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What is Integrative Medicine and Holistic Medicine?
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Integrative Medicine
There are a lot of terms used is describing the different styles of medicine available today. The following description should clear up any confusion. In broad terms there are basically two styles of medicine. By far the most popular and well known style is termed "conventional" medicine. Actually, the proper term is "allopathic" medicine. This is the type of medicine that is taught in American medical schools and practiced in most doctor's offices and major hospitals.
The general philosophy of this style is that when a patient is ill, it is the duty of the doctor to intervene, find, and overcome the agent that is causing the illness. These doctors typically use pharmaceutical drugs and surgery to attempt to achieve this goal. An example would be to use anti-biotics to kill a bacterial infection or to perform a heart by-pass surgery to alleviate blockage in an artery. Doctors who use this style of medicine typically only spend a short amount of face to face time with their patients. Unfortunately, especially with chronic ailments, with the time constraints involved, often it is very difficult to find out what is causing the disease. Therefore, in many cases, the only option with this style of medicine is to suppress symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs in an attempt to give the patient a better quality of life.
The other, lesser known, style of medicine is termed "alternative" medicine, in that it is an alternative to conventional medicine. Alternative medicine is being practiced by more and more M.D.'s and D.O.'s who have gone through conventional medical training earlier in their careers. Alternative medicine can include acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathy, homeopathy, nutritionally based medicine, preventive medicine and traditional Chinese medicine to name a few. The basic premise of this style is that the medical practitioner?s role is to get the patient's body to an optimally healthy and balanced state wherein the body will then be able to heal itself. One major concept of this style of medicine is to rid the body of bad components (for example- toxins) and give the body good components (for example- proper nutrition). Alternative practitioners also help the body get into a healthy, balanced state by using various therapeutic methods.
As is the case with almost everything we encounter in life, each style has advantages and disadvantages. Conventional medicine prides itself in being backed by science and is superb at treating trauma and life-threatening infections where no other option is viable. However, history shows that this style of medicine is limited in terms of curing chronic illnesses. Drugs and surgery have their place, but they often have serious side effects and present other dangers as well.
Many alternative medicine therapies and protocols have been found to achieve very favorable results for chronic ailments for which conventional medicine has no viable solution. Additionally, alternative therapies are often exceptional in terms of keeping people in a healthy state and thus preventing illness.
However, alternative medicine is lacking, in most cases, when it comes to treating acute serious trauma. In addition, some of the therapies involved may not be able to be scientifically proven to be effective.
This is why it is important to make sure alternative treatments are valid when evaluating them.
This is what we have done at The Advanced Medicine Center. We only use what we consider to be valid alternative medicine techniques and protocols when treating our patients. Our main philosophy is to get your body into a state of optimal health so that the healing process can take place. We try to avoid using pharmaceutical drug therapy or giving recommendations for surgery whenever possible. However, we also understand that there is a place for conventional treatments and in certain cases pharmaceutical or surgical intervention is the only option a person may have to achieve an acceptable level of quality of life.
Holistic Medicine
Holistic , according to a dictionary definition, means ?whole.? For our purposes it means ?whole person.? In other words, we are different than most conventional doctors in that when we treat our patients, we treat the whole person instead of just looking at one aspect of their condition. This broad approach enables us to achieve success in treating complicated chronic medical conditions for which mainstream medicine has no satisfactory solution.
A holistic approach focuses on getting the patient?s body, mind, and spirit to an optimal level of health. The human body has great recuperative powers if it is in a healthy, balanced state. We do not use the common approach of simply covering up symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs. Instead we search for the root cause, or causes of your symptoms and then work to bring your body back into balance and into optimal health. In our practice the patient comes first. We take the time to listen to our patients and then we devote all of our energies to improving their health now and for the rest of their lives.
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