What is Holistic Medicine?

Far more than the absence of illness, this state of health is a dynamic balance of the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of an individual. As both a healer and health educator, the holistic physician, in partnership with the patient, addresses the causes of the disease in addition to treating its symptoms. Holistic medicine involves training in and application of seven core knowledge areas: nutrition, physical activity, environmental medicine, behavioral medicine, social health, energy medicine, and spiritual attunement. Six secondary subjects where the practitioner can discern when appropriate referrals need to be made are botanical medicine (Naturopath referral), homeopathy (often a Naturopath referral), ethno-medicine (traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Native American shaman/medicine man/woman referral), manual medicine (Osteopath who did a residency in manipulation of the musculoskeletal system, chiropractor, massage therapists, body-centered psychotherapist, or somatic experiencing practitioner), biomedical therapies, and health promotion.

Principles of Holistic Medicine

1. Holistic Physicians embrace a variety of safe, effective options in diagnosis and treatment including:

   1. education for lifestyle changes and self-care:

   2. complementary approaches; and

   3. conventional drugs and surgery

2. Searching for the underlying causes of diseases is preferable to treating symptoms alone.

3. Holistic physicians expend as much effort in establishing what kind of patient has a disease as they do establishing what kind of disease the patient has.

4. It is preferable to diagnose and treat patients as unique individuals rather than as members of a disease category.

5. When possible, lifestyle modifications are preferable to drugs and surgery as initial therapeutic options.

6. Prevention is preferable to treatment and is usually more cost-effective.

7. Illness is viewed as a manifestation of a dysfunction of the whole person, not as an isolated event.

8. In most situations encouragement of patient autonomy is preferable to decisions imposed by physicians.

9. The ideal physician-patient relationship considers the needs, desires, awareness and insight of the patient as well as those of the physician. Teamwork is key.

10. The quality of the relationship established between the physician and the patient is a major determinant of healing outcomes.

11. Physicians significantly influence patients by their example.

12. Illness, pain, and the dying process can be learning opportunities for patients and physicians.

13. Holistic 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.

14. Unconditional love is life's most powerful medicine. Physicians strive to adopt an attitude of unconditional love for patients, themselves and other practitioners.

15. Optimal health is much more than the absence of sickness, it is the conscious pursuit of the highest qualities of the spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, environmental and social aspects of the human experience.