Herbal medicine definitely works but it's less effective and it's much less pure and less standardised and regulated. This also means that they are much less studied and its safety is much less reliable compared to even an antidepressant that comes with the longest list of side effects.

If people think that herbal medicine doesn't work then I'd ask them what their take on something like St John's Wort or Valerian is.

Obviously I'd be treating any herbal supplement as if it's a medication when talking to a doctor or pharmacist.

There are some ways to mitigate the potential harm of herbal medicine like cycling on/off on a schedule.

As for other natural medicine:

Homeopathy is complete junk science and a complete scam. Avoid at all costs.

Chiropractors are varying degrees of scam, with American chiropractors being utterly galling in how they are a total grift. But even the "respectable" chiropractors still risk doing a lot of harm. Better to see a physiotherapist.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on bogus pseudoscience but the herbs they recommend can be useful and effective. The trouble is that TCM herbs are lacking in studies, especially in the west, and if you're going to actually brew your TCM herbs traditionally from a practitioner then you could be using a dozen or more herbs in one batch so to figure out even one herb's total effects on the body is hard enough but half a dozen or a dozen all with their own broad spectrum of effect that may overlap or enhance or reduce the effects is basically impossible. I used to take Po Chai Pills though and I'd swear by them lol so YMMV.

Acupuncture has very little scientific evidence to support it. It's hard to imagine that it would be likely to cause any harm but idk.

Any of the water seller nonsense is a joke. Kangen water is a complete MLM-style scam.

What else is there..?

Anyway I guess I'm just pretty skeptical towards stuff that markets itself as "holistic" and "non-invasive" and "natural". Not a lot of it is backed up by science and it's definitely the medical treatment form of a god of the gaps; as medical science advances, natural medicine almost always retreats and as our scientific knowledge of all things related to health increases, the room for alternative and natural medicine becomes smaller.

At the end of the day, you do you. I know a person who benefits a lot psychologically from acupuncture and they have a tendency to let things build up for a long time and then they have an outburst where they injure themselves in reckless, preventable accidents every few years - like they will impulsively do really dumb shit and put themselves into a situation where they are essentially guaranteed to hurt themselves. But regular acupuncture really mitigates this lifelong pattern of theirs. It might just be forcing them to take time out to relax, there might be some sort of neurochemical thing at play where acupuncture provides an extremely mild outlet for whatever need SH meets for this person (hello, BDSM community - I see you!), it might be something else. Who knows?

My criteria would be, in order:

• Is it an actual MLM scheme or something close to it?

• Is there any significant risk of harm, immediate or long-term?

• Is there a risk of interactions or aggravating a condition (e.g. chiropractic and an underlying chronic spinal injury)?

• Is it effective?

For the last question, effective doesn't have to mean scientifically established efficacy in my eyes. And if you have made it down to the last question then it's probably fine to do, or at least try out, to see if it does anything for you.