Difficulty Explaining Holistic Health Care

Holistic health Care: Those actions which improve a person’s overall health so as to facilitate rapid healing of health problems, and to create stable good health throughout their life.

Your friend gives you a condescending look and says, “Are you still going to that witch doctor?”

I don’t know why this particular line is so popular, but at least a thousand patients have told me someone asked them this at least once.

Whether it’s the witch doctor line or some other criticism, it seems that patients and practitioners of holistic health care must deal with skepticism and derision, even from well-meaning friends, family members and doctors. It’s not uncommon to have a spouse watch the complete turnaround of their partner’s health, and then express disbelief that their treatment had anything to do with the improvement that “would have happened anyway.”

I often talk to people who are confused about the whole concept of alternative health care… they understand that it must work, but for the life of them they can’t see how this could be. It just won’t square with their concepts of how health care functions.  No drugs? How in the world can that do anything?

So, I want to clarify one thing for you: WHY is there so much confusion about what I do, “holistic health care” compared to “traditional medicine.”

Seven Points: How Alternative or Holistic Health Care Works

1:  To recover from any health condition requires that the body must heal itself. Drugs and surgeries, when successful, make it possible for the body to heal. But no doctor has ever caused cells to regenerate or healing to occur. Doctors are facilitators of healing. Only the body itself can cause healing and health.

2: Your body is a closed system and must make do with only the resources that it has available. The healthier a body is, the more resources it has and the greater its resistance to illness and injury.  The healthier a body is, the less likely that body will be to become ill or injured and the faster that body will recover if it does have a problem.

3: THEREFORE: If a person is ill or injured, logic would dictate that this person should take actions to improve overall health in an effort to facilitate healing. Experience has shown that targeted stress reduction based on accurate testing can improve the body’s ability to heal… dramatically at times.

4: Holistic Health Care definition: Those actions which improve a person’s overall health so as to facilitate rapid healing of health problems, and to create stable good health throughout their life.

5: A person using holistic health care may boost their body’s ability to heal across the board, to the point that their body may heal from “medically un-treatable” and severe or long-term chronic health conditions.

6: If a person truly heals, then the underlying cause of their problem is reduced or eliminated and that person may no longer have to take drugs, even the “rest of your life” drugs. Properly done holistic health care has the potential to help an unhealthy person become healthy.

7: MOST IMPORTANTLY: Holistic health care has the potential to prevent a healthy person from becoming unhealthy, or to prevent a recovered person from getting ill again. It is the secret to avoiding health problems in the first place and to avoid relapses if one has gotten well.

Where the Confusion Comes From

Medical treatment is based on the emergency model: the cause of a problem is the problem itself. A cut that is gushing blood is the cause of the bleeding problem… yes it is! This model works very well for emergencies, and can save your life.

In a non-emergency chronic health problem, the medical model fails. High blood pressure is caused by… high blood pressure? Really? There is no treatable cause creating the high blood pressure?  Apparently not, as the treatment is a drug to lower blood pressure, taken for the rest of the person’s life. The holistic model would improve a person’s overall health until the body no longer had to have high blood pressure. The end result of this treatment would be: 1) No more blood pressure problems. 2) Overall better health: energy, attention, enjoyment of life. 3) Heightened resistance to developing additional health problems.

Your friend or family member making the “witch doctor” comment likely thinks that you believe that the supplements you are taking will replace your blood pressure meds. This is nonsense, but your friend can’t think with the idea of improved health ending health problems. They think that ONLY direct treatment of the problem could possibly be valid, therefore your holistic treatment must be a form of direct symptom treatment. You can see how this would confuse them: to them you are taking a whole-food supplement instead of a drug and expecting the same result.

Hope this helps!

Dr. Billiot