Question

Is the incorporation of holistic and alternative medicine with traditional medicine good medicine, in your opinion?

Answer 1

Holistic medicine is something that alternative medicine practitionerstraditionally use as a basis for their treatments. However, it is a common misconception that holistic medicine is just 'alternative' or 'complementary' medicine. It is true that holistic medicine allows for a wider range of treatment approaches to be used together and encourages open-mindedness for these different approaches. Some of these approaches may include the use of complementary and alternative medicine but holistic medicine does not dismiss conventional medicine. It uses conventional medicine as part of the treatment approach. Nutrition, exercise, homeopathy, prayer, acupuncture and meditation are just a few other treatments that may be used together with conventional medicine as part of an holistic approach. Holistic nursing is also recognised as being an important concept.

TCM is a system of healing that dates back to 200 B.C. in written form. China, Korea, Japan, India and Vietnam have all developed their own unique versions of traditional medicine. Alternative medicine is commonly categorized together with complementary medicine under the umbrella term “complementary and alternative medicine”. Complementary medicine refers to therapies that complement traditional western (or allopathic) medicine and is used together with conventional medicine, and alternative medicine is used in place of conventional medicine. Alternative medicine refers to therapeutic approaches taken in place of traditional medicine and used to treat or ameliorate disease. Integrative medicine refers to combining complementary treatments with conventional care. The basic philosophy of complementary and alternative medicine include holistic care, which focuses on treating a human being as a whole person.

We refer to medical practices that evolved with indigenous peoples and that they have introduced to other countries through emigration as traditional medicine. We refer to approaches that emerged primarily in Western, industrial countries during the past two centuries as scientific or Western medicine, although we acknowledge that not all Western medicine is based on scientifically proven knowledge.

Traditional Chinese medicine incorporates acupuncture, herbal medicines, special diets, and meditative exercises such as tai chi. Ayurveda in India similarly uses the meditative exercises of yoga, purifying diets, and natural products. In the West, homeopathic medicine and naturopathic medicine each arose in the late 19th century as reactions to the largely ineffectual and toxic conventional approaches of the day: purging, bleeding, and treatments with heavy metals such as mercury and arsenicals.