Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM)
Complementary alternative medicine is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices and products that are typically used together with conventional Western medicine. While some people use CAM as a blanket term to cover all alternative healthcare practices, others use it to specifically denote healthcare practices that are used in order to complement both, other alternative healthcare treatments as well as Western medicine and treatments. The term complementary alternative medicine is often used interchangeably with the terms integrative medicine, complementary medicine and alternative medicine.
Some practitioners of non-Western medicine make clear distinctions between the terms complementary and alternative. While both terms refer to almost any healthcare practices that are not a part of mainstream Western medical healthcare, such as acupuncture, aromatherapy, chiropractic, massage therapy, and meditation, to name just a few, complementary medicine is used to denote when these therapies are used in conjunction with traditional Western medicine. Alternative medicine is when these approaches are used instead of traditional medicine.
People who identify themselves as CAM healthcare providers, often have one or more medical license and/or training in different alternative healthcare practices. Some CAM healthcare providers go through schooling to earn various titles including that of a doctor with a PhD (doctor of philosophy) or a medical doctor (MD), to name just a few of the titles that some CAM healthcare providers have. Many courses of study for complementary and alternative medicines offer certificates, master’s degrees and other authorizations but some do not offer degrees that are recognized by the Western medical community as medical degrees.