Discussion: Diagnosis by alternative methods, such as iridology, or diagnosis by the tongue, can be used as part of self-healing therapy but not exclusively.

In an age of accurate and reliable lab tests, the importance of iris diagnosis, tongue use, and other methods has decreased dramatically. Traditional Chinese medicine extensively uses the tongue, but mainly as a rule of thumb, for a rapid, relatively simple, and valid diagnosis. The main advantage of these traditional self-healing tests is that they are far ahead of the findings of laboratory tests. At the same time, they are not very accurate and give an incomplete picture.