Is Holistic Health Care Safe and Scientific?

The title of this article is a nice way of asking, “Could holistic health care waste my time and money and make my health worse?”

The short answer is, “It’s very, very unlikely to have any detrimental effect on your health, but it’s possible to waste time and money.”

Holistic health care isn’t a uniform treatment method or even a common viewpoint. The practitioners, treatments, philosophies, and modalities that make up the body of what might be considered “holistic health care” cover a tremendous territory. A specific type of holistic health care must be matched to the patient for good results.

As with selecting most important services, it’s wise to research, read and check reviews.

Is Holistic Health Care SAFE?

There is no branch of holistic health care that you are likely to run across that has any significant element of physical danger. You have a very slight chance of being harmed by any common holistic techniques (chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, nutrition, health coaching, etc.).

Supplement Safety

One of the more common concerns is the safety of supplements. Since this is my area of expertise, I’ve always kept abreast of supplement safety issues.

A common accusation is that supplements “aren’t FDA approved” and could be harmful.

The truth is that the FDA considers supplements to be food and regulates the manufacturing process by inspection. Because supplements aren’t drugs and are not designed to DO something to the body, the formulas must only follow food regulations and don’t have to be pre-approved. Drugs aren’t food and are intended to affect the body significantly. Therefore, drugs require FDA pre-approval and safety studies, and supplements don’t.

The FDA has many regulations that apply specifically to the supplement industry, requiring stringent quality control of raw materials and manufacturing processes and quality control of the final product. Over the past decade, the FDA has effectively shut down many small supplement companies that lacked the resources to follow these regulations. The manufacturers still in business tend to be very conscientious and organized with extremely safe, uniform, and high-quality products.

Many of the supplement suppliers I utilize have been with me for almost 30 years.

Is Holistic Health Care Scientific?

The definition of scientific is something relating to science, natural science, or done very systematically.

The holistic technique I use is based entirely on the science of physiology and anatomy. However, it’s the systematically part that stands out.

Each patient is evaluated using functional lab testing, reflex testing, and heart rate variability testing. From this evaluation, I work up a detailed treatment program individualized to the patient. This program is then executed one step at a time, each step validated with additional testing. Every patient’s progress is graphed as a statistic so that I am alerted that a patient’s progress is slowing or plateauing, often before they are even aware of this. Depending on the graph, I program the patient differently; a slight improvement indicates different treatment actions than a steeply improving graph.

But What Really Matters? That it WORKS!

I use scientific approaches to my treatment programs because I was trained this way and because it works. The techniques I use are scientific but are not commonly done in most health care clinics, either holistic or conventional. I use these techniques because they work.

There is much that isn’t known about health, healing, and the human body. Honestly, medical research is only scratching the surface of what needs to be known for a completely effective health care system. With ongoing, chronic health problems, conventional medicine usually only manages symptoms with life-long pharmaceuticals. Until a better result can be obtained medically, I believe that a systematic method of assisting patients in restoring their body’s ability to heal may very well be the best possible solution to this kind of health problem— because it works.

Doing the Same Thing, Expecting a Different Result

More than 34 million Americans are prescribed high blood pressure medications.

More than a million Americans are prescribed hypothyroid medications.

More than 35 million Americans are on statin drugs for high cholesterol.

These numbers continue year after year for decades. But the fact is that not one of these millions of patients has recovered from their diseases because of these medications.

These diseases and thousands more have no medical solution, only symptom management.

What has proven effective in many cases is a unique approach to improving the ability of the body to heal. I do nothing to treat symptoms, diseases, or conditions. I only work with my patients’ bodies to assist them in becoming more effective at healing.

Yes, this is quite different from the pharmaceutical and surgery methods we’re all most familiar with.

But, as I often ask patients, is being different OK if it works?