As do many HIV-positive people, Elena Monica does all she can to maintain her health and avoid the disease's symptoms.

She sees a conventional medical doctor who checks her blood and advises her. But she also undergoes oxygen therapy, an unproven remedy that involves intramuscular injections of pure liquid oxygen. And she practices \o7 chiqong\f7 , a form of Chinese meditation.

"Most people (with HIV) have to take some sort of action to get themselves healthier," says Monica, 27, a Los Angeles actress. "And unless you're unconscious, it's hard to avoid alternative medicine in this town."

Since learning a year ago that she had contracted HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), Monica says she has felt fine and suffered no symptoms. (It's not uncommon for people to remain symptom-free for years after being diagnosed.)

The problem with her therapy--and with most unconventional medical practices--is that no one can say for certain whether they really work.

That may change.

In an action some call historic, the National Institutes of Health this year opened a small office to study the many alternative practices and therapies flourishing in the United States.

The office for the study of unconventional medical practices--the name is tentative--will put such therapies as acupuncture, herb medicine, massage therapy, meditation and hands-on healing to the kind of scientific scrutiny applied in conventional medicine.

The project is loaded with promise--and with problems.

Among the latter: how to ease the tensions between alternative therapists and conventional medical doctors and promote cooperation and how to test therapies that, practitioners say, are often based on a complicated blend of mind, body and spirituality.

"One of the questions I've raised is: What should we call this office? Unconventional? Alternative? Complementary?" says Dr. Jay Moskowitz, associate director for scientific policy at NIH. "Since we are doing this to bring two communities together, unconventional and conventional medicine, I want them both to be comfortable with the name."

The NIH, which funds the majority of the nation's medical research, responded to a congressional mandate to research alternative medicine. Alternative health advocates lobbied Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to increase federal funding for studies on alternative medicine. Congress eventually mandated NIH to open the office with a budget this year of $2 million (the agency's overall budget is $8.9 billion).