Holistic medicine is a whole-body approach to healthcare. It aims to improve health and wellness through the body, mind, and soul. Usually, holistic medicine combines traditional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Your exact treatment plan will depend on the type of holistic specialty. Practical Nursing describes a holistic care model that promotes a “healthy psychological, emotional and spiritual environment” as a way of helping patients to heal and participate more fully in their own healthcare. It represents a recent attempt to enlarge and humanize the perspective and practice of modern biomedicine.

Conventional Medicine is effective at treating issues that are obviously physical in nature and that require immediate attention (like in emergency settings). However, it falls short at addressing health issues that have complex causes and/or where specialized/longer-term attention is needed. Many conventional medical settings are becoming increasingly aware of the need for individualized care and natural treatments that have fewer side-effects than prescription-grade drugs. From this approach prescription drugs have become the backbone of modern medical practice, providing an insight into how the body and disease is approached. If you have an inflammation, take an anti-inflammatory; an infection, take an anti-biotic; depressed, take an anti-depressant

Holistic medicine, clinicians are also encouraged to be sensitive to religious or spiritual beliefs and to ask the patient what they need from you. Patients may be interested in alternate pain-control methods, such as relaxation techniques, rather than pain medication. Physicians often need to elicit this kind of information from the patient, who will feel more comfortable providing it if they feel accepted.

The holistic approach takes a more multi-factorial approach to disease health and wellness, looking at nutritional and environmental factors that may have thrown the body out of balance and understanding the intimate connection between those factors and the affect on both and the mind and body, which of course are intimately connected.

As holism has become an increasingly popular concept, it has been distorted by both proponents and critics. Tendencies to equate holism with particular therapeutic modalities, to neglect public health for a one-sided emphasis on individual responsibility and to reject rather than elaborate on the scientific method have hampered the movement’s progress.