Holistic health care

[Carole Rogers]

We are discussing definitions of TCM but one of my pet interests is collecting definitions of holistic medicine.

TCM practitioners often say, rather proudly, that they practise holistic medicine - and some of them then go on to provide a formula of herbs and/or acupuncture points based on a western diagnosis. I should be most interested to hear the thoughts of others on what, in their view, constitutes 'holistic health care'.

Cheers,

Carole

[Cameron Rogers]

Holistic medicine seems historically to be used as a generic term for any practice that considers the health of the patient to be more critical than simply the nature of opportunistic diseases that may afflict them.
The down to earth, up in the air set do seem however to abuse the term often.

Cam

[paddy]

Daoist notions of the interconnectedness of all things are at the heart of Chinese medicine, or at least the way I try to practice it. That's what makes it holistic. The notion that every aspect of the human condition is a reflection of every other aspect, that linear causality breaks down when we see these interconnections. Dao is both named and nameless.

[Dale]

G'day,
I like to think that holistic medicine as a practise takes into consideration all things. Now I don't mean all things involing the patient but rather all things in the literal sense.
If we look at the classic texts of TCM we see just about every aspect of both the individual, and the macrocosm with which they co-exist, taken into account.
Now this is what I feel is meant by holistic medicine.
To me this is the beauty of TCM. The constant striving to practice truly holistic medicine and the fact that everything can be explained using the holistic theory of TCM. If one trusts the system then there is no need to go for the easy answers offered by western theory. Just as it would be inappropriate to treat TCM patterns with western drugs so it is inappropriate to treat western conditions with TCM therapies.


Just my thoughts,
Respectfully,
Dale Elsdon

[michael]

Why can't being holistic take a western medical diagnosis into account, if by definition it includes consideration of all things. I don't mean a western diagnosis should form the basis of any TCM treatment, ever, but if it could help it should be given a hearing. An example: at uni in the herb clinic a patient came in with a stomach ulcer. The diagnosis and herbs were based on TCM, but one herb was also added because it had been shown to be effective against the bacterium in question. That one herb was based on the western diagnosis, and the practitioner is a brilliant practitioner, does this mean she wasn't being holistic?

I actually really don't like the term holistic, for me it has too much of a hippy connotation. For some reason I just don't see TCM moving into hositals or main stream medicine with the term "holistic" attached to it.

[paddy]

Western medicine is, at it's core, not a holistic medicine. When DeCartes pronounced that the mind and body were seperate medical science was able to develop the mechanistic view of the human body that still prevails. I'm not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, there have been obvious benefits in the development of medical science, neither of my children would be alive today without it.
Adding a herb to a traditional formula because it has been demonstrated to be effective by western means is not the same as using a western diagnosis. I'd hope that if the herb didn't fit the TCM pattern it wouldn't have been used.
And if we think that we should give up notions of holism because it'll stop acupuncture going into the mainstream then I'm outta here. What sort of acupunture do we want practiced in these hospitals?