especially those of us who are in our 30s or early 40s, enjoy the wildly different experience of seeing a practitioner of complementary medicine, or holistic therapy. We turn to them because we feel we will get empathy and plenty of time to describe
our list of ailments or difficult moods.We have become wary of swallowing endless pharmaceuticals, yet we are not at all put off by strange Chinese herbs, "healing hands", or men in sandals wielding fistfuls of acupuncture needles. In fact, Middle England is now so mad about alternatives to conventional medicine that it splashes out a whopping £1.6billion a year on "unproven therapies" - nearly as much as it spends on organic shopping.
But the growth of holistic therapy and complementary medicine is about as welcome with doctors in general as the Ebola virus. At best, they are dismissive. Colour therapy? You're having a laugh. Iridology? Crystal-light-bed therapy? Ha, ha, ha.
When a House of Lords scientific committee investigated complementary medicine (CM) a few years ago, it predictably highlighted the lack of proper evidence for the efficacy of treatments. And it didn't stop there: it also warned darkly about unregulated quacks and the dangers of seeking CM treatment in place of conventional diagnosis.
None of this bothers the CM practitioners much.
"I am not sure how much credibility these pointy-heads have," snorts Dr Michael Dixon, a trustee of the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Integrated Medicine and a visiting professor in integrated health at the University of Westminster. The efficacy of complementary treatments, he insists, simply cannot be measured by standard scientific "double-blind" tests in a lab.
He is equally unfazed by the most common accusation: that CM only produces a placebo effect. "Sometimes, perhaps, the treatments may be symbolic and just appeal to people's imaginations," he says. "In practice, we are pragmatists. If something works, that is fine." Some 90 per cent of CM and holistic therapy is paid for privately and can be fearfully expensive. If you decide to give it a go, you will want to ensure that you see the best of the bunch.
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