Alternative medicine

Alternative medicine describes practices used instead of normal medical treatments. Some patients seek these practices along with normal medicine. When the patient's medical doctor works with an alternative medicine therapist, this is called "complementary medicine."

Alternative medicine includes practices that incorporate spiritual, metaphysical, or religious belief; non-evidence-based practices, non-European medical traditions, or newly developed approaches to healing.

Examples include acupuncture, chiropractic and homeopathy.

Alternative medicine does not prevent or cure any disease. The opposite of alternative medicine are medical diagnoses and treatements that are proven to work. This is called evidence-based or conventional medicine.

Alternative Medicine Media

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  Marcia Angell: "There cannot be two kinds of medicine – conventional and alternative."

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  "They told me if I took 1000 pills at night I should be quite another thing in the morning", an early 19th-century satire on Morison's Vegetable Pills, an alternative medicine supplement

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  Ready-to-drink traditional Chinese medicine mixture

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  Acupuncture involves insertion of needles in the body.

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  A chiropractor "adjusting" the spine

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  Edzard Ernst, an authority on scientific study of alternative therapies and diagnoses and the first university professor of CAM, in 2012

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  Friendly and colorful images of herbal treatments may look less threatening or dangerous when compared to conventional medicine. This is an intentional marketing strategy.

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  Health campaign flyers, as in this example from the Food and Drug Administration, warn the public about unsafe products.

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  Neil deGrasse Tyson:Q: What do you call Alternative Medicine that survives double-blind laboratory tests?A: Regular Medicine.