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Modern medicine and holistic medicine
Essays about holistic medicine
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Allopathic medicine, otherwise known as western medicine, is defined as, “A system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals (such as nurses, pharmacists, and therapists) treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery” (National Cancer Society). On the other hand, a different approach to the treatment of ailments and diseases is Holistic medicine. According to The American Holistic Health Association (AHHA), “Holistic Medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses the whole person - body, mind, and spirit” (AHHA). All these definitions are great and treating things like diseases and broken bones is a good thing but what is really being said or done when a patient chooses one over the other? Also, …show more content…
Another factor that must be taken into consideration is that holistic medicine arose long before western medicine and has been used for centuries. Allopathic medicine is new in the perspective of mankind while holistic medicine has almost all of mankind’s history worth of experience. The latter type of medicine doesn’t focus on just treating the ailment at hand, but it also tries to improve the overall well-being of the body, spirit, mind, and even their social health. Advantages of choosing this way of treatment is whole- person treatment, exclusive attention, rare side-effects, and stress on prevention. In contrast, traditional medicine deals only with what is wrong at the moment, and if applicable, the disease or illness that is causing these symptoms, not all the aspects of life and the medicine prescribed almost always has annoying side effects. Doctors who practice western medicine examine hundreds of patients a week, therefore there is no special attention given. Not only that, but it does not try to prevent illnesses or diseases, whether mental or physical, except in obvious cases such as an allergy or asthma attack for example. It is not all imperfect, though. Advantages of western medicine include, but are not limited to, evidence based treatments, constant room for scientific …show more content…
According to The World Bank’s Development Education Program, countries with better hospitals, ultimately, showed a greater life expectancy for its citizens and an improved survival rate for diseases and premature births. There are three main kinds of hospitals in the U.S., namely general hospitals, specialty hospitals, and government hospitals; however, for the sakre of relevance we will only look at the first two. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines general hospital as, “a hospital in which patients with many different types of ailments are given care” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In other words, a general hospital can provide all the services that relate to the body, whether mental or physical. On the other hand, a specialty hospital is defined by The American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons as, “Specialty hospitals offer focused services to treat medical conditions that require a particular subset of skills and technology” (AAOS). These two kinds of hospitals are similar in that they both treat a wide variety of things but in different extents. A general hospital treats a wide variety of basically everything, from the common cold to a hernia. On the contrary, specialty hospitals treat a wide variety of a specific disease, age group, or other ways of patients with a similarity of some sort. An example of a specialty hospital is St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital which specializes in children and
Ross defines and differentiates between the terms healing and curing. She recognizes the fact that healing and curing are very intertwined and it can be hard to distinguish between the two terms. There are differences between the definitions in scholarly and general settings. She references an ethnographic study of healing versus curing conducted by anthropologists Andrew Strathern and Pamela Stewart in 1999 with native groups in New Guinea. The results of the study looked at how energy used by the different types of tribal healers to either cure or heal a patient. Eastern medicine focuses on how energy interacts with the healing process in connection within the mind. Whereas Western medicine is focused on the mind and the body separately. The practice is considered a holistic approach to finding cures. According to Ross (2013), healing is more a therapeutic process targeting the whole body and specific illness including emotional, mental, and social aspects in the treatment. The act of curing is a pragmatic approach that focuses on removing the problem all together. The life experiences of a person playing into how well certain treatments will heal or cure what is ailing them. These aspects can not be defined with textbook definitions. The interaction that the healing process has with energy is a variable in the success rate. Uncontrolled emotions can have a greater impact on the inside the body than a person can realize. The exploration of energy interaction within the body can be used for greater analysis of health care systems. (21-22). Are Western healthcare facilities purposely “curing” patients just so that they return are few years later? Is Western Medicine built upon a negative feedback loop? The terminolo...
The challenges that all acute care hospitals and facilities faces are the demand for highly specialized services has increased. The US population is constantly aging and the elderly tend to need more acute care services. Because many people lack health insurance, they tend to use emergency rooms in the hospitals as their source of care. The increase demand in acute care prompted hospitals to expand their facility
Different hospitals in different locations specialize in different areas of care. Most hospitals provide general orthopedic care. Some hospitals specialize in burns, cleft lip and palate care, and spinal cord injuries. Today there are eighteen hospitals that provide general orthopedic care, eight hospitals that specialize in cleft lip and palate care, five hospitals that specialize in burn care, and three hospitals that specialize in spinal cord i...
Each year, people spend billions of dollars on pharmaceutical drugs, but what if there was an option that was cheaper and natural? Herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years and shows no sign of stopping. Many are familiar with Aloe Vera, a plant commonly used to treat burns, but it can also be used to speed the healing process of cuts. Herbal remedies have been around for a long time and have saved lives, like little Teddy’s life in No Witchcraft for Sale.
Abortion is a procedure which allows the legal ending of a child’s life prior to birth. The debate and political fighting it sure to continue for years to come and complete abolition of abortion is far from a reality. However, strides are being made to swing he pendulum in the opposite direction that the Supreme Court sent it with the Roe v. Wade ruling.
The famous spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi said, "Homeopathy cures a greater percentage of cases than any other method of treatment. Homeopathy is the latest, most refined method of treating patients economically and non-violently” (Malik). However, Homeopathy is only one of the many natural forms of treatment that patients are utilizing in an effort to avoid conventional medicine. A clinic practice model that combines conventional medicine with Naturopathic, Complementary and other forms of alternative medicine all in one setting, is the new health paradigm called Integrative Medicine. With the public’s growing concern of being over-medicated by costly and sometimes violent conventional medicine, I am going to explain the movement towards
procedure to end pregnancy and take away the life of an unborn baby. An abortion can be done two different ways using medicine or surgically removed by removing the embryo of the fetus and placenta from the uterus(“Abortion”).Both
Abortion is a common practice that may be performed for several reasons, all sharing the same end result, the termination of an unwanted pregnancy. In cases such as rape, incest or a simple lack of responsibility when having sex, having an abortion is a choice that some women may encounter. There are different types of abortion in today’s society. Some which are too scary to even dream of. There are two types of abortions: Spontaneous abortions; miscarriages and Induced, this is the deliberate termination of the fetus.
Abortion is the act of removing an embryo or fetus from the uterus when it is not yet able to exist by itself. Abortion that occurs spontaneously is known as a miscarriage and that which is caused purposely is called an induced abortion. The word though is used often to refer to the induced abortion. For abortions in the modern world, either medication or surgery is used. About 44 million abortions happen in the world each year with almost half of them done unsafely. In the ancient times, abortion was done using herbal medicine, using force, using sharp tools and through other traditional ways. The issue has brought about very many ethical concerns due to the fact that many have different views concerning it. This ranges from the abortion
There are varying descriptions from Holistic Medicine, Alternative Medicine, Natural Medicine to Complementary Medicine. They all embrace the concept of interconnectedness and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. All aspects from the animal to human bond, environment, and lifestyle are considered when treating the
Modern medicine mixes chemicals and does extensive testing, while herbal remedies come from naturally grown herbs. For every argument there is two sides, herbal remedies lack dosage instructions, regulations, and may interact with current medication, as well as modern medicines also have improved treatments. With improvements made on information and studies of herbal remedies, they would prevail over modern
Over the centuries, ancients made use of several treatment methods. Two of them are modern medicine and traditional medicine. Alternative medicine is older than modern one. That effective therapy has used for many centuries on the patience when modern medicine has not occurred in the world. Because it has improved in China, it can be called Traditional Chinese Medicine. In contrast, modern medicine has been in used since 1900’s. In this system, drugs’ testes are done in safety laboratories with care and nicety, and their side effects are located before they are given to the patient. However, sometimes the side effects are not blocked so, people have to take another pill to get better. It makes people to take more chemicals into their bodies. Further, modern medicine has splendid efficacy on the fatal diseases. Even, alternative medicine which people’s ancestors utilized stayed in the background when modern medicine has just found, it works at the present time efficaciously. ****** Therefore, using alternative medicine is more helpful to get better than modern medicine because there are fewer drugs, side effects; there is placebo effect and holistic therapy.
People often choose Herbal Medicine over the prescribed and conventional medicine when they have a lifelong health complication. More so, Herbal Medicine is not just to cure such health problems, it also improves the overall well-being, many health enthusiast use herbal medicine to preclude illness or to assure a healthier lifestyle.
After the industrial revolution in the 18th century in Europe and America, there was the rapid industrial and economic growth in the 19th century, which in turn caused various scientific discoveries and various invention therefore making more progress in identifying illnesses and developing modes of treatment and cure, this was where modern medicine started. After the industrial revolution there were more industries, which in turn created a lot of work-related diseases and poor hygiene, also as the cities began to grow larger, more communicable diseases began to increase, cases like typhoid and cholera became epidemics. As well, due to the changes occurring, more and more people became more aware and since there was democracy there became an increase in demand for health care. There were also the wars that occurred, causing injuries which needed to be treated. Modern medicine evolves to solve the problems of the society at a given time and various advances in this mode of health care has occurred over the years. It has been seen that modern medicine is a positive influence in the society today for various reasons, the goal of the modern medicine is to achieve good health of the citizens, and modern medicine is experimental which is capable of advanced diagnosis. Likewise, modern medicine has an effect on the social and economic state of the modern society. Modern medicine is understood as the science of treating, diagnosing or even preventing illnesses using improved sophisticated technology. This mode of treatment involves a variety of methods, using diet, exercise, treatment by drugs or even surgery.
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.