complementary medicine

The major difference between alternative medicine
or what I'll call holistic health
and Western medicine
is in approach.
A Western doctor
or MD
sees his duty as searching out disease
diagnosing it
and treating it. If he does that correctly and effectively
he's done his job. Most often
this means the doctor prescribing a pharmaceutical drug or a surgical procedure to remedy the situation. The patients is passive in all of this.
A holistic health practitioner sees her duty as an educator and a facilitator. She feels that the body can heal itself
and it doesn't necessarily need outside influences (drugs
surgery) to heal from an illness or to prevent an illness. In holistic health
the patient is an active participant.
This is the best and the worst thing about holistic health! The patient is actively involved in the healing process. Everything you know about your body says that this is the right approach. It makes so much sense. That's the good part. The bad thing about this is that it is HARD WORK for the patient. In most cases
the patient must make changes to their lifestyle. Change your diet
do more exercise
stop using sugar
do these stretches
stop negative thoughts
meditate twice a day
etc.
Making lifestyle changes is immensely difficult. The only time it's easy is when you are faced with a life-threatening disease. When you find out you have lung cancer
it's pretty easy to quit smoking. However
it's far too late by that time. Lifestyle changes need to come before the illness becomes manifest.
Let's examine one of the big differences between holistic health and Western medicine: holism versus reductionism.
Holistic versus Reductionist
This is a major shift in perspective. Taking a holistic perspective means that you cannot understand a single problem with a single part of the human body without looking at the whole person. We use the short-hand “mind
body
spirit” to refer to the whole person.
This is not how a Western doctor is taught to see a patient. He sees the patient as the disease. “This is an epileptic
” it is not a whole person who has epilepsy. He feels that he can administer a drug or perform a surgery that will cure a person's liver without making any difference to the rest of the person. Of course
this is never possible
so when the inevitable “complications” arise
the Western doctor deals with those one at a time
often causing additional problems for the person
whether in body
mind or spirit.
Even those three parts of the person are treated by separate people in Western society. The body is the domain of the medical doctor. The mind is the domain of the psychiatrist. Spirit is left to the priest
rabbi or pastor. There is no overlap in roles
except for referrals from one to the other. In our bodies
of course
there is tremendous overlap. A loss of connection to God or the universe will cause no end of mental and physical problems. Mental stress causes many physical diseases
as we well know. Who can coordinate between these in the Western system? No one. Problems falling “through the cracks” between mind
body and spirit is a common failure of Western medicine.
A holistic practitioner understands the interconnections between mind
body and spirit. They work on the connections
and
although the practitioner may not be an expert in all three
they focus on the overlaps rather than ignoring them.
In my opinion
a holistic approach is better in almost every case for almost every person. Understanding the linkages between mind
body and spirit is essential to understanding how to stay well and how to heal. Western medicine can play a part within the scope of holistic health by offering emergency solutions to problems that arise quickly and need to be fixed immediately.