our medical system treats symptoms

[turtledude23]

Alot of doctors, especially younger ones, are giving more focus to diet, exercise, and the social determinants of health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dete..._of_health

The official view of medicine is no longer that health is only caused by physiological factors, mainstream medicine now subscribes to a theory called the Bio-psycho-social Model, meaning doctors - at least in theory - should be giving as much weight to psychological and social factors in determining health as biological factors.

Mainstream medicine is far from perfect but it is gradually starting to absorb more principles from alternative medicine and prevention rather than symptom management, but there are a few rare cases where pharmaceuticals actually cure a disease. Until practitioners of alternative medicine get the money to have double blind placebo controlled scientific studies of their treatment methods they will always be less credible than mainstream doctors.