Categories of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

Massage is often referred as a CAM. Although hard to categorise in any meaningful way, CAM can be broken down into four groups:
– Spiritual – includes spiritual healing and Reiki
– Psychological – includes hypnosis and NLP
– Physical – includes osteopathy, chiropractic, massage therapy and acupuncture.
– Nutritional – includes nutritionalism and herbalism
However, this categorisation is problematic as there are many therapies that do not fit into any of these categories or fit into more than one – eg homeopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine. Also, some can be categorised as fitting into one category but can fit into several categories – eg massage.

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