Understanding Holistic Medicine
- Admin
- Jul 8, 2023
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 4, 2023
This is intended as a well-rounded explanation of what Holistic medicine is, and where the term Holistic originates on some level. I felt compelled to provide a primer on this often publicly misunderstood terminology, when I heard a friend talking about it being explored by someone close to them. This is exactly how it proliferates, through a real concern for people, a desire to find answers or solutions, and word of mouth.
Unfortunately, anecdotes are a powerful and emotionally driven medium for pseudoscience to spread through. It is almost always well meaning, every-day people who are affected by those who grift off others’ fear, vulnerability, and health concerns.
I’ll offer some definitions of the term, some brief introductions to how it was adopted, and what it means in science and medicine today.
Definitions:
From Google:
From Dictionary.com:
Very Brief Origins of Holistic Medicine
The origins of the word are thought to have come from ‘Holos’, the Greek word for whole. It was an idea which dates back as far as 5000 years ago, and was a great insight into what was understood about health at the time – which takes into account social and mental wellbeing as well as the site of illness.
Holistic Medicine was also part of the Indian Alternative Medicine approach of Ayurveda – dating back over 2500 years. From this, came a wave of Subcontinental Indian Naturopathy which:
“…incorporates a variety of holistic practices and natural remedies and became increasingly popular after the arrival of the post-Second World War wave of Indian immigrants.”
The modern Western holistic movement began in the late 1960s as people thought modern medicine focused too much on drugs and medical technology for diagnosing and treating diseases. The adapted forms of this Eastern culture, New Age Ayurveda and Maharishi Ayurveda, came under the umbrella of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) in the 1970s to Europe.
Already at its roots, we see that it was deeply integrated with Alternative Medicine, Eastern culture and mysticism, and traditionalism. It has come directly from pre-scientific ages and carries a lot of that baggage.
Alternative Medicine
Holistic in Terms of Medicine
As shown in the recognised definitions, ‘holistic’ describes a mode of thinking in which specific parts of a bigger system or group of systems, can only be accounted for or understood, by reference to all said parts/systems at once. In other words, inseparably so. It is implied that knowing the fine details of one component of a system can’t inform us about how to interpret the bigger picture.
This is rarely the case in terms of modern medicine, as each small discovery of one part of the body usually informs the greater picture of understanding – this makes it more like the other way round and is how science often progresses.
It does cut both ways though, and here’s where there’s some irony. In the context of an anomaly in a study, you wouldn’t take that one anomaly as the main focus – you might take a look at the greater context, statistically, to see if that can explain the result. Science already does this as part of its’ scrutiny – so it is meaningless to suggest that this is unique to Holistic Medicine.
The word in the sense that it is applied to medicine by Alternative Medicine practitioners, is a vague/non-specific rule applied to everything at once, based in the above philosophy. It effectively encourages us to ‘ignore the details, let’s just make assumptions based on an overview’. The way this originated (before scientific method) was legitimate for its time. Specific causes of illness, and treatments to target those causes at the root were not yet available or understood, so it was as good a way as any to approach treating illness. It comes from a place of ‘do everything and something might work’.
In the modern scientific age, this doesn’t hold water any more. Holistic Medicine has now been adopted as a term for Alternative Medicine, by such practitioners of pseudoscientific therapies. It still offers an olive branch emotionally, makes money and doesn’t require a thorough understanding of anything. The term is not based on any learned knowledge or scientific breakthroughs over the years – still reliant on outdated philosophies and pre-scientific principles, and as a result is often harmful for a myriad of reasons.
Holistic Medicine Tropes
In recent decades, through huge advancements in the scientific method in testing, controlled studies, biology, understanding of the bodily systems to finer degrees than ever, and many more fields of knowledge, science has determined how to diagnose and treat thousands of illnesses effectively – the operating word being effectively. The Holistic scene tries to spin it differently, in favour of promoting their ideas while trying to diminish science-based medicine.
Taken from merriam-webster.com:
The above is a core theme in Holistic Medicine.
There are several throw-away assumptions about modern science-based medicine here, the core one being that science and ‘western medicine’ don’t consider the person as a whole. This is utterly false.
For example, one of the first things science teaches us is that you can’t make assumptions based on a few single symptoms which can occur commonly for hundreds of different reasons, in different people. Modern medicine does not assume an answer/cause without first gathering data, as much information about the patient as they can, and systematically eliminating the wrong answers, starting with the most likely to be true.
This is highly efficient, and as accurately as you can work. ‘Holistic medicine’ or Alternative Medicine (interchangeably), is like taking the same data gathered from the patient and making (often uninformed) guesses at a condition, rather than considering all the possible answers systematically. They will recommend one or a range of ‘treatments’ and arrive at that conclusion in any order, based on poor reasoning. It is trial and error, with no clear directive.
Here are some refutations to some common tropes Holistic practitioners will promote alongside misconceptions about ‘Western’ or science-based medicine.
“Holistic treats the whole person, rather than single symptoms.”
While real medicine will treat symptoms, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, Alt Med practitioners will play even heavier than real medicine into treating subjective symptoms such as pain, because it’s difficult to measure. But this also implies that science-based medicine won’t bother to find the cause. In reality, science-based practice is by far the best way to find the cause, and therefore treat the ‘whole’ person.
“Holistic treats the root of the cause and is preventative, rather than fobbing you off with pills.”
“Western medicine doesn’t tailor to the individual.”
“It emphasizes the connections between the mind and body.”
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Having put to bed some tropes in which Holistic Medicine has been known to diminish real medicine, let’s now hit the nail on the head and look critically at Holistic Medicine.
What is wrong with Holistic Medicine?
The Holistic Medicine approach is fundamentally flawed. As we can see from the earlier description, they literally oppose careful analysis, accuracy in their methods. This is nothing other than absurd. They disagree with eliminating biases. They disagree with accumulated knowledge. They disagree with a thorough approach to discovering practical truths about treating real people, with real problems.
By extension, this means they are not interested in testing claims, figuring out what will really help people, or putting forth any effort to be taken seriously by real medical professionals.
It may sound reasonable that Holistic Medicine wants to not ‘miss the forest for the trees’, but as explained, that is not what is happening in real medicine. Understanding the most granular of biological processes only builds a better understanding of the forest – it doesn’t blind you to the bigger picture that you’re looking at the forest. This is effectively like saying one can’t hold too much knowledge or it will push important stuff out of our brain. That’s not how accumulative knowledge works in science.
Holistic medicine is also up front about the fact that it incorporates mystical, and traditional Chinese or Indian spiritual healing ideas such as Acupuncture and Yoga (not just the exercise Yoga). This is clearly an appeal to tradition, and confirmation that it is even less about reality-based methods than it cares to appear.
All modern medical advancements combined as a whole system can be considered a holistic approach by the same definitions that Holistic Medicine offers (leaving out when they sidestep into magic). There is essentially one difference between modern science-based medicine and Holistic Medicine – one works and the other doesn’t.
When you take away the stuff that is holistic – and works, and is therefore already a part of science-based medical practices, this is what you are left with. Pseudoscience. This is what distinguishes ‘Holistic Medicine’ from just, well… medicine.
What’s the Harm?
A large-scale example of the harm that Alternative Medicine and Holistic practitioners cause was COVID-19. A great majority of the anti-science, dangerous misinformation spreading, fearmongering and conspiracy peddling is largely supported by these forms of pseudoscience – non-professionals who are fearful themselves, who are part of belief systems, or are just trying to exploit people for money.
The harm? Money and time wasting, but more importantly, spreading lies to millions over the safety and effectiveness of the most studied and tested, most regulated, safest medical intervention science has produced – in the middle of a global pandemic.
This behaviour literally endangers and kills people, even if indirectly. Remember, these people are not medically trained. They increase all the risks they tout as being associated with the vaccines in this case, by persuading people to avoid receiving them in favour of ineffective, unproven, untested and unregulated ‘treatments’ or therapies.
There are many more examples of this regarding cancer treatment and other serious diseases, right down to manageable but maybe incurable minor ailments. The harms are always of a negative or counter-productive nature.
Holistic Victim Blaming
One other relevant issue found within Holistic Medicine needs to be mentioned.
“It’s about maintaining a positive attitude”.
– this is a common and damaging idea. I know a lot of people need to hear this: it is in fact not about your attitude.
Yes, a positive attitude can potentially help a person in coping with illness, but in no way is that going to help with treating anything physically. Furthermore, people need to process stress in whatever way they feel they deal best with it. If that involves moping or embracing despair, let them. We are not all the same – something which real medicine does try to account for, and which Holistic medicine claims to.
The blame is put on the victim when they are constantly told they’re not getting better because they don’t have a positive enough attitude, which is nonsense. That will only add further stress to the equation if a person feels pressured to believing their attitude is to blame for a negative physical outcome. This is a thing you will hear from various pseudoscience practitioners, who believe such similar notions that ‘positive energy’ will help shrink a tumour and that you have the ‘choice’ to heal, or you need to just believe hard enough.
Of course, if the real medicine they’re also taking works, then the side-grifters claim a victory – you must’ve had enough positive vibes. If the medicine doesn’t work, then they blame the victim – you didn’t have enough of a PMA, you should’ve tried whichever brand of nonsense it is that they believe, be it Reiki, naturopathic remedies, Homeopathy, Acupuncture etc. It’s never a critical look at whether or not their belief system works; that is never called into question. That, ironically, is not a truly holistic approach by the definition of the word – failing to consider what doesn’t work, too.
Actually, maybe that’s the point. Holistically, when their brand of quackery doesn’t work, they have many other approaches they can shift the blame onto instead of facing the truth.
Conclusively, Another Avenue for Alt Med
The word ‘holistic’, and the correct use of it, is still a legitimate component of real, modern medicine. Everything good that comes from it is already part of science-based methods and practices. However, use of the term Holistic Medicine generally and historically comes from a place of Alternative Medicine, and people attach flawed principles to it in a way which make it synonymous with pseudoscience.
In other words, a practitioner calling themselves a holistic doctor has no need to do so, unless they are also promoting a pseudoscientific therapy alongside the normal standard of science-based care. This is similar to how a chiropractor would be pseudoscientific by default; the legitimate aspects of chiropractic are already inherently just physiotherapy and massage. The only thing that makes a Chiropractor a Chiropractor, are the additional nonsense claims or non-scientific, non-regulated and often dangerous techniques and practices.
When all is considered, you can see that Holistic medicine is no more than a rebranding of Alternative medicine – something which happens once the latest iteration of it is found to be the same old outdated tropes that have been peddled for decades. It’s just another umbrella term for hundreds of unproven, disproven, ineffective, and outdated pseudoscientific treatments and therapies.
Holistic Medicine originated with some very important principles in mind, from an innovative way of thinking, for its time. We have carried those forward into scientific medicine where appropriate. In modern times however, ‘Holistic’ is a red flag and a placeholder name for Alternative Medicine. Thus, the infiltration of harmful nonsense into the fringes of mainstream institutions like our NHS continues, for now.
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