Complementary, alternative, integrative: what the words mean

People use "alternative" and "complementary" as if they were the same word. The NIH's own centre for the field separates them: a non-mainstream approach used together with conventional medicine is complementary;¹ one used in place of it is alternative.² Most people who use non-mainstream approaches also use conventional health care.³

Integrative health is the third term, and the one ProperHealth is built around: it brings conventional and complementary approaches together in a coordinated way,⁴ aiming for well-coordinated care among different providers and institutions to care for the whole person.⁵

Why the distinction matters on this site

Each clinic card and each integrative item on a topic page carries a role: alongside standard care, or instead of it. The same intervention can be reasonable in one role and dangerous in the other. A breathing practice alongside blood pressure medicine is complementary; stopping the medicine for the breathing practice is alternative, and the evidence for that step has to be shown separately — it usually cannot be.

What integrative does not mean

It does not mean that natural is safe, that a mechanism is a result, or that conventional medicine is the enemy. It means the whole person and the whole evidence, in one plan, with a prescriber who knows everything the patient is taking.