Holistic/Integrative Medical Approach

A year ago when I heard the term holistic, the first thought that came to mind was "hippies".  I had no idea what the term meant.  I knew people took herbs in place of medicine at times but that is all I knew.  And I was to stubborn to think anything outside the modern day medical approach had any true wisdom in it.  Now my opinion is that there is a great deal of wisdom and knowledge in both. 

A simple definition I found for holistic health was from wikipedia:  a concept in medical practice upholding that all aspects of people's needs, psychological, physical and social should be taken into account and seen as a whole. Holistic health focuses on all facets of human functioning, which involves our taking responsibility for maintaining all aspect of our well-being.

Integrative healing is based on a practitioner-client partnerships in which both conventional and alternative modalities are used to stimulate the body's natural healing potential.

In the book, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics, Dr. Kenneth Bock states, "My approach is based upon the medical principle of holism, which calls for addressing the human body as an integrated, interdependent, interrelated entity. Because every aspect of the brain interacts with every other aspect..."  He then continues to discuss how he uses this approach to help children with Autistic brains.  

In my own family I have seen through my kids, myself and my husband how eating healthier, taking supplements, and including exercise in your life is all part of becoming healthier by taking care of your whole body. Now we still have further to go but I am now opening my mind to look at our health differently.  We still use medication when needed and the doctors that I see use medication when needed to cure certain sicknesses.  But they look at what the root of the problem is instead of medicating the symptoms.  They want to help their patients to get their bodies working the way God designed them to work, by healing themselves and being able to detox themselves from certain environmental toxins.  We cannot avoid all the toxins, pollution, pesticides, and parasites in the world but we can have a healthy immune system to flush them out .  Like I said before this is all new to me and I am learning as I go.  I have so much more to learn about how our bodies work as a whole entity.