The Importance Of Holistic Healthcare

Gone are the days of healthcare focusing only on one aspect of the body. Nowadays, healthcare professionals focus on healing the person through integrated practices as a whole. This encompasses the body, the mind, and the spirit to ensure optimum health and balance. This is known as holistic healthcare or holistic healing, and professionals worldwide use it to treat a large number of illnesses and chronic conditions.

What is Holistic Healthcare?

Holistic healing practitioners believe several interlinking parts influence their patients’ overall health, including physical, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional health. Imbalances in any aspect affect the body as a whole.

Holistic care dates back as far as Hippocrates in the 4th century BC. He encouraged self-healing through natural measures. Holistic care encourages viewing the patient in their entirety rather than treating an isolated symptom or condition.

The movement towards modern Western holistic approaches began in the later 1960s because many people felt that modern treatments focused too much on drugs and technology, rather than the patients and treating their illnesses. People were starting to recognize that pharmaceutical treatments were not the only option, and that lifestyle, environmental, and emotional factors were important too. From here, the practice of holistic healing has grown in popularity to become what it is today.

This type of healthcare can involve multiple forms of treatment from a multi-disciplinary team. Usually, symptoms are not treated with just one approach. Instead, treatments may involve complementary practices, including:

• Surgery
• Physical therapy
• Dietetics and nutrition advice
• Personal training
• Chiropractic work
• Acupuncture
• Meditation or mindfulness
• Psychological therapies
• Spiritual work.

Great examples of a holistic healing approach are the solutions to common ailments such as headaches or migraines. If you go to a general practitioner, they will provide medications to alleviate your headaches. However, if you choose to go to a functional medicine doctor in Acworth, they will focus on identifying the root cause of the migraines or the key factors that contribute to the onset of your problems. They may prescribe medications alongside lifestyle changes that can help to prevent your headaches.

Principles of Holistic Healthcare

Several key principles form the basis of this particular treatment approach. The main idea is that everybody is responsible for their own health and wellbeing. Healing of the body or mind may be long-term, as the focus shifts from removing symptoms to fixing the cause of the issue.

A core principle that sets holistic healthcare apart from other, more traditional methods is the idea that the human body has its own healing powers—an innate ability to overcome difficulties without needing external help.

Why is Holistic Healthcare Important?

Taking holistic measures can greatly improve the quality of life for the majority of patients. Many people have found that holistic healthcare has provided better results than traditional approaches when it comes to alleviating symptoms.

For example, if you need functional thyroid treatment in Acworth, the practitioner will ask you about every aspect of your life to obtain a well-rounded overview of your health. Your health problems may manifest in physical symptoms, but there could be underlying psychological factors contributing to them.

What Conditions Can Be Treated with Holistic Healthcare?

Holistic healthcare considers every aspect of the individual’s well-being. This means that most conditions can be managed, regardless of the root cause.

For those that require functional diabetes treatment in Acworth or help with other endocrine disorders, a holistic healthcare practitioner may be able to reduce symptoms using a combination of medications, exercise therapy, and dietary changes. This provides an effective method of care that targets every contributing factor to the condition.

Many physical and mental health conditions stem from excessive inflammation, including arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), obesity, and cancer. For functional autoimmune treatment in Acworth, a healthcare practitioner may use a holistic approach that looks at genetics, lifestyle, and environmental factors to relieve symptoms and pain.

Inflammation may also be one of the driving factors for mental health illnesses such as depression. Holistic healthcare can use medications such as SSRIs to stabilize key hormones involved in mood and happiness. However, they will also focus on therapeutic methods to improve the patterned thinking of the individual, such as mindfulness practice or cognitive behavioral therapy. They may also suggest making important dietary changes, such as increasing omega-3 intake, to reduce inflammation within the body.

Benefits of Holistic Healthcare

There are several amazing benefits to providing a well-rounded package of care from a multi-disciplinary team.

1. Treats the Patient as a Whole

Instead of focusing on individual parts of the patient, holistic healing uses a thorough care method to identify the cause of the presenting condition.

2. Treats Acute and Chronic Conditions

Holistic healthcare has proved therapeutically effective for many acute and chronic conditions, some of which are not easily handled with traditional approaches.

3. Encourages Patients to Take on a Proactive Mindset

A key component of holistic therapy is to support each patient so that they can reach their full potential. This may be done through education or counseling so that they can become proactive in their own wellbeing. Encouraging patients to focus on all aspects of their health ensures they achieve the best possible outcomes.

Looking at the body as a whole is slowly becoming a standard way to treat patients. Seeing them as a whole person rather than an individual illness or collection of symptoms is key to identifying and overcoming the root cause of a number of conditions. It’s important to provide support in all aspects of life, from physical to mental to emotional, to ensure the best possible care. Holistic healthcare has made incredible progress in recent years, and it is only set to improve further. Call our team at Georgia Integrated Health Center in Acworth today!