The questions people ask about complementary and holistic care rarely change. How many people actually use these practices? What do they spend? And the hardest one to answer honestly: how much of it is backed by evidence?
This page gathers the most reliable numbers we could find, from national health surveys, the World Health Organization, and the Global Wellness Institute, together with original figures from our own platform, where we have mapped 641 holistic and complementary modalities and reviewed how they relate to 261 health conditions. Every external statistic links to its original source. Where a number is old or imperfect, we say so.
Key statistics at a glance
- •36.7% of US adults used at least one of seven major complementary health approaches in 2022, up from 19.2% in 2002 (NIH/NCCIH).
- •Meditation is now the most used complementary practice in the US at 17.3% of adults, more than double its 2002 level (NIH/NCCIH).
- •Americans spend $30.2 billion a year out of pocket on complementary health approaches, per the most recent national estimate (NCCIH/CDC, 2012 survey).
- •The global wellness economy reached a record $6.8 trillion in 2024 and is forecast to reach $9.8 trillion by 2029 (Global Wellness Institute).
- •Traditional and complementary medicine is used in 170 of the WHO's 194 member states, yet receives less than 1% of global health research funding (WHO).
- •Of the 641 modalities mapped on Gyfts, fewer than one in three carry a strong or moderate evidence label. The largest single group, 193 practices, rests on traditional use rather than clinical research (Gyfts, 2026).
How many people use complementary health approaches
The clearest picture comes from the US National Health Interview Survey, analyzed by the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
- •36.7% of US adults used at least one of seven complementary health approaches in 2022. In 2002 that figure was 19.2%, so usage nearly doubled in twenty years. The seven approaches counted were yoga, meditation, massage therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, naturopathy, and guided imagery or progressive muscle relaxation. Source: NCCIH, published in JAMA, 2024
- •Meditation rose from 7.5% of adults in 2002 to 17.3% in 2022, overtaking yoga, chiropractic care, and massage to become the most used approach.
- •Yoga more than tripled over the same twenty years, from 5% of adults in 2002 to 15.8% in 2022.
- •Among people who use these approaches, the share using them specifically for pain management rose from 42.3% in 2002 to 49.2% in 2022.
The shift at a glance: share of US adults using each approach
Any of seven approaches
2002 ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 19.2%
2022 ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 36.7%
Meditation
2002 ▓▓▓ 7.5%
2022 ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 17.3%
Yoga
2002 ▓▓ 5.0%
2022 ▓▓▓▓▓▓ 15.8%
Each ▓ represents 2.5% of US adults. Source: NIH/NCCIH analysis of the National Health Interview Survey, published in JAMA (2024).
Practitioners consistently describe the same pattern in the room. People rarely arrive out of curiosity alone. They arrive with something they are carrying, most often pain, stress, or grief, and they are looking for support alongside their conventional care, not instead of it.
Outside the United States, the pattern holds. A nationally representative Australian survey found that 63.1% of adults had used some form of complementary medicine in the previous year, and 36% had consulted a complementary practitioner, most commonly massage therapists (20.7%), chiropractors (12.6%), and yoga teachers (8.9%). The headline figure includes vitamin and mineral supplements, so the practitioner figure is the more conservative one to quote. Source: Steel et al., Scientific Reports, 2018
What people spend
- •Americans spend $30.2 billion a year out of pocket on complementary health approaches, which is 9.2% of all out of pocket health care spending. That includes $14.7 billion on visits to complementary practitioners, and works out to roughly $510 per user per year. This remains the most recent official national estimate, drawn from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey, so treat it as a floor rather than a current figure. Source: NCCIH and CDC, National Health Statistics Reports
The global picture
- •Traditional and complementary medicine is used in 170 of the World Health Organization's 194 member states. In the WHO's latest global survey, 67% of responding countries reported that between 40% and 99% of their populations use it. Source: WHO
- •Less than 1% of global health research funding goes to traditional medicine, per the same WHO source. For a field used by billions of people, that gap between usage and research investment explains a great deal about why the evidence base is so uneven.
The wellness economy
These figures describe the whole wellness economy, which is much broader than complementary health alone. They are included because writers and researchers ask for them constantly.
- •The global wellness economy reached a record $6.8 trillion in 2024, about 6.1% of global GDP, and is forecast to reach $9.8 trillion by 2029. Source: Global Wellness Institute, 2025 Global Wellness Economy Monitor
- •Traditional and complementary medicine is projected to be among the fastest growing wellness sectors, at 10.8% annual growth from 2024 to 2029. That is a forecast, not an observed figure.
- •North Americans spend more on wellness per person than anyone else, at $6,029 per year as of 2024.
The evidence landscape: original data from Gyfts
This is the part nobody else publishes. Gyfts maintains a reviewed map of the holistic and complementary landscape: 641 published modalities, 261 health conditions, 959 symptoms, and 1,496 individually reviewed relationships between conditions and the modalities people explore for them. Each modality carries an evidence context label, assigned through our editorial review process. Here is how the landscape actually breaks down, as of September 2026.
Evidence labels across 641 modalities:
- •Strong — 47 — 7%
- •Moderate — 157 — 25%
- •Mixed — 40 — 6%
- •Emerging — 84 — 13%
- •Limited — 92 — 14%
- •Traditional use — 193 — 30%
- •Contemporary practice — 26 — 4%
- •Fewer than one in three holistic modalities (32%) carry a strong or moderate evidence label.
- •Only 47 modalities, about 1 in 14, meet the bar for a strong evidence label.
- •The single largest group, 193 modalities (30%), rests on traditional use: practices with long cultural histories but little formal clinical research. Given that less than 1% of global health research funding reaches traditional medicine, this is not surprising.
How practices map to conditions:
- •Across 261 conditions, our reviewers have documented 1,496 condition to modality relationships, an average of 5.5 potentially relevant modalities per condition.
- •Only 13% of those individual relationships (197 of 1,496) are rated as having strong evidence for that specific condition. A practice can be well supported for one purpose and unstudied for another, which is exactly why blanket claims serve nobody.
How the landscape divides by category. Using the MACH framework (Metaphysical, Alternative, Complementary, Holistic), the 641 mapped modalities break down as: Metaphysical 217, Alternative 179, Complementary 128, and Holistic 116. The categories describe the nature and philosophy of each approach and how it relates to conventional care, not a rating. Metaphysical practices work with energy, spirit, and consciousness; alternative approaches are complete healing systems with centuries of history; complementary approaches are used alongside existing care; holistic approaches work with the whole picture of mind, body, and lifestyle. Metaphysical practices form the largest single category.
What these numbers mean
Reading them together, an honest picture emerges. Use of complementary health approaches has roughly doubled in a generation, spending is in the tens of billions in the US alone, and the wellness economy has become one of the largest consumer sectors on earth. Yet the research base has not kept pace, and most practices remain grounded in tradition rather than trials.
That gap is not a reason to dismiss these practices, and it is not a license to oversell them either. It is a reason to be precise. When someone comes to a practice for grief, for stress, or to feel more at home in their body alongside the care their doctor provides, the right question is not "does holistic health work" but "what does the evidence context look like for this practice, for this purpose." That question is answerable, and answering it is what we built Gyfts to do.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of Americans use complementary or alternative medicine?
36.7% of US adults used at least one of seven major complementary health approaches in 2022, according to NIH analysis of the National Health Interview Survey. That is nearly double the 19.2% recorded in 2002.
What is the most popular complementary health practice?
Meditation, used by 17.3% of US adults in 2022, followed by yoga at 15.8%. Twenty years earlier, chiropractic care topped the list.
How big is the wellness industry?
The Global Wellness Institute valued the global wellness economy at $6.8 trillion in 2024 and forecasts $9.8 trillion by 2029. Traditional and complementary medicine is projected to be among its fastest growing sectors.
How much of holistic health is evidence based?
On the Gyfts platform's reviewed map of 641 modalities, 32% carry a strong or moderate evidence label; the largest group, 30%, rests on traditional use. Evidence also varies by purpose: only 13% of the 1,496 reviewed condition to modality relationships are rated strong for that specific condition.
Explore the data in depth
Each chapter of this report has a dedicated deep-dive page with the full numbers, charts, and sources:
- •Alternative medicine usage statistics covers who uses these approaches and how usage has grown.
- •Holistic health evidence statistics publishes our full original dataset on the evidence landscape.
- •Alternative medicine spending statistics breaks down the $30.2 billion figure and its limits.
- •Wellness industry statistics covers the $6.8 trillion wellness economy and what it actually includes.
- •Traditional medicine statistics covers global usage and the research funding gap.
About this data and how to cite it
External statistics on this page come from the NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the CDC, the World Health Organization, the Global Wellness Institute, and peer reviewed research, each linked at the point of use. Survey years are stated because they matter.
Gyfts platform statistics are original data from our reviewed content system as of September 2026 and are updated as the map grows. You are welcome to cite them with attribution:
Source: Gyfts, Holistic Health Statistics (2026), gyfts.io/blog/holistic-health-statistics
If you are writing about this space and need a number we have not published, ask us. If we have it and can share it honestly, we will.
Gyfts maps 641 holistic and complementary modalities, with evidence context for each, and connects them to practitioners you can actually talk to. Explore the full landscape on the Living Map or start from what you are experiencing.