Types alternative therapies used for veterinary treatments may include, but are not limited to, acupuncture, herbal medicine, homeopathy, ethnomedicine and chiropractic.
Descriptive terms such as holistic, conventional, traditional, alternative, integrative, or complementary do not enhance the quality of care provided and should not receive special consideration when judging the safety and efficacy of those treatments.
[2] Oftentimes different modalities of alternative veterinary medicine will be used in conjunction with one another for the best results, such as integrative nutritional being used with physical rehabilitation.
[3][2] One barrier to the advancement of alternative veterinary medicine is simply the lack of research and evidence backing up many modalities of treatment.
[2] A veterinarian interested in alternative treatments may be a member of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association (AHVMA).
Integrative nutrition is more and more common within the agriculture industry as well because of the increased amount of production and growth that can come with altering the diet of cattle, chicken, hogs, or other livestock.
Many types of physical rehabilitation and sports medicine treatments have been studied in humans and in animals enough to have some sort of evidence to support its usage.