What are complementary therapies?

Answer 1

Complementary therapies complement conventional medical treatment, while alternative therapies are those which offer alternatives to conventional diagnosis and therapies. Complementary medicine used together with conventional medicine is known as integrative medicine. Complementary and alternative medicines can include herbal, vitamin, mineral, homoeopathic, nutritional and other supplements. Therapies include herbal medicine, Chinese medicine, chiropractic, naturopathy, acupuncture, reflexology, aromatherapy, yoga and others.

Answer 2

I am on a complementary therapies course, i could have chosen a holistics course but complementary therapies are more geared towards complemeting traditional medicine to aid recovery and health rather than holistic which is places more emphasis on maintaining health and balence before illness can occur. Both use the same types of treatments and have a holistic principle that the body mind and spirit are connected and that is is the unbalence of one of these that causes illness. Therapists in this field may interchange their names but those that want to work alongside existing healthcare professionals prefer to call themselves Complementary rather than holistic so show that the therapies are there to work with existing medical services rather than an alternative.

Answer 3

Basically it's anything that isn't fda approved which you should always take with a grain of salt. The drugs that ARE approved are not tested properly, as they find ways to hide negative results. Typically you have two groups, one take a placebo (non active) pill and the others take the real drug, they then compare results. However, there is no real guidelines as to what goes into a 'placebo' and they have been found to put things into the placebos to make the results look positive in their favor. A lot of money and powerful people are involved. "Have acne? Take this, you may experience heart failure, death, etc. etc." It's really nuts, consider this, the BIGGEST KILLER in the U.S.A is healthcare, it's true. I'm not talking about mistakes either, or people that die in the care of doctors that would have died anyway, no i'm talking about deaths caused DIRECTLY by the procedure or drugs given. Shocking isn't it? Examples of alternative medicine are herbs, acupuncture, yoga, "energy healing", shamanic healing and many others. Many of these are COMPLETE crap, however, some are FAR superior to traditional medicine. Consider that people in pain become dependent and ultimately on methadone for life. The government makes big big big money for life for every methadone patient, however an alternative cure exists, ibogaine, it fixes the problems in the brain no withdrawal and in one dose. Why is this not used? Because it causes "visions".... I guess beneficial visions are unacceptable but death, heart failure, stroke, cancer side effects are ok? Complementary medicine is something given in addition to traditional therapy, for example after a car wreck you are given physical therapy and acupuncture, mostly for the reason that they figure it couldn't hurt, and they really don't know what else to do. Placebo is a powerful thing, it's unclear whether some of these treatments are simply placebo or something we don't yet understand.

Answer 4

Differences between complementary and alternative medicines are that alternative medicines are mainly used in those that have different types of cancer as it is the alternative measures needed when complementary medicines do not work on the individual.

Answer 5

The advantages of complementary therapies are that they are non toxic and prevent disease rather than treat it. Many of these can be done or started at home for little expense.

Answer 6

In general these are nonsense and scams to which people with little mindset call.