Evaluation of Utilizing Buddhism Alternative Medicine

Abstract

There are more and more complex health and public health problems these days. Health problems are addressed and focused on prevention and promotion. Traditional and alternative medicine are used to serve the alternative medicine policy of the Ministry of Public Health. Buddhist alternative medicine principles were introduced to relief health problems and concerns for community members. Village had held a community health camp for 1–­­7 days by utilizing nine techniques of the Buddhist alternative medicine principles to campers or community members who participated in health camp. The nine techniques were (1) Having various herbs with your meals or herbal drinking, (2) Skin scraping or Guasa, (3) Intestinal detoxification, (4) Hand & foot immersion in warm herbal liquid, (5) Herbal plastering, (6) Exercise or yoga, (7) Balance diet, (8) Relaxation of thought by Buddhism principles, and (9) Self-supervision or maintaining a balanced life. The objective of this study was to evaluate the sustainability of the alternative medicine in relation to those nine techniques. This study was cross sectional by distributed questionnaires that asked the campers their perceptions and opinions on how they would evaluate in terms of sustainability when applied those techniques toward their health. Questionnaires asked all campers who participated if they used/applied those nine techniques or had never used/applied the nine techniques. The authors used t-test to analyze the collected data. The authors found there were five techniques had statistics significantly different (p-value < 0.05) on sustainability of the program regarding the nine techniques which were; technique 2 – Guasa, technique 3 – Detoxification, technique 4 –­­ Hand & foot immersion in warm herbal liquid, technique 6 –­­  Exercise or yoga, technique 7 –­­ Balance diet. The five techniques were significant maybe because the campers learned and obtained comprehensive knowledge on those techniques and practiced them every day. The campers also received the training and knowledge about meditation, basic self-health care. They believed on the ability of self- supervision and they could become more aware and active on their own health.