Alternative Medicine

Alternative medicine techniques have been successfully used either in conjunction with traditional medicine or, on occasion, alone. These treatments are often described as holistic because both examination and treatment focus on the patient as a whole rather than being narrowly focused on treatment of a specific symptom. This holistic approach reduces the probability that treatment of one symptom or disease will create a problem in a different part of the body. Because holistic medicine is aimed at restoring a balance within the body and stimulating the body to heal itself, it can sometimes succeed when traditional medicine fails. This is particularly true of problems for which the “root cause” cannot be determined. More information on alternative veterinary medicine, including a list of holistic veterinarians by state, is available at http://www.ahvma.org/.