HPER H350: Complementary & Alternative Approaches to Health

Finding Articles

You can search many article databases simultaneously in MetaSearch, or each database individually by clicking on the links below.

See this handout for tips on distinguishing between popular magazines, industry/trade publications, and peer-reviewed journals.

Want to save some time by brainstorming search terms before diving into the article databases? You may find a concept table very helpful (here's a sample of how it works).

• CINAHL Plus with Full Text  is the authoritative resource for nursing and allied health professionals, students, educators and researchers. This version automatically maps keywords to official subject headings. It also offers basic keyword searching, citation searching, and index term browsing.

• Health Reference Center Academic provides access to the full text of nursing and allied health journals, plus a variety of personal health information sources.

• Health Sciences: A SAGE Full-Text Collection  covers such subjects as nursing, social studies of health, qualitative research, cultural studies, aging and gerontology,  holistic nursing, autism,  health education & health promotion,  research methods & evaluation, and sociology of the family.

• MEDLINE (EBSCO version) provides authoritative medical research information from such fields as medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more with MEDLINE®.

• Physical Education Index researchers and professionals in the field to acquire accurate and scholarly information in this comprehensive database. These abstracts feature a wide variety of content, ranging from physical education curricula, to sports medicine, to dance. Other coverage includes sport law, kinesiology, motor learning, recreation, standardized fitness tests, sports equipment, business and marketing, coaching and training, and sport sociology/psychology. Health education and physical therapy are also covered as they continue to become more prevalent in our society.

• SPORTDiscus w/ Full Text offers comprehensive, bibliographic and full text coverage of sport, fitness and related disciplines. This database contains over 230 full text titles. In addition, SPORTDiscus with Full Text also contains over 650,000 records with journal and monograph coverage going back to 1800; over 20,000 dissertations and theses and reference to articles in 60 different languages.

• Nutrition Journal (freely available on the Internet) is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers manuscripts within the field of human nutrition. Animal studies are not published.

Finding Books & Media

Search IUCAT to find books on specific topics. (Go to our How to . . . page or view this podcast if you're not sure how to begin.)

• GV1 thru GV1799 - Recreation, physical education, sports

• QP1 thru QP345 - General physiology, including kinetics/kinesiology

• RC1200 thru RC1245 - Sports medicine

• RM259 - Vitamin therapy

• RV1 thru RV431 - Botanic, Thomsonian, and eclectic medicine

• RX  thru RX675 - Homeopathy

Reference Materials

• Credo Reference searches over 275 reference works, including International Dictionary of Homeopathy, Mosby's Handbook of Herbs & Natural Supplements, Pharmaceutical Medicine Dictionary, and many other reference works.

• Encyclopedia of Vitamins, Minerals, and Supplements [Reference QP771 .E53 2004]

• Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research, including Gale Encyclopedia of Diets: A Guide to Health and Nutrition and Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine.

• How to Find information : Complementary and Alternative Health Care [R733 .M33 2001]

• Nurse's Handbook of Alternative & Complementary Therapies [R733 .N87 2003]

• Oxford Reference Online consists of a wealth of facts, figures, definitions, and translations found in dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. Publications of interest include Food and Fitness: A Dictionary of Diet and Exercise and A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition.
  

Web Resources

• Alternative Medicine Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, founded in March 1998 to provide responsible and reliable information about alternative medicine to the public and health professionals.

• Clinical Trials.gov is a registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov gives you information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers for more details.

• Dietary Supplements Labels Database offers information about ingredients in more than two thousand selected brands of dietary supplements. It enables users to determine what ingredients are in specific brands and to compare ingredients in different brands. Information is also provided on the health benefits claimed by manufacturers.

• MedlinePlus: Complementary and Alternative Medicine

• MedlinePlus: Drugs, Supplements, and Herbal Information

• National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

• PDRhealth  is the consumer Web portal of the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR®), which has provided trusted and authoritative drug and clinical information to physicians for over 60 years. The PDRhealth site offers consumer-friendly explanations of disease states and conditions as well as the safe and effective use of prescription and non-prescription drugs as well as herbal medicines. Includes a special section on Herbals, Supplements, and Alternative Therapies.