Click here to view the U.S. News & World Report article.

Over 30 percent of Americans use some form of non-conventional medicine, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. If you’ve ever stretched out on a yoga mat or popped a probiotic, you may be part of the growing segment of the U.S. population that uses non-conventional therapies to treat medical problems.

Although labels like “alternative medicine,” “naturopathic medicine” and “integrative medicine” are often casually used (and misused), each term refers to something specific and different.

The article lists eight common terms used in non-conventional approaches to medicine and what researchers and practitioners say about them. Featured excerpts quoting Osher Center directors are included below:

Integrative Health Care

“Integrative [health care] is a philosophy of how we take care of the patient,” said Melinda Ring, executive director at Northwestern Medicine’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine.

“It is an approach that looks holistically at the patient, including all aspects of their lifestyle, their community, their environment, in addition to physical and emotional aspects of their health.” The goal is to seek to address the roots of illness, not just the symptoms.

Acupuncture

Helene Langevin, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said that more research is needed to answer other questions about acupuncture, such as whether the location at which needles are placed makes a significant difference.

“If we observe different effects of acupuncture when using different combinations of acupuncture points, it is hard to know whether this relate[s] to aspects of Traditional Chinese Medicine theory (like Yin and Yang), or to different nerves being stimulated at the locations that are being compared,” she said in an email.

Click here to read the full article.