Your Guide to Alternative Medicine

Don’t know your Ayurveda from your Reiki? You’re not alone.

Alternative medicine has more treatment options and remedies than there are shoes at DSW. This broad range of healing therapies is called “alternative medicine” because it’s exactly that—an alternative to traditional Western medicine, even though some of these practices, such as aromatherapy, date back hundreds and even thousands of years—long before traditional Western medicine existed.

The biggest difference between the two healing practices is how they approach a health problem.

For example, if you have back pain, Western medicine might try to tackle it with prescription pain medication or in severe cases, surgery, while alternative medicine emphasizes less invasive and more holistic treatments, such as acupuncture and chiropractic.

Rather than solely concentrating on curing an illness, alternative medicine focuses on providing natural ways to improve your physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. Some popular practices—in particular, massage therapy, chiropractic and acupuncture—hardly seem “alternative” anymore and are practically mainstream.

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The growing acceptance of alternative medicine means that people are more likely to step outside their comfort zone and try a non-Western cure for what ails them. Nearly 40 percent of American adults use some form of alternative medicine, according to the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Whether you’re seeking a non-invasive way to treat a chronic health condition or simply want to banish stress and bring your body’s qi, or vital life energy, back into balance, alternative medicine offers many remedies that work safely and in tandem with Western medicine, as well as stand-alone treatments. For example, acupuncture and acupressure provide pain relief, chiropractic conquers muscle pain, aromatherapy tames tension and tummy trouble and meditation boosts your ability to handle stress.

Want to find out which alternative medicine treatments are best for you? Read on.