Alternative medicine.
This is really a catchphrase, a phrase that talks about all sorts of techniques for healing and self help to make yourself feel healthy and well.
But it's outside of Western medicine.
That's the medicine that they teach to doctors in universities.
So what are some forms of alternative medicine? It really is extremely wide ranging and some of the alternative medicines can be truly effective and others.
Well, you really have to believe strongly, let's say let's take a few examples.
Massage, massage is one kind of alternative medicine through massage.
You can make people feel less stressed and more comfortable.
But there are some people would argue it's also very good for healing, green drinking, green tea, green tea is supposed to have special properties like antioxidant oxidation compounds which can really help the body heal itself.
Another one might be tai chi, that's the slow moving exercise that you often see old people doing in the parks early in the morning.
It seemed to have been really popular in China and I've seen people doing it here in Japan.
Also acupuncture.
That's where you get a professional who's been trained to insert needles into your body.
There's different styles of acupuncture and the style that I took once or twice was the Japanese style.
Really, it's virtually painless and they're not putting the needles into your body.
They're just sort of touching the skin, they're going in like one millimeter or so I found it really effective personally.
And in fact, a lot of doctors I talked to say that acupuncture is effective for some things, alternative medicine.
There are lots of them but it really is.
Buyer beware.
You might find something that works for you and you might not.
Do you use any alternative medicines?