(HealthNewsDigest.com) – A strong argument can be made that health is the most important thing in anyone’s life. To be sure, a well-lived life is full of a wide spectrum of different experiences. But health is the fuel that drives that exploration. And health is also the lens by which we look on at the various wonders the world has to offer. But until fairly recently, our culture has had a rather strange relation to health.

Usually, people want to take as much control as possible of the more important parts of their life. People have happily handed responsibility for their health over to various medical establishments. But all that has changed in the past few decades. Healthcare is becoming more of a collaborative process. In short, people taking control of their own health view it as a more holistic process.

The basics of holistic medicine

Holistic medicine tends to focus on the totality of a person’s health. People usually go to the doctor due to one specific thing that’s wrong. Holistic medicine, instead, places a stronger focus on what’s right. It seeks to cultivate health and help restore the body’s natural recuperative powers. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that the medical establishment isn’t a part of that process though. Holistic medicine is all about finding balance. Balance in your own health. And balance in finding treatment within one’s own body and within institutionalized medicine. And there’s often shared ground between the two. For example, www.harrishouesstl.org uses many holistic practices within a group setting.

One can generally think of holistic medicine as something which treats the body as a whole rather than focusing on an individual element. However, it’s important to remember that this applies to the mind and spirit as well. Holistic medicine often places an emphasis on one’s feelings and relationship with his or her body. The health of one’s body influences the health of one’s mind. And likewise, the health of one’s mind influences the health of the body.

Even elements such as food choice are a part of holistic medicine. The food we choose to eat is the very matter our body is constructed from. As such, it makes sense to concentrate on the right food choices.

A broad subject with many different facets

Part of the difficulty in talking about holistic medicine is that it’s a bit like talking about western medicine. When doing so it would lump cardiology, neurology, pharmacology and a host of other topics under a single label. Likewise, homeopathy tends to act as a wide banner that covers everything from herbal medicine to yoga. One can’t even really call it traditional medicine. Because holistic medicine takes in modern findings and ensures that treatments grow accordingly.

But if one keeps that in mind, there are still some constants. One of the more important elements is that you’re not fighting with your body. Holistic medicine operates under an assumption that the body knows how to heal from illness and injury. Western medicine often tries to supplant or replace those natural healing abilities. Holistic medicine instead asks why those processes aren’t capable of a given task. And then it examines how it can boost the body’s natural functions so that it can heal from any given issue.

Boosting general health

But another important point of holistic medicine comes from how it looks at normal day to day life. Holistic medicine also looks into how people became ill in the first place. Preventative medicine is usually an important part of holistic treatment. One isn’t simply trying to remove a problem. The focus is instead on trying to determine how and why something is an issue for one’s health in the first place.

Often times medical issues are the culmination of a long series of events. And an issue that’s suddenly showing up might just be the tip of the iceberg. Holistic medicine works to alleviate the particular problem showing up at that moment. But it also tries to increase overall health and well being, up to a point where the circumstances which gave rise to the issue aren’t an issue anymore. For example, it might work on the symptoms of a cold. But on top of that, it would also look into why someone’s immune system was overly susceptible to infection in the first place.

Additionally, there’s also an element of geographic and social holistic medicine. This focuses more on the social elements which contribute to both health and healthcare.