More and more independent doctors have been adopting the holistic health system to diagnose and treat a patient. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of this system if used in national hospitals? This article will guide health practitioners into the usage of the holistic ideology and implement it in hospitals or clinics nation-wide. By Daniela Silva
A patient diagnosed with chronic anxiety and with frequent gastroenteritis episodes is taken to the hospital for the third time in a month. He can´t stop vomiting, he can´t breathe and the nurses yell at him to calm down. But he can´t.
He has anxiety and hospitals scare him. The nurses don´t know this information because they are focused on his immediate symptoms. He argues with the nurse to give him something to help him calm down but the nurse refuses. He gets worse over time and ends up spending the night in the hospital until in the first hours of the next day he is able to keep the shivering away for some minutes.
Pedro is an adult man that suffers from a mental health problem that affects him in a physical way. He has headaches, and stomach problems and it is all connected with chronic anxiety. His panic attacks make him nauseous and when he starts vomiting he can´t stop until the panic attack comes to an end.
He goes to the hospital at least two times a month explaining he is in pain and he only needs medicine to stop the panic. But the nurses never always treat the symptoms and not the root. And he keeps coming back.
National general practitioners often see a symptom as the end problem. If you have a pain in your back you will get a prescription for something to ease the pain. The problem is that a lot of times the symptoms are just that. And solving them will not treat the patient.
“Holistic Health is an approach to look for health as a whole. Is to see the unique human instead of just one pathology understanding that you aren't only your stomach or your eyes”, Ana Patricia is a holistic practitioner at an independent level.
“It's for example to understand that a mental health issue is happening because of diet and lifestyle. Diet is one of the biggest causes for anxiety but in modern medicine they will look only into the mental health side of the problem - while on the holistic approach we see the individual with a story, a diet, a body and a soul”, said Ana.
General practitioners don´t use the holistic system when diagnosing or treating patients. Sara who is a nurse said, “In my experience, the diagnostic of a patient is sometimes too rushed and not much thought of. But it is rare that it is inaccurate. The only problem is that sometimes the problem can mean more than just a simple headache”.
One of the reasons that this approach is not used in general medicine is that it would mean: “much more elongated time in the hospital and more financial support for extra exams needed. Also, more staff in the hospitals to cover all health areas”, said Sara.
The truth is that using the holistic approach to health in national hospitals could be almost close to impossible. But general practitioners can take advantage of such an approach and better the overall patient treatment by making small changes in the health system.
“Holistic Approach needs more time. It's powerful in healing chronic diseases. It is very useful in recovery. Basically, the advantage is that it works on the root (and the root can be more than one) while modern medicine works on the symptoms”, said Ana.
There are some actions that holistic practitioner Ana Patricia said that can be taken to incorporate the holistic system:
1- Similar metabolic Types:
“I understand that in a hospital it's not possible to look to each person but they can create groups of people that have similar metabolic types”:
Categorising patients in similar metabolic types is something that would definitely help the hospital staff understand more about an individual unique health and treat it accordingly to it.
One good example of this is:
There is vegan people who work well and are healthy in this diet but there are others with different types of metabolic systems. If you implement a vegan diet in an individual with
Eskimo ancestry and in an individual that was previously vegetarian, the one with Eskimo ancestry may develop a strength issue in such diet while the one who was previous vegetarian will probably adapt well to the vegan diet.
2- Aromatherapy:
“They can use aromatherapy to help their healing process also”.
Aromatherapy is one powerful tool in a holistic practitioner kit.
It can help a patient recover faster and in a steady way. It can also act like a placebo effect.
When a patient is keep in a stress-free environment while recovering the healing process will likely be quicker and aromatherapy contributes to create a harmonious environment for that. An aromatherapy diffuser in each patient room could make the difference in recovery times.
3- Have a better awareness to the products used in patients:
“At least they can have attention to the products which they bath and prescribe the patients, we don't want to bath cancer clients with bath shower that contain Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. This chemical is a detergent with a high toxicity level”
Bath products and beauty products are not thought of when given to patients in hospitals. But the skin can absorb 60% of the products put directly on it and the chemicals found in such products can delay or even stop the healing process.
A good website hospital staff can use to check beauty products and bath products toxicity is: https://www.ewg.org/ewgverified/index.php
4- Use antibiotics and prescription drugs as a last resort:
“If the symptoms are urgent to treat maybe it's better to use modern medicine. However, drugs and antibiotics should be in last treatment because it will disrupt all our system”.
Antibiotics and prescription drugs are the most common treatments in the modern health approach. This is because they are easy to use and have a relatively quick healing time. But the truth is that specific prescription drugs don´t work in an individual the same way to do on another.
For example, two patients both with a migraine take paracetamol (500mg). Patient A of them can absorb the drug more easily and get a pain relief after an hour, and the patient B can never obtain pain relief from the same quantity of the same drug.
Holistic approach looks at each patient differently and tries to solve the issue by taking in each patient unique health issues. With the holistic approach patient B would obtain a more unique treatment for his own body.
Also, antibiotics and prescription drug all have second effects and while some of them can be mild and first, most of them can be severe overtime. Some of them can even stop effecting the patient all together.
Sandra is a patient that suffers from chronic migraines and has them on a frequent basis. She has been to the hospital a couple of times in search for some drug that can relief her pain when a migraine hits.
500mg of paracetamol was enough in the first years of her problem but she developed resistance to the medicine and it stopped working.
She has tried 4 different quantities of paracetamol but none of them work. But her doctors only prescribe her more drugs alike it to ease her pain.
She doesn't know the root of the problem. And until today she continues taking prescription drugs every time she has a severe headache which is 5 times a month on average.
5-Having a deeper knowledge of holistic health.
“A great thing that nurses can do is study holistic matters by themselves - change comes from knowledge.”
Online resources and print books all have extensive information about the holistic approach to health and there is the possibility to study independently the subject and later on apply it individually in each work place.
But a great change that goes into the flow of incorporating this approach in modern health would be to make it a mandatory subject in the education of every nurse to be.
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Pedro is now seeing a holistic practitioner and he resolved his stomach problems by taking small steps to resolve his severe anxiety.
He can now control his panic attacks before they get to the point where he feels nauseous. Meditations and aromatherapy were the key to calm him down in a crisis