What is the difference between alternative medicine and holistic health

Many people often tie the two together and say that in fact they are not a dimensional concept at all - alternative therapy is a general term for a type of intervention method that is parallel to mainstream medical care, and its core attribute is "methods used to replace conventional diagnosis and treatment"; while holistic health is a health concept, and the core is to regard people as a unified whole of body, mind, society and spirit, rather than a combination of parts that treat headaches, head and feet, and feet. This is the core difference between the two.

Controversy over alternative therapies has never ceased. Supporters will cite acupuncture, traditional herbal medicine, and mindfulness therapy as examples, saying that they have clear effects on many chronic discomforts and functional problems. Opponents emphasize that most alternative therapies are not supported by large-scale evidence-based medicine, and it is easy to be pitted if they completely replace formal treatments. I met an uncle with type 2 diabetes before. He believed the propaganda of "natural therapy to cure diabetes", stopped his anti-diabetic medicine and drank the so-called "quantum health tea" every day. He went to the emergency room for ketoacidosis in half a month. This is a typical example of overestimating the effects of alternative therapies.

As for overall health, it has actually been included in the official health framework advocated by the WHO for a long time. It has never excluded the role of formal medical treatment, but will instead regard clinical treatment as a part of health management. Let’s talk about that uncle again. After he was discharged from the hospital and took anti-diabetic drugs according to the doctor’s instructions, we helped him adjust his heavy eating habits that he had been eating for decades. We accompanied him to the Tai Chi team in the community to exercise every morning. We also helped him relieve his previous anxiety about raising his grandson. After three months, my glycated hemoglobin has become very stable, and my overall spirit has improved a lot. This is a typical overall health idea - not limited to "taking medicine to lower blood sugar", but putting all dimensions of life on the track of health.

Many promotions of alternative therapies on the market now deliberately play up the popularity of "holistic conditioning", causing many people to confuse the two. The public health field has also been calling on everyone to make a distinction. I met a girl in a health community before. In order to treat acne, she stopped taking the topical medicine prescribed by the doctor and drank the "holistic detox drink" promoted by the merchant every day. The acne became more serious in three months. Later, she adjusted her thinking and followed the doctor's instructions to apply medicine while adjusting her high-sugar diet. She did aerobics three times a week and kept an emotional diary to relieve work stress. In less than two months, she improved a lot.

To put it bluntly, it is actually easy to judge. You just have to look at whether its core logic is "let you stop regular treatment and only use this plan" or "help you adjust your diet, work and rest, and emotional state to a better state on the basis of following the doctor's advice." The former is most likely an IQ tax for abusing alternative therapies, while the latter is the real overall health idea. Oh, by the way, that’s not to say that alternative therapies are all pitfalls. Acupuncture and mindfulness-based stress reduction offered by regular hospitals, as long as they are used as supplements to conventional treatments rather than substitutes, can become part of overall health management without being beaten to death~