Joav Merrick & Soren Ventegodt 
Alternative Medicine Research Yearbook 2012 

The field of holistic or integrative medicine needs a scientific approach. We need this kind of medicine – and we even need it to be spiritual to include the depths of human existence – but we need it to be a little less "cosmic" in order to encompass the whole human being. Many important research questions and challenges, empirical as well as theoretical, demand the attention from medical researchers. The field has been too preoccupied with orthomolecular medicine, and dietary supplements without much scientific foundation. Acupuncture needles and other seemingly effective, but strange elements from the traditional medicines, semi-religious procedures of meditation and healing manipulating "energetic dimensions" like "chakras" and "auras" in symbolic ways, and similar approaches have been in the forefront, but not easily compatible with the basic reason and common sense of a modern medical science. This year book 2012 brings together the work we did over the past year with a broad research agenda on a global basis, addressing questions ranging from a discussion of a changing health paradigm, sleep disorders, Hippocrates, and life satisfaction to positive youth development in Hong Kong. We hope this book will provide you with new knowledge, link research to practice and policy, and help build networks of research collaborations and move science forward in this field.