The Difference Between Alternative Medicine and Holistic Health

Many people tend to confuse these two concepts, but in fact they are far different in essence: Alternative therapy is a collective name for a series of intervention methods used to replace mainstream evidence-based medical treatment, and belongs to the category of "tool layer"； Holistic health is a health concept that treats people as a multi-dimensional unity of physiology, psychology, and society, and it belongs to the logic of the "cognitive level". The two are not concepts of the same dimension at all, and there is neither an equivalence relationship nor an either/or oppositional relationship.

To be honest, during the more than half a year I worked as an administrative assistant in a natural medicine clinic, I encountered too many people who confused these two concepts. The one who impressed me the most was 62-year-old Aunt Zhang. Her high blood pressure had been under stable control by taking antihypertensive drugs for two years. She watched a short video and saw someone saying that "antihypertensive drugs damage the liver and kidneys, and overall health management can eliminate the root cause." Then she went for the so-called "blood toxin cleansing" bloodletting therapy and stopped taking the medicine. Half a month later, she felt dizzy and couldn't stand and was sent to the emergency room. Her blood pressure soared to 180. She even told the doctor that "this is a reaction to overall health management", which made the doctor laugh and cry.

Let’s first clarify the boundaries of alternative therapies. There is actually a unified classification in the world called “complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)”. “Complementary” and “replacement” here are completely different things: when you take a piece of ginger candy during chemotherapy to relieve nausea, or when you have severe lumbar pain, do regular moxibustion to relieve pain. This is a supplement and an auxiliary method in addition to conventional treatment. There is no problem.； But if you directly stop chemotherapy and drink folk herbal remedies to treat cancer, or stop antidiabetic drugs and rely on enzymes to control blood sugar, this is "replacement therapy". The essence is to directly replace conventional treatments that have been proven effective with unproven methods. There has been controversy in the industry about the rationality of alternative therapies: the judgment standards of mainstream evidence-based medicine are very clear. Only methods that have been proven effective and have controllable adverse reactions through large-sample randomized controlled trials (RCTs) will be included in routine diagnosis and treatment. The vast majority of alternative therapies are considered to have unknown risks due to the lack of such evidence. ； Practitioners of traditional natural medicine and integrative medicine believe that many alternative therapies are the summary of thousands of years of experience. It is difficult for the standardized framework of RCT to cover the individualized intervention effects and cannot be killed with a stick.

Interestingly, many people think that holistic health is a new concept created by the alternative therapy circle, but this is not the case at all. As early as 1948, the WHO defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social adaptability and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". This is the core of overall health. A while ago, I accompanied a friend to the cardiology department of a tertiary hospital for a follow-up consultation. After reading her blood pressure report, the old director who treated her did not rush to adjust the medicine. He first asked her if she had been working a lot of overtime recently, had quarreled with her husband, and whether she always watched short videos until 1 o'clock at night. In the end, in addition to adjusting the amount of medicine, she also asked her She takes 20 minutes to go downstairs for a walk every day. Don't stay at home all the time on weekends and go out with friends more often. This is a proper overall health idea - there is no mention of any alternative treatments at all. She still treats people as complete individuals, not as a container with abnormal indicators. I once met an uncle who had undergone lung cancer surgery. In addition to the conventional auxiliary treatment plan, the treatment team in charge of the bed also asked the nutrition department to prepare a diet chart for him, and asked the psychiatrist to chat with him regularly. He even suggested that his wife accompany him to the park to play chess with his old friend. There is no "metaphysical" content in the entire plan, but it is the most standard overall health practice.

The biggest misunderstanding now is that many businesses deliberately combine alternative therapies with overall health in marketing. When they say "holistic health", they will sell you essential oils, energy crystals, and fasting packages worth thousands of dollars. The subtext is "doing no medicine and using our 'natural therapies' is called holistic health." The essence is to use the "political correctness" of holistic health to endorse alternative therapies that have no scientific basis. Of course, that’s not to say that alternative therapies are all pitfalls. Whenever my aunt suffers from dysmenorrhea, I would also use moxibustion patches on my stomach, which is much more effective than drinking hot water. However, I never stop taking the hormone-regulating medicine prescribed by the doctor just because of the moxibustion patches. I know very well that this is just a supplementary method to relieve symptoms. My overall health management should follow the doctor’s plan, taking into account physiological indicators and my own comfort, so there is no problem.

Nowadays, there are many extreme views on both sides: some extreme evidence-basedists believe that any method that has not been verified by RCT cannot be used. If the content of alternative therapies is included in overall health, it is "pseudoscience".”； Some extreme natural medicine enthusiasts believe that mainstream medical treatment is all about treating headaches, and only using alternative therapies can be called overall health. Both of these views are actually quite wrong. To put it bluntly, they fail to understand the core difference between the two.

In fact, to put it bluntly, the core of distinguishing these two concepts is never the method you use, but the logic of your decision-making - if you just stop conventional treatment and use some unproven method for the so-called "natural" and "no side effects", then no matter how fanciful it is, it is essentially gambling on luck with alternative therapy.； But if you follow the doctor's advice and include your emotions, living conditions, and physical comfort in the scope of health management, even if you use all conventional medical treatments, it is still a solid overall health practice. After all, after all the hard work, the ultimate goal is to make ourselves really comfortable and healthy, right?