What is the difference between alternative medicine and holistic health

The most essential difference is that the attributes are completely different - overall health is a set of health management concepts that cover all aspects of physiology, psychology, and lifestyle, while alternative therapy is a type of specific intervention method that does not belong to the conventional diagnosis and treatment system of traditional Western medicine. The former can completely incorporate the latter into its own program system, but the latter alone cannot be equated with the former. To use an inappropriate analogy, alternative therapy is like a hammer in your toolbox, which can drive nails and crack walnuts, while overall health is a complete set of whole-house decoration plans. In addition to the hammer, you also need a screwdriver, a level, and ideas for space planning and soft decoration matching. You can't just hold a hammer and say that you can handle the whole house decoration, right?

Many people who come into contact with them tend to confuse the two. After all, many health-preserving businesses now like to sell alternative therapy services under the banner of "holistic health." It seems that if you do an essential oil massage and drink a customized medicated diet for two months, you are practicing overall health. In fact, this is not the case at all. Take the common chronic migraine as an example. If you use alternative therapies to intervene, it will most likely give you a head massage, acupuncture, and some pain-relieving herbs. It is indeed possible to relieve the current pain. ； But when it comes to overall health management, we have to dig deeper into the underlying causes: Are you staying up late for a long time and not getting enough sleep? Are you under a lot of pressure at work recently and feeling emotionally tense for a long time? Do you inevitably get a headache every time you drink iced coffee? The final plan may include acupuncture to relieve pain, but more of it requires you to adjust your sleep rhythm, take time to do aerobics every week to relieve stress, and quit iced coffee. Acupuncture is just a small module in the entire plan.

Of course, now, whether it is the general public or the medical community, there is a big difference in acceptance between the two. The effectiveness of alternative therapies has always been a focus of controversy. In the relevant clinical literature that I have followed up on before, there is indeed data proving that acupuncture is better than placebo in relieving postoperative nausea and chronic back pain. However, there are also a large number of studies that believe that the effects of many alternative therapies are no different from psychological suggestions. Not to mention that if you encounter emergencies such as acute appendicitis or acute myocardial infarction and insist on not using conventional treatments and relying on alternative therapies, something serious will definitely happen. But the concept of overall health has actually been recognized by the mainstream medical community for a long time. After all, the era of "treating headaches, treating head and feet pains, treating feet" was long gone. Last year, my colleagues in the Department of Gastroenterology complained to me that many patients with chronic gastritis had trouble taking medicine on time. When I asked, they were always doing 996 every day, eating to make ends meet, and lying down when they got home. Taking medicine alone is of no use. You must adjust your work, rest, diet, and mood. This is actually the idea of ​​​​whole health.

Two years ago, I met a client who confused the two and suffered a big loss. He was diagnosed with a thyroid nodule of 4a. He heard someone say that "the overall health can eliminate the nodules without surgery." He spent hundreds of thousands on some herbal and energy healing programs. However, half a year later, the nodule was directly upgraded to 4b after a reexamination. Fortunately, the puncture revealed that it was benign and did not cause a major disaster. When I talked to her at that time, I made it very clear that those herbal medicines and so-called energy healing belong to the category of alternative therapies. If you really want to manage your overall health, we will first recommend that you follow the doctor's advice for regular check-ups and get a puncture when it's time. Secondly, adjust your health care routine. If you have a sullen personality and get rid of the habit of eating high-iodine seafood every day, if you are willing, you can also find a regular top-level Chinese medicine doctor to prescribe some conditioning medicine. These alternative therapies are only auxiliary, and they cannot replace conventional diagnosis and treatment, let alone be equated with overall health.