What is the difference between alternative medicine and holistic health

The core difference is that the two are not in the same dimension at all - alternative therapy is a collective term for a type of intervention that is opposed to conventional clinical medical care, while holistic health is a health concept that treats people as a multi-dimensional unity of physiology, psychology, society, etc. Many people confuse the two. The essence is to equate "tools" with "ideas that guide the use of tools."

In the seven or eight years I have been doing health management, I have met too many people who confuse the two. Not long ago, a girl suffering from chronic fibromyalgia came to my door and said that she wanted to practice "holistic health". She had stopped taking the anti-inflammatory drugs prescribed by the doctor and relied entirely on moxibustion and aromatherapy. As a result, she was in so much pain that she couldn't even go to work.

In fact, the category of alternative therapies that everyone often talks about is very complex, ranging from massage and cupping to some folk remedies that claim to be able to cure cancer. The academic circles have never stopped arguing about it: some evidence-based methods, such as acupuncture to relieve postoperative pain and mindfulness to assist in improving sleep, can indeed be used as Supplementing conventional treatment can help patients relieve discomfort, but there are also many methods that lack evidence and are even harmful. For example, the "acid-base constitution therapy" and "fasting to cure cancer" that were previously rumored to be amazing are essentially pseudoscience disguised as "natural". If these are used to completely replace formal treatment, it is easy to delay the condition.

The overall health we often refer to has never required everyone to refuse conventional medical treatment. It is more like a perspective on looking at problems, and it is never a rigid rule that "only certain methods can be used." Take the girl just now, for example. Later, we adjusted the plan together: taking anti-inflammatory drugs on time to control the inflammation according to the doctor's instructions, seeking acupuncture from a regular traditional Chinese medicine hospital to relieve muscle tension, and at the same time using cognitive behavioral adjustment to reduce the chronic stress caused by internal friction in the workplace. She also gradually cut off her diet. After drinking high-sugar milk tea every day and other foods that can easily induce inflammation, her pain score dropped by more than half after three months. Later, she even joked that it turns out that it’s not just not taking Western medicine that makes her healthy, but taking all factors related to her physical condition into consideration, which really takes care of the whole thing.

To be honest, if you compare maintaining health to taking care of your own small yard, alternative therapy is a certain kind of flower fertilizer or insecticide that you choose. It may be a niche product from an Internet celebrity or it may be an IQ tax. Before using it, you must check whether it is qualified and whether it will harm the seedlings; and overall health is when you take care of your yard. The way of thinking is that you can’t just focus on whether there are insects in the flowers, but also whether there is enough light, whether the soil is fertile, and whether the ventilation is good. Even if you are using the most conventional formal flower fertilizer (that is, conventional medical treatment), as long as you take care of all the factors that affect plant growth, it is also a standard overall health practice.

Nowadays, many businesses deliberately bind the two. They sell moxibustion devices and enzymes and call them "holistic health solutions." The essence is to use the concept to harvest health anxiety. For ordinary people, it is actually easy to distinguish: anyone who advocates that you don't need to listen to a doctor and only use a certain "natural therapy" can cure everything. No matter how "holistic" it is, it is essentially an unreliable alternative therapy promotion; as long as it takes into account your physical condition, emotional stress, and living habits, and does not reject the health ideas of formal medical treatment, even if all conventional treatments are used, it is really practicing overall health.