Understanding Holistic Medicine

Holistic medicine acknowledges the totality of the human being and treats all levels of human existence in a comprehensive view of health and healing. The different levels of human health and existence can sometimes be called mind, body, spirit. We can expand these concepts to include stressors, environmental inputs (such as toxin exposure), individual genetic and biochemical individuality, relationship to community and relationship to the greater outer environment. Holistic medicine takes into account all these factors in formulating a complete picture of health for each individual patient. Each patient is considered a synergistic combination of all these factors. By synergistic, we mean that the total is considered greater than merely the sum of the parts, so that in the interaction of these levels of being, novel realities and complexities are realized. Finally, in holistic medicine, the overriding philosophy is aimed at encouraging the Body’s own innate ability to heal as opposed to merely suppressing symptoms or working against the body’s physiology.

As a member of American College for the Advancement of Medicine, I collaborate with a society of physicians aimed at developing and promoting the ideals in Holistic Medicine.