What is Complementary Therapy?

There is a lot heard about complementary therapies but what are they and how can they help people? The aim of this article is to give some general information about complementary therapy to help you get more informed.

Complementary therapies or complementary medicine are terms that refer to treatments that can help medical conditions. However these therapies usually occur outside of the normal medical world and are not taught at the same time. Although they are not part of conventional medicine, more and more now they are being used by medical practitioners in order to offer their patients other alternatives to standard medical practices.

In the past these therapies were seen as completely separate from conventional medicine and so were given the name alternative therapies or complementary therapies. As time has progressed many of these therapies are being used by medical professionals and so are less separate than they used to be. However any therapy that is used alongside conventional medicine is referred to as a complementary therapy.

To give a more formal definition, that provided by the Cochrane Collaboration is below:

"Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a broad domain of healing resources that encompasses all health systems, modalities, and practices and their accompanying theories and beliefs, other than those intrinsic to the politically dominant health system of a particular society or culture in a given historical period. CAM includes all such practices and ideas self-defined by their users as preventing or treating illness or promoting health and well-being. Boundaries within CAM and between the CAM domain and that of the dominant system are not always sharp or fixed."

There is a wide range of different complementary therapies and we have put together a list of some of the best known ones:

•Acupressure
•Chiropractic
•Naturopathy
•Acupuncture
•Cranial osteopathy
•Nutritional therapy
•Alexander technique
•Environmental medicine
•Osteopathy
•Reflexology
•Applied kinesiology
•Healing
•Reiki
•Anthroposophic medicine
•Herbal medicine
•Relaxation and visualisation
•Aromatherapy
•Homoeopathy
•Autogenic training
•Hypnosis
•Shiatsu
•Ayurveda
•Massage
•Therapeutic touch
•Meditation
•Yoga
•Magnetic Therapy

This list does not include all possible complementary therapies and as you can see some of them are widely accepted by medical professionals and are well established in our medical system.

Generally there is a lot of fear around complementary therapies and this is usually caused by lack of knowledge. A lot of patients have benefited from different types of complementary therapies. It is important to point out that although many complementary therapies have been accepted by the medical world they are generally not available on the NHS. This could mean you end up spending a lot of money on your treatment as generally they don’t come cheap.

If you are interested in complementary therapies we would recommend discussing with your doctor to see which one they think is best. You can also do a lot of research on the internet to make sure you are happy with a treatment and it is what you want to do. Also before deciding on a practitioner do as much research as possible and if you can try and talk to previous patients to ensure your chosen practitioner has a proven track record. It can be a bit of a mind field as complementary therapy practitioners are not regulated so you need to make sure you do proper research before going ahead.

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