are users of complementary and alternative medicine sicker than non-users用户的补充和替代医学的病情比吸毒者.pdfVIP

Advance Access Publication 31 October 2006 eCAM 2006;4(2)251–255 doi:10.1093/ecam/nel076 Original Article Are Users of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Sicker than Non-Users? Amir Shmueli1 and Judith Shuval2 1The Hebrew University and the Gertner Institute and 2The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel Higher utilization of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), both in cross-sections and over time, is commonly related to better socioeconomic status and to increased dissatisfaction with conventional medicine and its values. Little is known about health differences between users and non- users of CAM. The objective of the paper is to explore the difference in health measured by the SF-36 instrument between users and non-users of CAM, and to estimate the relative importance of the SF-36 health domains scales to the likelihood of consulting CAM providers. Interviews were used to collect information from a sample of 2000 persons in 1993 and 2500 persons in 2000, representing the Israeli Jewish urban population aged 45–75 in those years. Bivariate and logistic regression analyses were used to explore the above associations. The results show that while users of CAM enjoy higher socioeconomic status and younger age, they tend to report worse health than non-users on the eight SF-36 health domains scales in both years. However, controlling for personal characteristics, lower scores on the