What is Holistic Medicine?

Since I create and offer all natural products, I constantly strive to educate myself about what nature has to offer and the effects/interaction(s) that those offerings have upon our mental status and other bodily systems. In becoming more "Earth based" myself, I have been studying alternative medicines and treatment modalities. Since many people are turning to these methods, and many more are curious about them, I thought that I would share some basic information with you. While this does not mean that I am encouraging you to self prescribe (please don't, these are potent treatments and should be administered by knowledgeable professionals), I do hope to encourage you to further educate yourself on the alternatives to the straight, traditional, medical model. I encourage you to open your mind to explore the possibilities!

First of all, the general term for all of these "alternative" treatment modalities is "holistic medicine", while traditional medicine is labeled as "allopathic" medicine. It is important to understand that the goal of holistic medicine is to treat the CAUSE of the problem, not just the problem itself. Most often, traditional medicine is aimed at simply treating the symptoms, never looking for or even considering the cause, the root of the problem.

Holistic physicians actually combine the knowledge and skills of regular/traditional (allopathic) medicine, with the holistic approach. To the patients benefit, this provides a broader range of healing possibilities, and it is also what makes this field of medicine so interesting and important.

Holistic medicine and treatments are more lifestyles than immediate fixes. While holistic treatments usually do cure the problem being looked at, they do tend to be at a slower rate than traditional medicine. Of course it also tends to be without the potentially harmful, synthetic drugs that traditional medicine routinely prescribes. The focus, if not key, to holistic medicine is prevention of the problem that causes the symptoms, while traditional medicine tends simply to focus on the problem at hand.

While there are many holistic treatments, the mainstays or the "basics", as I see them, are; homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy, massage treatments, herbal treatments, nutrition and education. Of course these areas are very broad, and yes, there are many, many more that I did not mention, but I'd like to offer you an overview of these common treatment modalities. The first installment will be on "Homeopathy".