complementary therapy

Any treatment, practice or product that is not considered conventional therapy (the currently accepted and widely used treatment) but is used together with conventional therapy to ease symptoms and improve a person’s overall health and feeling of well-being.

Complementary therapies may help people cope with a disease, its treatment or its side effects, rather than treat the disease itself. For example, a person with cancer may use an herbal treatment to lessen the side effects of chemotherapy.