Holistic health
Holistic health care or alternative health care systems come in many form and shape: Pray, acupuncture, Meditation, Ayurveda, believe in some outside and inside power, Herbs, yoga, and exercise.
According to data from the center of disease at the world health organization, the third preventable cause of deaths is a drug side effect and medical errors.
Students enter medical school with good intentions to help and treat sick people. They take their oath not to harm very seriously. But as they graduate and enter the world of medicine unknowingly, they are sucked into the business of medicine.
Medicine, like any other business, is there to make money. To make money they need to have a flow of customers, a constant stream of patients.
Because healthy people are not drug companies’ customers, and they have no intention to keep the patients in optimal health.
Doctors also become victims of large health care corporations, profitable hospitals, and big pharmaceutical companies. In the United States, the Pharmaceutical companies have eminence powers over Congress and government’s officials.
Drug companies are required to test their drug against the placebo before they get approval. Pharmaceutical companies fought many times to get rid of this placebo testing, as that is the secret of their business.
Based on A Research in Health and science magazine, most of the drug approved had 10-25 % more efficacy than the placebo. In many cases, the differences have been negligent, but the drug got approval.
There is much research that proved the doctors’ personality and character affect the outcome of a treatment.
A study at Harvard Medical school published in the New England journal of medicine showed the effect of doctors caring attitude on the outcome of the treatment.
Some researchers go as far as to suggest that the doctors play the role of placebo. And their caring attitude and bedside manner toward the patients has a significant effect on the treatment and recovery of the patients.
In Holistic health care, the practitioners are aware of the power of the mind to heal the body. But In allopathic medicine, the practitioner relies on what they learned in medical school that drugs are the cure for every disease.
Their training did not expose them to the body’s self-healing power. The allopathic doctors learn that the body’s immune system fight and cure us of most of the bacteria that enter our body. But they neglect to see that our immune system is in direct control of our mind.
Psychoneuroimmunology is a new branch of health science that studies brain functions in connection with neurological, endocrine, and immune processes. It is a fascinating intersection between mind and body.
Ten years ago, David Felten uncovered a network of nerves that led to cells of the immune system. It was the first time that a direct connection between our nervous system and our immune system was established.
Outside and inside stressors can directly affect our brain physiology and, as a result, change our whole health.
Psychoneuroimmunology proved that our thought and emotion make physiological changes in the brain. These changes will affect the body through the secretion of neuropeptide and neurotransmitters.
Stress and negative thought are energy that affects our brains and are the root cause of most of the illness.
Allopathic medicine just treats diseases, not the root cause of the disease. Let me clarify this with an example.
Stress creates worries that led to negative thoughts and emotions. This negative thought affects our body through our autonomic nervous system.
Our negative thought releases the neurotransmitter in the brain, which travels through our automatic nervous system and signals the adrenal gland to produce more cortisol, as the body needs this cortisol at the time of danger to function, like when you try to outrun a lion. It is a defense mechanism that protects us from the threat.
But constant negative thought and fear increase the level of cortisol in the body. This continuous high level of cortisol increases the cell resistance to insulin, as a result, the sugar level increase in the blood.
Medication to bring down the level of sugar in our body is not the right solution as there is nothing wrong with Pancreas or insulin secretion. It is the stress that caused the high level of sugar to circulate in our blood. The sugar cannot get into the cell due to the cell membrane resistance created by cortisol.
The drug will damage the other organs. The doctors prescribe more medication to treat damaged liver and kidney. This vicious cycle of drug and side effect is the reason that drug and medical errors are the third common cause of preventable death in the world.
While negative thought, anxiety, and pessimism affect the brain to signal the glands to secret stress hormone that make us sick,
With the same mechanism, Optimism, happy thought, and emotions will affect the brain physiology that signals our endocrine glands to secret hormones and enzymes like Oxytocin and dopamine to heal the body.
The mind has this incredible power to heal the body. Doctors should function as placebo and facilitators, especially in chronic disease.
Doctors can perform miracles when there is a real need for a drug, surgery, or other procedures to heal a patient.
But, many other times, they should use the power of their white gown, kindness, caring bedside manner, and compassionate communication to affect the mind of patients and play a significant role in the self-healing processes of the body.