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Are you considering an alternative health treatment? Buying a nutritional supplement? Need hard facts on the effectiveness of a therapy?

When evaluating an alternative therapy, as with conventional therapies, there are two basic factors you want to look at: Benefits and Cost.

The benefits can be hard to sleuth out. Many treatments are buried under so much hype, marketing material or legend that it's hard to figure out the real benefits. Here are several ways to find out how effective the therapy is.

User experiences
Other people who have used the product are going to be some of your best sources for information. Printed testimonials have limited use, though, as many of them are fictitious, or exaggerated. A better method is to actually talk to people who have used the therapy and get their opinions first hand. Try to talk to people who have had good and bad experiences. With the people who have had bad experiences, you may find that most of them did not properly use the therapy, in which case you can probably discount them.

Scientific information
Ask your health professional or a sales representative for scientific research on the product or service you are looking at. You can also look for scientific data on PubMed or at libraries.

The cost of a therapy or treatment is not just the financial cost. While price should be figured in, a treatment that really works is worth a lot of money, but one that doesn't is not worth anything. So price should not be your first concern.

The primary cost you should be concerned with is side effects. Are their side effects that you may experience while taking the therapy? Are there possible long term health risks? Long term damage to your health is a very high price to pay for a treatment.

With careful evaluation, you can choose an effective treatment or therapy that will work for you, without bad side effects.