Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Types of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

When describing these approaches, people often use “alternative” and “complementary” interchangeably, but the two terms refer to different concepts:

• If a non-mainstream practice is used together with conventional medicine, it’s considered “complementary.”
• If a non-mainstream practice is used in place of conventional medicine, it’s considered “alternative.”

Most people who use non-mainstream approaches also use conventional health care.

Reference:
Complementary, Alternative, or Integrative Health: What’s In a Name? NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/complementary-alternative-or-integrative-health-whats-in-a-name. Published in 2018. Updated July 2018.