Integrative wellness centers, offering acupuncture, herbal medicine, and bodywork alongside referrals to conventional doctors, are multiplying across Brooklyn. They pitch themselves to New Yorkers who want traditional practices without abandoning mainstream medicine.

The fictional center Meridian & Root in Prospect Heights employs licensed acupuncturists who coordinate with clients' physicians and are frank about the limits of the evidence. Its founders say that candor is the selling point in a field crowded with overblown claims.

Medical experts remain divided on many of the treatments, and regulation is uneven. But the centers have found a durable audience: people looking for care that treats them as a whole person, delivered without either hype or dismissiveness.