Holistic Medicine is a whole different view of a patient and how to treat them than how standard medicine treats patients. Is standard medicine safer and more effective than holistic medicine?
The main purpose of the holistic doctor is to find the root cause for symptoms by looking at diet, lifestyle, and other factors that influence your health and well-being. The human body is so complex that it involves a lot of detection work by the holistic doctor. There may be emotional or mental issues that are a problem as well such as depression.
Once he finds an issue or issues in their health, the patient needs to follow a plan, change his lifestyle, and follow through which can take months or weeks to see changes. Many people today just want a quick fix or a pill to make all the symptoms go away.
You have to invest time and some money often to secure results that take time. So, you may not get the results as soon as you think you should see them or you may need to try a different doctor or change the progress plan. The experience of some patients then gives them this view, that holistic medicine does not work.
If you are new to this page, it might be you with this view. I hope you will read further to perhaps get more insight into why your herbs, herbal treatment, or holistic treatment might have failed or worked less effectively than you had hoped for.
I have been using natural medicine for over 40 years with success. Yes, here and there I did have to take medicine but rarely. This was not always my view and the way I dealt with my health challenges.
Just to give you some of my history, I worked for doctors in the late 80s for about 5 years. I was part of a clinic in Ramona, CA that went out administering to the Indian reservations in that area. I believed in doctors and the system then. I was entrenched in the system. I learned so much and it gives me a base to understand both worlds: standard medicine and holistic medicine.
It was when my doctors could not help me or my youngest daughter that I left that belief system. I now only go to doctors mainly to get a physical once a year. On the occasions I have gone for treatment by the traditional health care system, I can count on both hands during the past 40 years. I do not get a breast exam, colon exam, shots, or other interventions.
You can stop reading now if you object to my view. If you do question my view, but still want to know more about why I have this view, read on.
If you are NOT open to new information, a new view, or why possibly your health is getting worse, not better, this blog will go in one ear and out the other.
You must be open to a new view. One of my future articles will be written on why I do not get those standard tests, that doctors say you must DO to remain healthy.
I am 71 and have only been to the emergency room only once in my life. I have used holistic medicine for the past 40 years after going to get formal herbal medicine education. Even that one time left me with no answers and a $10,000 bill for 5 hours with no insurance.
I have not undergone any operations other than a tonsillectomy and a procedure performed in an outpatient status for a nerve condition on my foot. Both were done when I was working for doctors in the 1980s. This does not count having my children in the hospital but without intervention and spinal blocks. One of the three was born at home.
Does Standard Medicine always work is the first question you need to ask.
No
You need to read the two articles below if you think that standard medicine is not flawed in many ways and the success of standard medical treatments is questionable, to say the least. Many thousands get prescribed the wrong medicine for their problem or the side effects are so severe they cannot take the medicine. Thousands of deaths occur every year from patients taking too much prescription medication.
Read the two articles below. They will give you a new view of the question.
Twelve million patients are misdiagnosed yearly in America, says VA
Why Getting Medically Misdiagnosed Is More Common
It was a few months ago that I began experiencing pain in both ears. I went to three local doctors who said nothing was wrong. I paid 90 dollars in co-insurance fees to be told it was all in my mind. It got to the point several weeks later that I couldn’t sleep and then all the glands in my neck got swollen. My jaw got painful as well. I could not lie down or turn my head without severe pain. Nothing was working herbally.
The new doctor I went to at that time, immediately said it was a dangerous infection in the lymph nodes coming from my jaw. So, the undiagnosed ear pain was the beginning of a systemic lymph node infection. Nothing got taken care of until it became deadly serious.
After taking 10 days of antibiotics, the infection in the lymph nodes had gotten better somewhat but was still very swollen and sore. My gut was in severe pain from the side effects of the antibiotics, and I couldn’t eat without stomach pain. I was in bed with stomach pain at that point. So instead of going back to the doctor, I prayed for an answer.
It came to me that over the years, I had not tried essential oils such as myrrh and frankincense on my recurring jawbone infections. I spent several days researching essential oils, infections, and oral health infections. There is a lot of research on the success of using these two oils on oral mouth infections.
The best quality essential oils are expensive. Oral herbs were not working at that point so that was out. The oral herbs and the antibiotics were not getting to the main cause of the infection. It was entrenched in the jawbone itself. The infection was now antibiotic-resistant or an MRSA infection.
I bought the oils and began using them both as an oral mouthwash and massaged them into my jawbone, throat, under my ears, and into the neck area where the discomfort remained. Within a week, I was remarkedly improved. I used them for a month in that way daily. All of the pain and discomfort disappeared. I still use them as a preventive 3 times a week. If I had stopped using the same herbs with no results, I would have said herbs don’t work. It was the form of herbs that were not reaching the infection in the bone.
Often it is the form of therapy or herbal regimen that is not the right one for your health challenge. You have to work with your body, your own individual immune system, and your health challenge to find the answer. Often it may take days, weeks, or months to find the answer.
You must take the right herb or essential oil for the problem, take it in enough dosage to secure results, and for enough time for the body to use that herb or herbs to repair the body system.
I did not grow up with any knowledge of using herbs, vitamins, or alternative medicine. We were taken to a standard doctor who I might add was not as good as the local vet. Later on, he was charged with sexually harming young boys at the school and blew his brains out before the court date. He was not much of a doctor, but he remained in practice for many years until some young boys blew the whistle on him.
This same country doctor told my mother for years that her weight issues were food-related. He refused to test her for thyroid problems. When two or three years later another doctor did test her, and he found she was severely hypothyroid. After taking the thyroid medication for some time, she lost weight and never had a weight issue for the rest of her life.
Despite that, I became a medical assistant with some doctors and became entrenched in the standard medical treatment world. I did everything from lab work, x-rays, input with the patients, vaccinations, and other shots, and working with the drug salesmen who came to influence the doctors into buying their products. They brought in sample packets of medicines and took the doctor out to lunch often. I never thought much about the issue at that time.
It was after my third child was born, had her first vaccines, and then became deathly sick that I questioned the system. These doctors could not find anything wrong in lab tests but kept her on potent antibiotics for almost a year. She became sicker and sicker. Her weight dropped and she would not eat. There was a nasty, red rash on her butt all the time. They had no answers. When it was apparent that the antibiotics did not work, they told me people do not become resistant to antibiotics. I was crazy. This was in the middle 1980s when doctors did not realize that giving antibiotics for an extended time will cause the infection to become resistant to medicine which now is called an MRSA infection. I saw it from watching her get sicker by the week.
Standard medicine today is often a failure and there are thousands of statistics to back that up. Even though often standard medicine does not work, you will never see a traditional doctor advise you to try herbs or other holistic therapies. Instead, they will tell you it is snake oil medicine or doesn’t work.
There is a place for standard medicine which is in emergencies, life-threatening illnesses or diseases, and technology to help patients with operations needed to save lives and limbs. If I got hit by a car, I certainly would not go to a holistic doctor at that time. I would need expert doctors to keep me from dying.
It is in diagnosing health problems before they become heart attacks or diabetes that they fail the patients.
If holistic and standard medicine were used together in a manner to best serve the patient and their health challenge, that would be the best of both worlds.
In China, Asia, Japan, and many other countries this is what they do there. They combine the best of both modern medicine and holistic medicine to treat their patients getting outstanding results. It is so tragic, that this is not the case in the United States. Here insurance often only pays for standard medical therapies.
Signing off, Cathryn Freer, The Herbladyisin
