Understanding Holistic Health

Holistic medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses the whole person - body, mind, and spirit. The practice integrates conventional and alternative therapies to prevent and treat disease, and most importantly, to promote optimal health. This condition of whole health is defined as the unlimited and unimpeded free flow of life force energy through body, mind, and spirit.

How does this differ from conventional medicine?

• Primary Objective of Care...To promote optimal health and as a by-product, to prevent and treat disease. conventional medicine attempts to cure or mitigate disease.
• Primary Method of Care ...Empower patients to heal themselves by addressing the causes of their disease and facilitating lifestyle changes through health promotion. Conventional medicine focuses on the elimination of physical symptoms.
• Diagnosis ...Evaluate the whole person through holistic medical history and health score sheet, physical exam, lab data. Conventional medicine evaluates the body with history, physical exam, lab data.

• Primary Care Treatment Options...Love applied to body, mind, and spirit with: diet, exercise, environmental measures, attitudinal and behavioral modifications, relationship and spiritual counseling, bioenergy enhancement. Conventional medicine relies on drugs and surgery.

Some Basic Principles

1. Searching for the underlying causes of disease is preferable to treating symptoms alone.
2. Physicians expend as much effort in establishing what kind of patient has a disease as they do in establishing what kind of disease a patient has.
3. Prevention is preferable to treatment and is usually more cost-effective. The most cost-effective approach evokes the patient's own innate healing capabilities.
4. Illness is viewed as a manifestation of a dysfunction of the whole person, not as an isolated event.
5. A major determinant of healing outcomes is the quality of the relationship established between physician and patient, in which patient autonomy is encouraged.
6. The ideal physician-patient relationship considers the needs, desires, awareness and insight of the patient as well as those of the physician.
7. Physicians significantly influence patients by their example.
8. Illness, pain, and the dying process can be learning opportunities for patients and physicians.
9. Physicians encourage patients to evoke the healing power of love, hope, humor and enthusiasm, and to release the toxic consequences of hostility, shame, greed, depression, and prolonged fear, anger, and grief.

Anyone, young and old alike, who truly want to be responsible for their own health and wellness should be familiar with holistic health and other alternative medicines. Conventional medicine, prescription drugs, and invasive procedures should be an optional last resort.



Return from Holistic to Natural Health

Return from Holistic to Vitality-After-60 Homeage