What is Natural Medicine?

There is a lot of confusion about exactly what natural medicine is. Is aromatherapy or acupuncture worthwhile? Is it a con? What does it actually involve? In this post I’d like to describe some background to natural medicine, and maybe dispell some of the confusion surrounding it.

Natural medicine is simply the use of traditional remedies, natural methods, and herbal medicines, to cure illness. Most societies in the world have a long history of using these natural medicines. Many types of healing treatments and alternative therapies fall under the term natural medicine.

A number of herbal medicines have been prevalent for many years in Chinese and Indian society. These natural medicines tend to be (though they aren’t always) inexpensive and risk free, in stark contrast to many modern manufactured drugs, and have few if any side effects other than allergic reactions.

Since the creation of the popular penicillin, traditional natural medicine treatments have fallen out of favour or been forgotten. However, alternative treatments like acupuncture are making a comback. More and more doctors are beginning to realise their benefits, and many scientific studies are being conducted to measure their effectiveness against modern drug therapy.

With more people becoming aware of the vast number of chemicals we put into our bodies – either from treatments or clothing – natural therapy is surely becoming a more viable treatment in our modern society.

Article syndicated courtesy of Syndicate Kahuna