Tia Gordon
Professor Marcotte
The Great Conversation
14 November 2017
Holistic Healing
You have a constant headache. You decide to go to the doctor looking to receive some treatment. It’s no surprise that the prescription is a bottle of pills. You pop a few every day for about a week and then the headache is gone. But now you feel light headed, dizzy and maybe even a little sad for no apparent reason. But hey, at least your headache is gone. Now you’ve got more problems than you started with. This is the case with many adults today. They go to the doctors seeking a quick fix but end up with more than they bargained for. People of all ages become victims of this. However, there is an alternative, which consists of a whole branch of doctors
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Aside from looking at diet and exercise, it has a variety of what is called “secondary care treatment options.” Robert Ivker gives a list of remedies which include, Botanical (herbal) medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, manual medicine, biomolecular therapies, physical therapy, drugs, and surgery (Ivker, "Comparing Holistic and Conventional Medicine"). In the event that all else fails, these are the remedies that holistic healing entails. Ivker also states its biggest strengths saying, “[It] Teaches patients to take responsibility for their own health, and in so doing is: cost-effective in treating both acute and chronic illness; therapeutic in preventing and treating chronic disease; essential in creating optimal health.” The main focus is both creating and maintaining optimum health for an …show more content…
There are a few drawbacks of healing health holistically. Robert Ivker addresses spoke of a few in his article. He says that there is a shortage of physicians and training programs as well as addressing that holistic healing is a time commitment as it does not offer a quick fix. (Ivker, "Comparing Holistic and Conventional Medicine"). Physicians tend to go the alternative root, allopathic medicine thus resulting in a shortage of physicians willing to do the training of holistic healing. The other problem is that it is a commitment since it does not involve quick fixes. In the elderly population this can be seen as a negative as no one knows how much longer he or she has on the earth and maybe the individual just wants the quick
"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system is not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in order to cure their ailments. For instance, they may present symptoms that are perfectly harmless, and lead potential citizens to believe that, because of these symptoms, they are "sick" and in need of medication.
Doctors work under intense pressure, and if a pill could fix a patient’s problems than many saw nothing wrong with that. What exacerbated the problem was that many hospitals also changed their modus operandi with regards to treatment. In some hospitals, “doctors were told they could be sued if they did not treat pain aggressively, which meant with opiates (95). However once the patient became addicted and could no longer get their prescription legally refilled, the drug dealers saw their chance. What is surprising is the fact that pharmaceutical companies acted in the same manner as drug dealers. Both sides did not care about the end user, and the problems they would have to deal with after using what was given to them. Their motive was purely to profit as much as possible, and they did not care about who would get hurt as a result of their
More than often, American’s argue that if we have the technology to gain access to these “miracle meds”, then we should take advantage of it. To receive an opposing view, the National Institute of Drug Abuse asked teens around America why they think prescription drugs are overused, and the results were shocking; 62%: “Easy to get from parent's medicine cabinets”, 51%: “They are not illegal drugs”, 49%: “Can claim to have prescription if caught”, 43%: “They are cheap”, 35%: “Safer to use than illegal drugs”, 33%: “Less shame attached to using”, 32%: “Fewer side effects than street drugs”, 25%: “Can be used as study aids”, and 21%: “Parents don't care as much if caught”. I believe the major problem here isn’t the medication, but instead the fact that our nation is extremely uninformed on the “do’s and dont’s” of prescription medication. When “the United States is 5 percent of the world’s population and consumes 75 percent of the the world's prescription drugs” (CDC), there is a problem present, no matter the reason. Clearly, many critics believe the breathtaking amount of pills we consume in America is simply for the better good, but tend to forget the effects that are soon to follow.
In America, it has become a battle to earn a high paying job to cope with the expenses of a typical American. It has become even more of a battle for some people to afford medical prescriptions to keep healthy. Health becomes a crucial issue when discussed among people. No matter what, at one point or another, everyone is going to stand as a victim of the pharmaceutical industry. The bottom line is Americans are paying excessive amounts of money for medical prescriptions. Health-Care spending in the U.S. rose a stunning 9.3% in 2002, which is the greatest increase for the past eleven years. (Steele 46) Many pharmaceutical companies are robbing their clients by charging extreme rates for their products.
In today’s society there are issues brought up daily on the news about political regimes and debates, however a much more debilitating issue is . Children, as young as two years old are being put on drugs that are stated “more addictive than cocaine”. Instead of gummy vitamins 7 million kids are given a prescription drugs before they go to school. Seven million kids are being handed a drug that’s “more addictive than cocaine” everyday! As the child grows with the medication, they are faced with an even bigger problem than originally. Any anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, anti-anxiety and/or stimulant given to an adolescent under the age eighteen, puts the child at great health risk. Yet, the government, doctors and schools continue
Today, a full 61 percent of adults use at least one drug to treat a chronic health problem, a nearly 15 percent rise since 2001. In today’s society doctors around America are abusing the privilege to prescribe medicine. This then causes the issue of overmedication. Americans who are being prescribed drugs that are not needed for them have more risk of side effects. The long-term effects are dangerous and have caused numerous children hospitalized. Americans who are buying treatments for ADHD, depression, and many more disorders have spent over 4 billion dollars in the past year. Prices are increasing because the desires for these drugs are becoming more prevalent. Overmedication is a global issue that is affecting children that come from many different backgrounds and live in many different areas in America.
For many centuries, humanity has been on an eternal quest for cures and treatments for many chronic conditions. At the present time, conventional medicine is mostly performed by doctors and other health care professionals, with the extensive use of pharmaceutical drugs, surgery or radiation treatments for disease treatment. Conversely, even though not as popular, complementary and alternative medicine and treatment options are slowly gaining popularity and becoming an addition to traditional medicine.
The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such. Not to mention the fact that the doctors who prescribe these opioids often tend to misuse them as well. Abusing these prescribed drugs can “destroy dreams and abort great destinies," and end the possibility of the abuser to have a positive impact in the community.
These alternative treatments include acupuncture, meditation, and therapy among many others.There is growing evidence that the desire for alternative medicine is expanding because people undergoing procedures in today’s health care system has had unmet needs as well as feelings of being uncared for (Acari & Flanagan, 2015). Alternative medicine is able to provide patients with treatments that provide relief for hard to cure problems such as back pain, neck pain, and arthritis. Many of these alternative treatments have been shown to be successful for various problems. The use of complimentary and alternative medicine as well as the open ended communication that holistic nursing provides is gaining popularity from patients who are fed up with traditional care and hospital
Complementary and alternative therapies are relatively new and essential options in health care, they help to increase the quality of life of patients and provide them with numerous possibilities to ensure growth of their health, beyond current medicine. Recently, these therapies, such as massage therapy and acupuncture, have become more prevalent in research. Consequently, their substitution with standard medicine in the healthcare system has been supported by the literature. The literature that supports these methods has explored why complementary therapies are needed, the different and distinct features of each therapy, and they also examine the education and knowledge those implementing the services must have. To accurately analyze if complementary and alternative therapies are valuable to the health care system, this paper will aim to learn why they are becoming predominant and why nurses should use these therapies’ to assist in improving the health of individuals. To determine the main attributes of these therapies, a variety of resources that extensively discuss complementary and alternative therapies will be examined and the paper will also examine the benefits and weaknesses they have on improving health. Lastly, this paper will aim to determine if these services should be implemented by nurses as alternative options for their patients, as nurses should have substantial knowledge pertaining to implementing these therapies.
As true as this may be, sometimes people need to be protected from themselves and their irrational, uneducated decisions. People frequently become victims of their own bad decisions, and at the end of it all, the cost of these decisions tends to be more than what they bargained for. Every 17 seconds in the United States, a teenager experiments with an illicit drug for the first time (cite). With this being said, prescription drugs are not just a threat in themselves, they also tend to pave the pathway for the use of illicit street drugs (cite).
In today’s world, many people assume that the latest medical technology and treatments are always the best option. However, all over the world, different techniques for curing diseases and aliments are being used. These methods fall under the category of complementary and alternative medicine.
Herbal products are medicinal agents obtained from the plants. It’s all started 100 years ago by ancient people. Since synthetic medicine are not yet invented by that time, ancient people had invented medicine out of the plants. Through generations the original herbal medicine had been modified due to the new knowledge discovered and technologies invented.
Do you want to know more about how to achieve holistic health and development? This article will surely help you since it is mainly designed to give some tips and ways to readers on how they can have a healthy lifestyle and achieve holistic development.
Health is considered a complete wellness of a body including physical, mental and social well-being and Holistic Health is considered a wellness of a whole body including mind, body and spirit. According to American Holistic Medicine Association “Holistic medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses the whole person – body, mind and spirit” (Wollumbin, page 3). Holistic Health is an alternate way to treat, prevent, and wellness of an illness and achieves the best possible level of health. It focuses on the whole body rather than just symptoms or diseases. It is an approach to heal the physical, psychological, environmental, spiritual, nutritional health of one’s being. For each individual, the definition of holistic health is different and in simple words it is an alternate way of treatment where physical, mental, emotional and spiritual works equally together to attain a health. In western medicine, standard treatment is given with drugs or surgery according to symptoms or diseases or injuries where a doctor or a physician determines the ways of treatment and the patient has to follow the recommendations. Whereas, holistic health is a complete opposite way to treat the illness where patients cooperate in their illnesses, take the responsibility of their treatments, make their own decision for own level of well-being and thoroughly participate in their health care plan.