Newsroom - Industry Trends and Statistics


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• The saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” has never been more meaningful than it is in today’s health-care industry. Policymakers and health professionals have come to realize that the allopathic health-care system has a fundamental flaw – it deals with health problems once they manifest themselves, instead of promoting healthy lifestyles. As a result, North Americans are now experiencing a surge in chronic illness. Increasingly, people agree that effective health care must incorporate educational and preventative initiatives. Natural health, which emphasizes conscientious stewardship of one’s own health, is helping shape a new philosophy of health care.
  
• Demographic whiz David Foot, author of the best-selling Boom, Bust and Echo, predicts that the aging baby-boomer phenomenon will incite tremendous growth in all areas of health care. The burdens being placed on the traditional medical system have already overwhelmed provincial budgets; in fact, the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada recommended health education as a means of controlling this runaway expenditure. Currently, Canadians are facing longer and longer waiting lists for both emergency and elective services.
  
• But conventional medicine is being far outpaced by the rise in complementary caregivers. Natural health is now the fastest-growing industry in North America. Half the U.S. population spends $30 billion a year on herbal remedies, massages, megavitamins and other complementary therapies to prevent illness and to treat anxiety, arthritis, headaches, and back and neck pain. Two-thirds of North American medical schools now offer courses in the mind-body connection, acupuncture, spinal manipulation, natural supplements, herbs and other complementary therapies. And last year, Americans paid 300 million visits to alternative-health practitioners, compared to 30 million visits to traditional medical doctors.

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