Sharma, 1992, 1996; Siahpush, 1999; Sirois and Glick, 2002; Sollner et al., 2000; Thorne et al., 2002).

An important finding noted by Wolsko et al. (2002) was that among the 2,055 study participants, the pursuit of wellness was a major contributor to CAM use. Those who used CAM for wellness purposes frequented CAM providers more often than those who did not. Other researchers have also noted that interest in health promotion and disease prevention appears to be a motivating force driving CAM use (Astin, 1998). Research suggests that obtaining “wellness care” from conventional and CAM providers is important to CAM users. Druss and Rosenheck (1999) found that adults who visit both CAM providers and conventional providers are more likely than individuals who seek care only from conventional providers to report that they monitor their blood pressure and cholesterol levels and undertake timely prostate and breast cancer screenings.

Astin and colleagues (2000) surveyed enrollees in a Medicare supplement plan offering benefits for selected CAM therapies and found that the most frequently cited reason for CAM use was “general health improvement” (42 percent), whereas CAM use for “chronic medical problems” was cited by only 18 percent of those surveyed. These findings are consistent with the findings of Eisenberg et al. (1993, 1998), who documented that 58 percent of those surveyed used CAM therapies, at least in part, to “prevent future illness from occurring or to maintain health and vitality,” whereas only 42 percent of those surveyed used CAM exclusively to treat an existing disease.

The 2002 NHIS asked participants about their reasons for using CAM. For any type of CAM, 54.9 percent believed that CAM therapy combined with conventional medical treatments would help, 50.1 percent thought that CAM would be interesting to try and 25.8 percent indicated that CAM use was suggested by a conventional medical professional. Alternatively, 27.7 percent believed that conventional medical treatments would not help, and 13.2 percent believed that conventional medical therapies were too expensive (Barnes et al., 2004).

Once a patient begins to use CAM therapies, however, how likely is the patient to continue to use them? Cross-sectional surveys carried out after time lapses of some years allow investigators to speculate about continued use for some purpose, be it health promotion, the treatment of periodic illness, or the management of a chronic illness or disability. Kessler et al. (2001) found that 50 percent of all CAM therapy use that had been initiated at least 5 years prior to the interview (Eisenberg et al., 1998) persisted at the time of the interview. This suggests that prior use of CAM therapy is a predictor of ongoing or current use for half of all users. The data also suggest that the persistent use of CAM therapies and modalities may be related to general health and may not be reserved only for the treatment of