You may hear of integrative or natural medicine, allopathic or traditional medicine in the media today. What are the differences?
Integrative medicine is a discipline that focuses on the whole person, not just the symptoms presenting or problems a person may have at this moment in time. Integrative medicine seeks to take an accounting of the physical, emotional, spiritual, nutritional, and genetic characteristics of a person to determine the problem at hand.
How does integrative medicine differ from traditional therapy of allopathic medicine in the United States? Integrative medicine seeks to treat the whole person by supporting the related body systems using non invasive treatments to promote healing and methods that are safe and effective.
Allopathic medicine seeks to identify the symptom, eliminate the symptom and you will eliminate the disease. The integrative natural medicine approach realizes that the disease cannot be cured until the cause of the condition is corrected. Integrative medicine seeks to achieve balance and health by using a non invasive means (by non invasive we mean non surgical).
Examples of non invasive therapies are:
Detoxification
Lifestyle changes
Herbs
Homeopathy
Nutrition
Massage therapy
Acupuncture
Acupressure
Health is the state of optimum physical, mental, and social well being, not merely the absence of disease. Health can be achieved and requires lifelong maintenance. Health is not a one pill solution. It is quite possible that many habits including supplementation for the rest of your life may be necessary.
To me the integrative medicine approach makes sense. The body responds in a fashion that is usually very complex compared to the allopathic model. If you are in a high stress job, just taking your nerve pill is not going to make your stress go away. Will it relax you? For sure! But unless you learn some techniques to manage stress you are only putting a band aid on a bigger problem. Don’t miss understand me, integrative medicine can incorporate the best parts of allopathic medicine to treat a condition in an effective manner. But let’s start to look at the whole patient, and not just the symptom that is presenting today.
What is your opinion? Does your doctor incorporate natural or integrative therapies like above into your healthcare?
