Immaculate Conception College–Albay College of Nursing 2nd Semester, A.Y.

’22-‘23
NCM103 – Fundamentals of Nursing Practice (FUNDA)
Name: Francine Dominique M. Collantes Course & Year: BSN1 Date: March 04, 2023
Assignment (February 26, 2023)
Search about complementary and alternative therapies.
 The term "complementary and alternative therapies" refers to treatment that are not part of
the standard healthcare system.
 Although the terms "complementary and alternative" are frequently used interchangeably, it
can be helpful to distinguish between them.
➢ Complementary medicine is used in addition to standard treatments.
➢ Alternative medicine is used instead of standard treatments.
Types of Complementary and Alternative Therapies
a. Whole Medical Systems
1. Massage – The massage relies on the body’s nerve endings and pressure points to promote
relaxation.
✓ Massage treatment is being applied to ease pain, boost mood, lessen stress and anxiety,
and reduce muscle tension.
✓ Massage can promote healing at incision sites and may prevent or reduce scarring, if a
person undergo surgery.
✓ It has demonstrated that foot massage helps with pain, nausea, and relaxation.
✓ There are many forms of massage: shiatsu, Hellerwork®, and reflexology.
✓ The most widespread variation builds upon the five basic strokes of Swedish massage:
effleurage (slow, rhythmic gliding strokes in the direction of blood flow towards the
heart); petrissage (kneading, pressing, and rolling muscle groups); friction (steady
pressure or tight circular movements, often used around joints); percussion (drumming
hands on body); and vibration (rapid movement shaking the muscle back and forth).
2. Reflexology – In this therapy, it involves applying manual pressure to areas of the foot,
hand, or ear that believed to correspond to the affected organs or body systems.
✓ Reflexology may help to relieve symptoms such as pain, constipation, and nausea.
3. Chiropractic / Osteopathic Manipulation – This is a hands-on approach that focuses on
the spine and other joints of the body and their connection to the nervous system.
✓ These approaches involve moving the muscles and joints using stretching, gentle
pressure, and resistance.
✓ They can help ease muscle pain and improve the overall mobility and function.
✓ This approach can help reduce the severity of various symptoms, including migraines,
menstrual pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome.
4. Cupping – This is a type of massage therapy that involves using heated cups to create a
vacuum on the skin.
✓ It increases blood flow to targeted areas to reduce inflammation.
5. Ayurveda – It is an ancient Indian medical system that has been in use for a very long
time.
✓ Ayurveda focuses on treating illnesses with certain medicines, massages, and dietary
practices.
 ✓ A purifying procedure, herbal cures, special diets, yoga, massage, and meditation are
frequently used as Ayurvedic treatment.
6. Homeopathy – A medical method called homeopathy is founded on the idea that the body
can heal itself.
✓ Homeopathy's fundamental concept is "like cures like," or the idea that a sickness with
identical symptoms can be treated with a very small amount of something that causes
symptoms in a healthy person.
✓ The goal of this is to mobilize the body's defense mechanisms.
✓ Poison ivy, white arsenic, crushed whole bees, and the herb called as arnica are used
as remedies for different illnesses.

b. Mind-Body Techniques
1. Meditation – a method of relaxing and quieting the mind to relieve muscle tension and
achieve inner peace
2. Relaxation and Deep Breathing – Relaxation and deep breathing techniques help to
release muscle tension, relieve breathlessness, lessen anxiety, and encourage a greater
sense of control, particularly when receiving unpleasant or stressful treatments.
3. Yoga – a form of gentle exercise consisting of body postures and breathing techniques
✓ It has been practiced for thousands of years in India and is now popular around the
world.
4. Landscape Therapy – It is the showing of peaceful, relaxing landscapes that can evoke
calmness and tranquility.
✓ Landscapes can be displayed in a dimly lit space via a slide show or video screen, as
well as through art books or genuine works of art.
✓ To divert from pain and anxiety, landscape therapy is frequently used.
5. Music Therapy – This is an expressive art form designed to help individuals achieve
harmony and balance.
✓ It can include both listening to and/or playing music; it can explore emotional, spiritual,
and behavioral issues.
✓ Music therapy can help release emotions and promote relaxation.
✓ Listening to music can be either calming or invigorating.
✓ Music therapists are professionals who are educated to design music programs for
patients.
6. Animal-Assisted Therapy – To assist in better coping with health challenges such mental
health disorders, cancer, and heart disease, a therapist will work with dogs or other
animals.
✓ It can reduce pain and anxiety, depression and fatigue associated with many health
problems.
7. Biofeedback – This is a training technique through which you learn to control your
thoughts, emotions, or behavior.
✓ A therapist will evaluate the body's functioning like, for example; the EEG is to
measure brain waves, ECG to measure heart rate, and EMG to measure muscle
contractions.
✓ As the client learns new coping mechanisms during therapy, these metrics will change.
8. Guided Imagery or Visualization – With the use of this therapy, a professional will assist
the client in seeing favorable scenarios and desired outcomes.
✓ Another strategy would be for him to mentally go through each step of the treatment,
imagining everything from the least uncomfortable to the most terrifying portions
while maintaining his composure.
 ✓ For instance, while relaxing, he may imagine himself feeling healthier or stronger, or
he could visualize the eradication of cancerous cells.
9. Hypnotherapy – It is like guided imagery, but a physician or licensed hypnotherapist
induces deep relaxation.
10. Prayer Therapy – This approach uses prayer therapeutically for mental and emotional
healing.
✓ The client's past, present, and/or future emotional anguish and stress might be explored
using prayer as a method.
✓ In exploring and releasing their emotions, they might gain a greater understanding of
themselves.
✓ The therapist only serves as an intermediary; the prayer may be private.
11. Spinal Manipulation – It involves moving and jolting joints, massage, exercise, and
physical therapy. It is also known as spinal manipulative treatment or manual therapy.
✓ It is intended to improve nerve function, lessen inflammation, and ease pressure on
joints.
✓ The pain in the back, neck, shoulder, and head is frequently treated with it.
✓ Currently, both Western and conventional Asian medicine use spinal manipulation.
✓ Chiropractors, osteopathic doctors, and physical and occupational therapists typically
carry out this procedure in many different parts of the world.
12. Aromatherapy – A client is exposed to essential oils during aromatherapy.
✓ The oils may be absorbed through their skin or evaporated in a space.
✓ It is believed that the aromas the oil emits affect their hypothalamus, a region of the
brain that regulates hormones.
✓ Theoretically, a smell could influence someone's mood, metabolism, stress level, and
level of sexual desire.
✓ Some common essential oils are chamomile, lavender, peppermint, rosemary,
eucalyptus, sandalwood, and tea tree.
13. Dance Therapy – DMT, also known as dance therapy or movement therapy, is a
psychotherapy approach that uses movement to support the integration of the mind, body,
and emotions.
✓ Strength, flexibility, reduced muscle tension, and improved coordination are all
physical health benefits of DMT.
✓ Additionally, it can provide significant advantages for mental health, such as stress
reduction and even symptom treatment for illnesses like anxiety and depression.

c. Energy Force Therapies

1. Tai Chi – It is a non-combat martial art that focuses on improving the flow of qi, or “life
force”, to relax the mind and encourage self-healing.
✓ Breathing exercises and sequences of slow, graceful motions are also used.
✓ “Meditation in motion” is a common description of it.
✓ Instead, then treating an illness, it is more frequently used as a sort of preventive
healthcare.
2. Qi Gong – Qi Gong is a practice that combines meditation, breathing exercises, and
movement.
✓ The goal of qi gong is to enhance and increase the movement of qi, often known as
“life energy”, throughout the body.
3. Therapeutic Touch – Using therapeutic touch, a practitioner tunes into the client's energy
field so that disruptions in “energy flow” are adjusted and their body's healing abilities can
function without restriction.
 ✓ To examine any alterations in the client's energy field, the practitioner softly passes
their hands inches above their body while directing healing energy from their body to
the client.
✓ Touch therapy is used to treat stress-related conditions such as fatigue and headaches
as well as pain relief, especially from muscle strain and following surgery.
✓ It also has been used to promote wound healing, and for lymphatic and circulation
disorders.
4. Reiki – Ancient Tibetan Buddhism is the source of the Japanese spiritual healing process
called as Reiki.
✓ It is said to promote health, maintain well-being, and help to attain a higher level of
consciousness.
✓ Holding their hands over a covered body, therapists transmit “reiki energy” through
their hands to portions of the body that are in need.
✓ It makes the assertion that it can harmonize the body's energy centers, or “chakras”,
and remove energy blockages that cause tension and disease.
✓ After therapy, some people could feel peaceful, while others might feel energized.
5. Acupuncture – It is a traditional Chinese medical practice.
✓ Acupuncture involves inserting very small, firm needles into specific body points to
treat and prevent various illnesses and disorders.
✓ It is thought to promote the release of endorphins, which are naturally occurring
painkillers that can also heighten emotions of wellbeing.
✓ The same effects of acupressure, which involves manually stimulating the same
acupoints, may be achieved, but to a lesser extent.
6. Magnets – This therapy involves placing magnets on the body to reduce pain or enhance
healing.
7. Acupressure – One of the therapy modalities employed in Traditional Chinese Medicine
is acupressure, an ancient form of massage.
✓ Acupressure and other Chinese medicine therapies aim to promote the flow of qi, or
“life force”, via the 14 channels (meridians) in the body.
✓ These energy meridians and acupoints are the same ones that acupuncture uses to focus
on them.
✓ It is comparable to acupuncture but does not involve the use of needles.
✓ Tuina is the most widely used type of acupressure practiced in China.

d. Expressive Therapies
1. Journal Writing – The feelings that living with a medical condition brings up can be
effectively managed by writing in a journal.
✓ It may be challenging for someone who is ill to communicate his sentiments to others
but he can securely, and quietly express challenging emotions through journal writing.
✓ He might be able to clarify his thoughts and make wise decisions by keeping a regular
journal.
2. Art Therapy – When it is done in a communal setting, the expression of emotions is
difficult to put into words.
✓ This kind of therapy can be aided by drawing, painting, sculpture, and other forms of
arts.
 3. Support Groups – In a support group, a person can express their worries, concerns, and
hopes to others who are going through comparable difficulties. Their relatives and friends
can benefit as well from support groups.

e. Biologically-Based Therapies
1. Dietary Supplements and Herbal Remedies – Minerals, herbs, vitamins, and enzymes
are examples of dietary supplements. The Philippine Food and Drug Authority does not
oversee them for efficacy or safety.
2. Chelation Therapy – Chelation therapy is a form of medicine used to treat heavy metal
poisoning.
✓ When hazardous amounts of metal are absorbed by the body's soft tissues, heavy metal
poisoning results.
✓ This includes giving the body certain medications known as chelators, frequently via
an intravenous (IV) drip.
✓ Chelators should only ever be prescribed by a physician in the event of metal poisoning
because these drugs have adverse reactions and tend to attach to metal traces that are
necessary for human health.
3) Diet Therapy – It is a biologically based practice that employs specific dietary routines
(such as the macrobiotic, paleo, Mediterranean, and low carbohydrate diets) to treat or
prevent a particular disease, such as cancer or cardiovascular disorders, promote wellness,
and detoxify the body by neutralizing or removing toxins from the body.
✓ People should seek professional guidance before starting a therapeutic diet that involves
a significantly modified way of eating to prevent nutritional deficits.
✓ Nutritional knowledge and science should routinely be reviewed with a healthcare or
nutrition specialist because they are always changing.
References
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Cleveland Clinic. (2021, August 15). Complementary Medicine: What Is It, Types & Health Benefits.
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MEd, S. L. (2021, July 9). What Is Dance Therapy? Retrieved March 4, 2023, from
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Millstine, D. (2023, February 21). Types of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Retrieved
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Morales-Brown, L. (2020, September 3). What to know about chelation therapy. Retrieved March 4,
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Morris, R. (2016, March 15). What Is Spinal Manipulation? Retrieved March 4, 2023, from
https://www.healthline.com/health/back-pain/spinal-manipulation

NHS. (2022, March 3). Complementary and alternative medicine. Retrieved March 4, 2023, from
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Ohwovoriole, T. (2021, November 8). What Are Alternative Therapies? Retrieved March 4, 2023,
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Rogel Cancer Center. (2018, June 3). Acupressure. Retrieved March 4, 2023, from
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WebMD. (2016, December 13). What Is Homeopathy? Retrieved March 4, 2023, from
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