摘要Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common chronic liver disease characterized by diffuse hepatic steatosis. With the improvement of people's living standard, the incidence rate of NAFLD has been increasing, which has become one of the global health problems in 21st Century. However, there is no specific drug or standard treatment for NAFLD, which brings challenges to treatment. Acupuncture, moxibustion, massage and other external therapies based on the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine have obvious curative effect in the clinical treatment of NAFLD, but the mechanism has not been systematically explained, which makes the clinical promotion evidence insufficient. This paper aims to summarize the researches on the treatment of NAFLD by external therapies of traditional Chinese medicine in recent years, and analyze its possible mechanism, so as to provide a scientific theoretical basis for future basic experiments and clinical research, and form a set of standardized clinical diagnosis and treatment scheme with the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine.