What's the Difference Between Alternative Medicine and Holistic Health?

To put it bluntly, the core difference is that their attributes are completely different - alternative therapy is a type of intervention tool that is opposite to conventional clinical treatment, while overall health is a set of underlying logic for viewing and managing health.

A while ago, I met a 28-year-old girl who had a grade 2 thyroid nodule in her physical examination. The Western medicine doctor said that no intervention is needed for the time being, and a six-month review would be enough. She always felt that her neck was congested, so she went to a traditional Chinese medicine clinic to do auricular acupuncture to press beans, moxibustion to soothe the liver twice a week, and also drank customized herbal tea. These intervention methods that do not require conventional Western medicine or surgery fall into the category of alternative therapies. Of course, there has always been controversy in this field. Some people have indeed alleviated symptoms by relying on this method, while others have believed in the rumors that "alternative therapies can cure cancer", delaying the best window period for regular treatment. This is something that all health practitioners must repeatedly remind.

Many people tie these two concepts together, and even think that "using alternative therapy is to do overall health." In fact, they are confusing the tools and the idea of ​​using them. When I was doing a health assessment on that girl, I would not just focus on her thyroid nodules. I would also ask her if she had been working overtime until early in the morning recently, if she had a conflict with her family just last week and was suffocating, if she usually drank iced milk tea and was on a diet to lose weight. Fat - The core of overall health has never been "whether or not to use alternative therapies." It means not to break people down into individual organs and symptoms, but to treat the physiological state, emotional state, living habits, and environment as a linked whole. The plan given to her later included the suggestion of weekly moxibustion, but also retained the requirement for her to follow up with thyroid B-ultrasound for half a year, and also added the requirement of 10 minutes of breathing meditation every day to regulate her mood, avoid drinking iced drinks, and try to go to bed before 11 o'clock. After three months of adjustment, the foreign body sensation in her neck was basically gone, and the nodules did not get bigger when she was re-examined. This is actually a typical example of using alternative therapies as one of the intervention tools under the overall health concept.

Over the years I have been doing health management, I have also encountered people who go to extremes. They think that overall health means completely rejecting Western medicine. They only rely on essential oils and diet therapy for headaches and brain fever. In fact, this narrows overall health into a pile of alternative therapies, which completely deviates from its original intention. After all, if there is a problem that requires emergency intervention such as bacterial infection or acute appendicitis, it is still necessary to use antibiotics and perform surgery. The core of health management is never to be on the team of a certain treatment, but to find the best way for the person's overall condition.