Use common sense, but be wary of the "doctors" who want to sell you a lot of stuff.

I have visited a chiropractor for a back ache and he helped. I have have known chiropractors who would tell me that their chiro treatment would cure flu and many worse diseases - that was a bunch of BS. In my experience, the chiropractors do help when it comes to musculo-sceletal problems, but hardly anything else.

To address Eric's point above - it is possible for a massage (done incorrectly) to tense up the muscles and cause significant pain afterwards, instead of relaxing them. There have been cases when chiropractic treatments had patients end up with broken vertebrae.

It is true that many medicines have harmful side effects, but they are also used to effectively treat problems. The "natural" supplements and remedies, all of them, have dubious medicinal value, in other words they are very rarely proven to have helped anything. The evidence of their efficacy is usually anecdotal, and most often they don't do better than the placebos in treating problems. Furthermore, despite Eric's assertions, there have been cases of "natural supplements" that had caused deaths.

My wife does work for a company that sells natural supplements. The owners of the company do not take these supplements - to me that is the most telling fact of all.

When we were expecting one of our kids, our friend who is a naturopath had given my wife some stuff that was supposed to take away the pain. This stuff did not work, but waiting for it to kick in we delayed getting the epidural, which does work, for several unbearable hours. As a result, my wife suffered unnecessary pain.

Draw your own conclusions, but remember that Western medicine has proven treatments of many health problems. If you find the alternative approach working, great. But be sure that in your pursuit of alternative treatments you are not delaying proven treatments for too long.

Regards