Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is an umbrella term for complementary medicine and alternative medicine, and incorporates integrative medicine and various subjects such as herbalism, meditation, chiropractic, yoga, body work and diet-based therapies.

The peceived boundaries within CAM and between the CAM and the dominant system vary with culture, time and can change with scientfic evidence. In many countries, long established traditional medicines viewed as CAM in US and the West with caution or even scorn, have to various degrees re-emerged, been officially recognized, regulated and standardized, and/or begun a process of scientific rationalization with Western medical principles. Testing and rationalizing biologically based traditional medicines, often based on empirical and clinical foundations, may be complicated by being multicomponent mixtures of nutrients and pharmacologically active constituents, patent issues and biopiracy.