Nature Health

Posts Tagged ‘Medicine’

Chinese medicine is one of the most sophisticated medical systems in the world. It has been enhanced through thousands of years of experience and research.

Its unique difference from Western medicine is that it focuses on “health” rather than on “healing” because Chinese medicine promotes overall wellness of an individual, as opposed to the approach of Western medicine in treating the symptoms of an illness. As a matter of fact, in ancient China, a physician would not be remunerated for treating his patient who had fallen ill, because it was his first duty to keep his patient from illness. Essentially, Chinese medicine is “heal-all”, while Western medicine is “cure-all.” Another major difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine is that Chinese medicine focuses on plants as remedies. Plants are essential to life. In fact, nearly all the food you eat comes from plants or animals who eat plants. Accordingly, to the Chinese, plants enhance health. In Chinese medicine, the number of plants used as medicines is greater than the number of plants for food. In Chinese medicine, there is not much distinction between a food and a medicine. Even thousands of years before Christ, the Chinese believed that every single plant on earth has its specific function in the well-being of an individual. For this reason, Chinese physicians have always been on the lookout for a remedy in any herbal plant. Not until recent decades and the opening of China to the Western world, little of traditional Chinese medicine was known to the Western medical community. Initially, Western doctors and scientists were skeptical of the potency of Chinese medicine, which is based on herbal cures and remedies. This is not surprising because in the beginning of the 20th century, Western medical science had dismissed even traditional Western plant remedies as folklore medicine – concoctions only for grandmothers but not for professionally trained doctors. With the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry, Western scientists began to focus almost exclusively on chemical drugs to treat different diseases with different symptoms. A case in point is human cancer. In the early 20th century, cancer was relatively unknown, but the number of cancer cases soon began to explode exponentially. With the growth of the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry and the need to validate the potency of these chemical drugs, more research studies have to be conducted. Given that Western medicine aims at treating the symptoms rather than eradicating the causes of a disease, and that chemical drugs often generate many adverse side effects, more new chemical drugs have to be developed to treat those new symptoms. Until fairly recently, after many years of concern at the pervasive side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, is there an interest in Chinese herbal remedies and medicinal foods. Such plants include aloes, garlic, feverfew, and licorice, among others. Another major difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine is that Chinese medicine often incorporates Western medicine into the medical system. For example, in Beijing hospitals, a doctor may carry out surgery in the Western manner with state-of-the-art equipment, while the anesthetist may use acupuncture and herbal preparations for preoperative and postoperative treatments. The Chinese are using the best from over four thousand years of experience to complement Western medicine. Results have proved that traditional Chinese medicine works even though it may not always conform to the current Western scientific theories. According to the Okinawa Centenarian Study, Okinawa, Japan, and Hong Kong are the top three areas of the world in life expectancy. They all share an important common characteristic of incorporating both Eastern and Western approaches to healing in their health care systems. The use of natural or herbal tonics in these populations far exceeds that of North America. Get the best of both Chinese and Western medicine so that they complement each other to give you the best health to enable you to become younger and healthier for longer.

Holistic medicine is health care that comprises all the aspects of one’ s personality to obtain the optimum state of wellness. It encompasses the process of looking into the wholeness of the person including nutritional, physical, environmental, spiritual, lifestyle and social values. Holistic medicine includes virtually all treatments and diagnosis known to achieve balance in personality. It upholds the responsibility of educating one’s self to attain the ideal over-all health and well being.

Holistic medicine and Alternative Medicine

Alternative medicine is commonly associated with holistic medicine. By definition, alternative medicine is the medical techniques that are usually not accepted or practiced by conventional medical practitioners. Most alternative medicines are founded to have rooted on unscientific, untested and untraditional principles. Often, these forms of medicine are closely associated with metaphysical components and anti-scientific stands.

Many of these techniques don’t normally have pharmaceutical values like the acupuncture, herbalism, Reiki, homeopathy and the likes. Yet the alternative medicine may also be used in experimental non-drug and drug techniques that are not yet accepted in the medical circles. The future of alternative medicine holds on the potentiality of transforming the “alternative medicine” into conventional medicine since it is now becoming widely appreciated and practiced by medical doctors. In fact, complementary medicine is the term used for alternative medicine practiced in combination with conventional medicine.

Due to these changes in view of the alternative medicine, holistic medicine has become a more preferable option among those who are quite doubtful of the alternative medicine.

Alternative medicine may appeal to metaphysical beliefs and so does the holistic medicine but on milder and more scientifically based approach. Yet the knowledge applied in holistic medicine still cannot hide the fact that it tends to cling to non-scientific knowledge.

Simply put holistic medicine claims to cure and treat the whole person. Holistic medicine stresses out the unification of the mind and the physical body. Holistic medicine practitioners give credence to the belief the man is not a pure physical body with systems and parts that encompass it. Man is also a spiritual being that requires spiritual healing. Holistic medicine concerns itself to the belief of the connection between the spirit and emotions and mind.

The gap between holistic medicine and alternative medicine is closed by the common practice of not using drug treatments and surgeries. They usually employ meditation, herbs, prayers, vitamins and minerals, as well as exotic diets in treating certain ailments.

Holistic Medicine and Conventional Medicine

Allopathy or conventional medicine defines individual health as the non-occurrence of diseases, which appeals to be a negative approach in defining the condition. Holistic medicine on the other hand concerns itself on a person’s absolute state of physical, social, mental and spiritual well-being.

As based on the definition given (that is commonly used among medical practitioners), orthodox medicine remains to deal with one’s susceptibility to diseases instead of the wellness as opposed by holistic medicine. Based on common observations, conventional medicine typically doesn’t apply to healthy individuals. While holistic medicine focuses on the quality of living practiced by people. Sick people normally don’t seek medical attention not until the symptoms of the disease/s are obvious. Thus, there is too little preventive treatment against sickness.

There are great differences between holistic medicine and the conventional type both in the diagnosis and treatments. Most of which are scientifically based. In oppose to this stand, diagnosis in holistic treatment are conceived through the manifestations of body imbalance. These are determined through certain procedures distinctive only to holistic medicine and other related medicinal practices.

People who have already undergone any of these procedures claim that is not bad trying on or all of these practices. Yet individual preferences still have the hand on what will be accepted as the ideal procedure.