Differences and connections between alternative therapies and holistic health

Proven alternative therapies are often used as tools to implement the concept of overall health. Both of them go beyond the limitations of traditional Western medicine's "symptomatic treatment" and have many overlapping applicable scenarios. However, there is still considerable controversy in the academic community over the clinical value and boundary delineation of the two.

To be honest, in the six years I have been working in the health management industry, I have seen too many people confuse these two concepts and have stepped into many unnecessary pitfalls. A while ago, a girl who works in Internet operations came to me and said that she had been suffering from migraines for three or four years. Western medicine had found no organic problems. She took painkillers and her stomach became acidic. A friend recommended her a "holistic health practitioner" and spent 8,000 yuan on ten moxibustion treatments. However, she still had to rely on ibuprofen for pain. She felt like she had paid an IQ tax. I was very happy after hearing this. She regarded a single alternative therapy as overall health itself.

Let’s first clarify the most confusing boundaries. The academic community generally refers to intervention methods that are not included in the conventional Western medicine clinical system as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), ranging from the familiar acupuncture, moxibustion, and aromatherapy to the highly controversial homeopathy and reiki healing. They are all included in this category. Interestingly, this boundary has been changing. A few decades ago, mindfulness was still within the category of alternative therapies. Now it has been included in the auxiliary intervention program for anxiety disorders by many psychiatrists, and it is considered a semi-conventional treatment method. Overall health is not a specific method at all. It is a set of cognitive logic: instead of breaking people down into individual organs, they look at physical state, psychological emotions, social relationships, living environment and even spiritual demands together. For example, if you have been suffering from insomnia for a long time, I will prescribe sleeping pills to you without thinking about overall health. I will first ask you if you have been working overtime until early in the morning recently? Have you had any conflicts with your partner? Are the bedroom curtains leaking light? Do you have the habit of watching short videos for half an hour before going to bed? The solution given in the end must be multi-dimensional and cannot be solved by just one method. An inappropriate analogy: if health management is compared to decorating a house, overall health is a complete design plan based on the lighting, living needs, and living habits, and alternative therapies are the optional building materials in the plan - you can choose environmentally friendly solid wood floors (acupuncture, mindfulness, etc. supported by evidence), or you can choose good-looking but not durable Internet celebrity decorations (metaphysical therapies without evidence), but no matter how good a single building material is, it is definitely not equivalent to a complete set of scientific decoration plans.

But having said that, it is not unreasonable why these two concepts are often tied together. After all, no matter how advanced the concept of overall health is, it must have specific implementation tools, and many alternative therapies tend to be systemic adjustments, which just meet the needs of overall health. For example, last year I helped a user with chronic urticaria adjust her body. She took antihistamines for two years, but she relapsed as soon as she stopped. She was so itchy that she couldn't sleep all night long. First, I didn’t let her stop taking the medication. I accompanied her to see a dermatologist to adjust the dosage, and then combined it with an evidence-based low-FODMAP dietary intervention (which is a nutritional adjustment in alternative therapy), 10 minutes of mindful breathing exercises every day, and asked her to change her commute from a crowded subway to riding a shared bicycle for 20 minutes a day to bask in the sun. In three months, her dosage was reduced by two-thirds, and the frequency of attacks dropped from three or four times a week to once a month at most. You see, the dietary adjustments and mindfulness here are alternative therapies, but the underlying logic of the entire plan is overall health-not just focusing on the symptoms of hives, but adjusting her diet, stress levels, and exercise habits.

Of course, the water in this field is indeed deep, and the views of different schools are not even the slightest bit different. Conservative evidence-based medicine practitioners have always felt that many alternative therapies are just trying to catch up with the popularity of overall health, especially those categories that cannot produce large-scale clinical data, such as so-called energy healing and singing bowl frequency modulation, which often charge thousands of dollars and claim to open up the whole body's aura. In essence, they are a placebo effect or even pure fraud. However, colleagues who practice integrative medicine feel that the effects of many alternative therapies are long-term and systemic and cannot be measured by short-term randomized controlled trials. For example, moxibustion may take half a year to adjust the constitution of a weak and cold constitution, and it may take half a year to see significant changes. It is difficult to verify using standardized experimental models. Not to mention that many businesses deliberately confuse the concept, packaging a single essential oil massage and acupuncture as "overall health conditioning" and raising the price. It's no wonder that ordinary consumers can't tell the difference.

In fact, in the final analysis, understanding the differences and connections between the two ultimately serves our own health. There is no need to think that alternative therapies are pseudoscience when you hear them, and don’t be fooled into spending money randomly by the concept of “holistic health” packaged by merchants. If you really want to try it, first see if there is clear evidence-based evidence, and then combine it with your own physical feelings. After all, there is never a standard answer to health, right?