Why Patients Turn to Traditional Medicine: New Study Reveals Their Real Motivations

Millions of people worldwide use herbal remedies, cupping, massage, prayer-based healing, and other traditional or complementary practices, often alongside visits to the doctor rather than instead of them. Yet the reasons behind this behavior have remained surprisingly opaque to health researchers. A new qualitative study published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies offers one of the most detailed windows yet into how users themselves perceive these practices, why they begin using them, and how they believe they should fit into modern healthcare. The findings suggest that the decision to seek out traditional, complementary and integrative medicine, abbreviated TCIM by researchers, is rarely a simple rejection of modern medicine. Instead, it emerges from a dense web of health needs, psychological expectations, cultural beliefs, and social influence.

The research team, led by Ayşe İspirli Turan of the Department of Health Management at Samsun University in Türkiye, used a phenomenological design, a qualitative approach that aims to capture the lived experience of a phenomenon directly from those who have experienced it. Rather than surveying a large population with fixed questionnaires, the researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 participants, each of whom had used at least one TCIM practice. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling, which deliberately selects people with direct experience of the topic, and snowball sampling, in which early participants refer others from their own networks. The interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis, a systematic method for identifying recurring patterns of meaning across qualitative data.

The analytical process yielded five main themes and 23 subthemes, a granular structure that reveals just how many distinct forces shape a person’s orientation toward complementary practices. The most prominent theme was health-based motivation. Participants reported turning to TCIM primarily for disease prevention, disease treatment, and strengthening immunity. These are not vague wellness aspirations but concrete health goals, and the study suggests that many users approach herbal products, dietary regimens, and physical practices with the same instrumental logic they would apply to a prescription: they expect a measurable benefit for a specific health problem.

Yet health goals alone did not explain the pattern. A second cluster of motivations centered on disappointment with modern medical treatment. Participants described situations in which they failed to achieve the expected benefits from conventional therapies, or in which they harbored reservations about long-term medication use. For these users, TCIM functioned as a response to a perceived gap in modern care, a way of addressing problems that pharmaceuticals had not solved or of reducing dependence on drugs they viewed with suspicion. This finding aligns with a well-documented phenomenon in health services research: patients who feel that conventional medicine has exhausted its options often begin searching for alternatives, and the search itself is driven by unmet clinical need rather than by anti-science sentiment.

Religious and cultural beliefs emerged as a third determining factor. Participants explained that their engagement with certain practices was grounded in faith traditions and cultural inheritance, frameworks that give healing practices meaning beyond their biochemical effects. The influence of family and social environments ranked among the strongest social drivers: recommendations from relatives, friends, and community members frequently initiated first use. In many cases, the pathway into TCIM was not an advertisement or an internet article but a trusted person in the user’s immediate circle, which helps explain why these practices spread so persistently through populations despite limited formal promotion.

Two psychological factors stood out as key supports for continued use. Participants expressed a belief that the practices would be beneficial, an expectation that researchers recognize as related to placebo and expectancy effects, and they reported seeking psychological relief. The act of doing something active for one’s own health, whether preparing an herbal infusion or attending a cupping session, appears to deliver a sense of control and comfort that participants valued in its own right. This suggests that part of TCIM’s appeal is not the treatment’s direct physiological action but the psychological experience of care, agency, and hope that accompanies it.

Perhaps the most striking finding concerns how users position TCIM relative to modern medicine. Contrary to the popular narrative of a war between alternative and conventional care, participants viewed the two as complementary rather than competing approaches. They did not describe abandoning doctors for herbalists; they described using both, often simultaneously, and they explicitly supported integrating TCIM into the modern healthcare system. This perception challenges the binary framing that dominates public debate and suggests that, from the user’s perspective, the question is not which system is superior but how the two can be combined safely.

Participants did not support integration without conditions. They emphasized three requirements: scientific evidence, professional supervision, and accessibility. In other words, users themselves want complementary practices evaluated by research, delivered under qualified oversight, and available within the formal healthcare system rather than in an unregulated gray market. This is a notable result because it indicates that the demand for integration is not a demand for exemption from scientific standards. Users appear to want the cultural and psychological benefits of traditional practices delivered with the safety infrastructure of modern medicine, a combination that health systems in many countries are only beginning to experiment with.

The study’s methodological choices deserve attention when weighing its conclusions. With 20 participants interviewed in depth, the research prioritizes richness of experience over statistical generalizability, which is standard for phenomenological work. The findings describe how these particular users perceive and experience TCIM, and they generate hypotheses about the motivations that likely operate in broader populations: unmet treatment expectations, medication concerns, cultural embeddedness, social recommendation, and expectancy of benefit. Quantitative follow-up studies would be needed to test how frequently these motivations occur at scale, but the thematic structure identified here provides a concrete map for that future research.

For clinicians and policymakers, the implications are direct. Because patients are already using TCIM widely and view it as a partner to conventional care, ignoring or dismissing the phenomenon risks losing sight of real health behavior, including potential herb-drug interactions and delayed treatment-seeking that clinicians should know about. The study suggests that the more productive path is engagement: asking patients about their complementary practices, understanding the motivations documented here, and working toward the evidence-based, professionally supervised, accessible integration that participants themselves called for. The shadow cast by modern medicine, the study’s title suggests, may be less a hiding place than a waiting room, where traditional practices stand ready to step into the light of scientific evaluation.

Subject of Research: Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Article Title: Traditional and complementary health practices in the shadow of modern medicine: a qualitative study of users’ perceptions and experiences

Article References: Turan, A. İ., Uluğ, M. E., Sarıyıldız, A. Y., & Küçük, Y. S. (2026). Traditional and complementary health practices in the shadow of modern medicine: a qualitative study of users’ perceptions and experiences. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-026-05649-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-026-05649-z

Keywords: traditional medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, qualitative research, patient perceptions, healthcare integration, TCIM, modern medicine, health behavior, Samsun University, Traditional, complementary