Natural health care includes everything from feeding your pet a healthy diet as a means to prevent illness naturally, to natural flea prevention, to natural treatment of diabetes. You've seen the labels on pet food, All Natural, Holistic, Organic, basically this means no artificial preservatives, color, or flavor. Organic food is a bit different as it refers to the methods used to produce the ingredients. In natural health care mostly herbal medicines are used, and a change to a natural diet, raw food, homemade food and so on. In alternative medicine you will find the following methods often mentioned as treatment for health problems.

Acupuncture: This is used to treat the majority of health problems, chronic, internal, skeletal, recovery, and respiratory. Most holistic medicine practitioners will use acupuncture along with a natural remedy to treat any health problem.

Homeopathy: Homeopathy is treating an illness with a diluted product- that would cause, in it's original strength, the same illness in a healthy animal.

Chiropractic Manipulation: Basically the same thing as humans get when they go to the chiropractor.

Herbal Medicine: There are herbal remedies for almost any type of pet illness. Liver disorders, worms/parasites, cancer, anxiety, arthritis, and asthma; the list could go on, but you get the idea. Three common types of herbal medicine dominate the practice of natural medicine, they are Western, from Greek and Roman sources; Chinese herbology, or Chinese herbal medicine; and Ayurvedic, from India.

Nutritional Therapy: This is mostly a preventive form of alternative medicine. Adding supplements rich in antioxidants, amino acids, botanicals, and fatty acids to prevent disease and promote healthy cell structure is a form of nutritional therapy. Supplements are also added to the normal regimen of drugs to hasten the healing process.

Therapeutic Massage: Again this is close to what a human would get. It is used to loosen tense muscles, increase circulation, and help arthritic dogs.

Vitamin and Mineral Augmentation Therapy: Same as Nutritional Therapy

Nosodes: Homeopathic vaccinations.