Daily HealthBeat Tip

Boomers like alternatives

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I�m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Vitamins, herbs, exercise � complementary and alternative medicine. If they think it will keep them healthy, baby boomers seem likely to try it.

Researcher Joseph Grzywacz (GREE�-vahtch) of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine studied data on people�s use of complementary and alternative medicine for prevention and for treating illness.

Grzywacz examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His study, supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, was in the Journal of Aging and Health.

"About 43 percent of adults age 45 to 54 report using some type of complementary and alternative medicine in the past year." (seven seconds)

That�s more than younger or older Americans.

But while some stuff � exercise, for instance � works, a lot of the herbs are unproven, shown to have no benefit, or can do harm.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 25, 2005

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