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What Is Holistic Medicine and Does It Work?

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Is Holistic Medicine Real?

Is holistic medicine real, and what is holistic medicine anyway?

Holistic medicine considers and treats the whole person, including assessment of physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual and environmental health. Holistic medicine employs prevention, elimination of causes and natural remedies first and foremost. However, all modalities are considered as needed, including modern medicine.

Holistic medicine is disease prevention through a healthy lifestyle. Holism takes into account the whole person and not a specific ailment. By first addressing and eliminating the cause of illness and ailments holistic healing seeks to heal the cause rather than treat the symptoms. Whenever possible natural remedies, including diet, nutrition and exercise are utilized in holistic healing.

Holistic medicine considers and treats the whole person with a focus on prevention and natural remedies.
~MyTrainerFitness.com

Holistic Medicine and Herbal Remedies

Plant medicine and natural healing from herbs has been around for thousands of years. In contrast, modern medicine has only been around for the past 150 years or in the form of pharmaceuticals. The first pill for an ill was aspirin, which evolved from over 3,500 years of use first in its natural form as white willow bark.

If you have access to white willow trees, you can make your own anti-inflammatory pain relief remedy. If you don’t you can buy white willow bark, teas and tinctures, and even capsules.

Or, you can pop an aspirin or other pain pill. However, most pharmaceuticals have a longer list of possible side effects than most holistic medicine.

A Return to Our Roots and Herbs

But today, more are returning to plant medicine such as the potent benefits of rosemary essential oil and CBD oil. Add to that homegrown, garden fresh foods, and you’ll have nature’s best food and medicine at your fingertips.

Of course it’s easier to pop a pill versus needing to peel tree bark and prepare it into a tea or tincture. Given that and the fast pace of life today, we can easily see how the convenience of modern medicine won out.

However, the consequence of modern medicine is that most of us have lost the healing knowledge that was mostly common knowledge to all.

Today, more people want to be more self sufficient and return to traditional medicine by using natural remedies they can grow. This growing interest in natural health has caused the market to expand into offering more convenient forms of holistic remedies.

Plant remedies are often less expensive with fewer side effects than chemical compounds. Besides that, plants have a vitality or life force, called “prana”, that contributes energetic healing beyond the obvious.

Growing one’s own food and herbs for nutrition and medicine gives us each access to the best prevention and remedies from nature.

Plant Prana

You might say that prana is closely akin to TLC. Tender loving care is an intangible factor that feels strongly real when it’s present. TLC is felt like the love between family members and the way Mom’s home baked chocolate chip cookies are always best, or Grandma’s hand picked blackberry cobbler can’t be beat… as if you can taste the love in it.

With the convenience of modern medicine’s apparently miraculous solution to ailments and quick fix to pain, most have forgotten the power and potency of herbal medicine. We’ve also forgotten to focus on addressing and eliminating the cause over primarily treating symptoms, AKA “the band aid effect”.

If you really want to go deep into that topic, check out books like The Secret Teaching of Plants, by Stephen Harrod Buhner.

RELATED: Study on the relationship between prana, electrons and health.

We feel the TLC in plant medicine as prana — life force — from the plants.

A Metaphor for Context and Perspective

We can view this metaphorically as how kids can’t wait to leave home and experience the thrills of the world. Most of us discover as we mature that our wiser elders were right. What we ultimately value most are the simpler things in life such as family, friends and nature. We come to realize that much of what we were seeking has often been there all along.

As far as time and longevity go, the science of modern medicine, which some call “traditional” versus “alternative” or “holistic” medicine is actually the young new kid on the block when it comes to health and healing. Yet today, modern medicine is the filter of approval and acceptability.

And yet like the kid returning home, many today are returning to roots of herbal remedies and growing their own food.

Modern Man Versus Herbal Lore

In our family, we first apply remedies we know through our own experience and research. Next, we choose naturopathic doctors whenever possible. Our naturopathic physicians attended six years of rigorous, science based education yet incorporates prevention and herbal healing from multiple traditions.

Looking at the thousands of years historical timeline, the real “alternative medicine” is modern medicine which is comparatively, the newest kid on the block. That doesn’t discount it by any means. There are many incredible advances and marvels with modern medicine. Yet much of that has been at the cost of the loss of traditional plant medicine used successfully for thousands of years.

In fact there are those who diminish herbal lore altogether. Wikipedia, which is likely the top search result for virtually every inquiry calls naturopathic medicine quackery and alternative medicine as unproven. Similarly with chiropractic healing.

“Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine, but which lacks biological plausibility and is untested, untestable or proven ineffective.”
~Wikipedia.org

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.
~Hippocrates, physician, Father of Modern Medicine, c. 460 BC-375 BC

Holistic Healing Deemed Quackery

Beyond Wikipedia’s perspective, Google has dramatically reduced the search results to reputable websites that proffer alternative and holistic healing options. One such site was built by a traditionally trained physician steeped in science on the foundation of a medical degree but with a keen interest in prevention and natural approaches to health and wellness.

We’ve experienced the fact of this “holistic purge” first hand as we own two websites that include information on the healing benefits of plants and natural remedies. Though our content is as well researched, cited and foot noted as that of any journalist and mainstream site with studies and appropriate disclaimers, we’re amongst those who’ve suffered dramatic losses when Google decided it wasn’t valid.

The result was a substantial loss of ranking and thus traffic from visitors following a 2018 Google algorithm update that downgraded websites offering alternative and holistic information.

Youthful Exuberance and Hubris

In the metaphor cited earlier, these exuberant youthful companies are dissing the old ways. Sure… some of it could be old wives tales. Yet when we use that somewhat derogatory term, we seem to be discounting the wisdom from experience of living and use accrued by those “old wives”.

Not scientifically proven doesn’t mean not true.

Often it just means that not enough studies were deemed worthy of funding to be done as yet. Just because a scientist hasn’t yet proven a belief doesn’t discount the eons of proof to those who’ve applied and observed it, even if it’s a placebo effect, for we know that modern medicine today also employs placebos, especially in studies.

Physician, Heal Thyself

What the placebo effect reveals — and bears studying toward intentional application — is the incredible healing power within each of us. One who works consciously with the power we each have to heal ourselves is Dr. Joe Dispenza. Fortunately, Dr. Dispenza is also incorporating scientific documentation of the many healings that are occurring through the work he’s doing to awaken people to the incredible healing power available to us all.

Mainstream medical practitioners now know that those who heal and recover best are those with a positive and proactive mindset. Dr. Joe is taking that a little further by teaching people how to do that and then put it to work for them.

Healing ourselves is our birthright. Our bodies already know how in so many ways. Now it’s our turn to discover how best to support that innate intelligence that keeps the body breathing and repairing without our thinking about it.

As we learn to consciously work more with the laws of nature through the use of plant medicine, proper nutrition and exercise, we will become a healthier society. Holistic medicine recognizes the integral relationship between healthy mind, healthy body, positive thoughts and positive healing.

Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.
~Hippocrates, ancient Greek physician, c. 460 BC-375 BC

Apolitical

This isn’t political, but we don’t get into “politics”, but we definitely believe in the constitution and first amendment. We also value the amazing contributions to humanity made possible by companies like Google and Wikipedia. We can appreciate the incredible challenges to both companies whose decisions are based on their desire to clean up spammy and inaccurate content to make the internet a valuable and reliable resource to all. It’s no doubt a hard — if not impossible — task to police the free flow of the information of the world.

So when it comes to our health, healing and prevention, we believe that no one way holds all the answers and that we should all have equal access toward determining that for ourselves. It’s our human right to learn about and put to use the incredible medicinal properties of the many plants and foods readily available to all of us. Perhaps that’s what they’re here for.

“Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.”
~Hippocrates, physician, Father of Modern Medicine, c. 460 BC-375 BC

Herbs Are Cheap and Easy to Grow

Herbs especially, are powerhouses of preventive and medicinal properties. Yet herbs are easy to grow, harvest and process like this lemon balm and lavender, both beneficial for stress and anxiety. They don’t take up much space, and cost so little in comparison to pharmaceuticals.

Most pharmaceuticals have negative side effects. Sure, some herbs can as well, which is why it’s important to learn, study and experiment carefully and with proper professional guidance and books. However most plant “side effects” are actually benefits in the way of more nutrients, flavor and health.

No holistic program is complete without healing mind and psyche through positivity and gratitude.


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