Use of Mind-Body Medicine and Improved Self-Rated Health: Results from a National Survey

Abstract

Background: Among the 20% of US adults who use mind-body (MB) medicine, half also use other types of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Our prior work showed that CAM use is associated with better selfreported health. However, little is known about the association between the use of MB therapies and perceptions of health. Method: Objective: To determine the association between the use of mind-body therapies and self-rated health. Design: We analyzed cross-sectional data from the 2007 US National Health Interview Survey (n=23,393). We partitioned the CAM-user respondents into 3 mutually exclusive groups: 1. MB-only, 2. Both MB and Non-MB-CAM (MB-Plus), and 3. Non-MB-CAM only. We used multivariable logistic regression to model the likelihoods of respondents’ reporting ‘Excellent’ health and reporting ‘Better’ health than the prior year. We controlled for socio-demographic, clinical and behavioral confounders and evaluated the models. Results: 8% of U.S. adults used MB-Only, 18% used non-MB-CAM, and 10% used both. Compared to users of Non-MBCAM, users of MB-Only (adjusted-OR=1.13,95%CI=[0.96,1.33]) and MB-Plus (adjusted-OR=1.09,95%CI=[0.94,1.26]) were not significantly more likely to report ‘Excellent health’. However, compared to users of Non-MB-CAM, users of MBPlus were more likely (adjusted-OR=1.48,95%CI=[1.28,1.71]) to report ‘Better’ health over the prior year while users of MB alone were not. Conclusion: Respondents who used MB in addition to other CAM therapies were significantly more likely to report improvement in self-rated health over the prior year. Large prospective trials are needed to establish whether MB therapies, used as an adjunctive treatment with other CAM, will lead to improvement in health.