Feature

Modern Western medicine has traditionally been remedial, however in the past few years we have witnessed ‘holistic’ treatments focusing on preventative care gradually integrated into NHS health system.

Eastern and Western health systems have long been divided on their approach to illness and treatment. Holistic therapies, such as Ayerveda, are prevalent throughout the East and emphasize the importance of the whole system and the interdependence of its parts. Treatment such as this highlights the need to examine an entire lifestyle when treating an illness, to look at diet, social and emotional issues that may be affecting an individual. In the West we more commonly look at the physical manifestation of a symptom and treat it as quite unique from the rest of the body, the treatment of the physique, mind and environment remain quite detached.

Holistic care is quick to impress the importance of the emotional and environmental state on the manifestation of illness, with the belief that many diseases are, on some level, psychosomatic. There are obvious situations here that fall outside of this theory, such as accidental injury. However, although these situations are not of psychosomatic creation, an individual’s recovery can be greatly heightened or hindered by their emotional and environmental state.

In the West we are only just beginning to realise this theory. As we witness stress related illness increase throughout our population, from young children right the way through to our older generations, we see an increase in conditions such as high blood pressure, anxiety disorders and addiction, all of which offer a platform on which further illness may manifest.

As our health system has increasingly become dependent on a drug culture, we have seen many miracles of medicine, yet we have also seen the decline of therapeutic care, with drugs seeming to provide the solution to any scenario, take for instance the suggestion that MRSA is the result of doctors over enthusiastically prescribing antibiotics for viral infections.

However in the past few years we have started to see gentle, holistic therapies gradually introduced to the NHS menu, with patients being offered the choice to prescribe to acupuncture or homeopathy as a form of treatment that avoids the use of harsh drugs and examines entire lifestyles in the quest for an appropriate treatment.

Many people are still very sceptical about ‘holistic’ treatment, claiming a lack of scientific evidence as grounds for dismissal, however there is much anecdotal evidence that provides working examples of the success of such care. Adversaries are quick to point to the ‘placebo’ effect of such treatment when questioned about it’s apparent success, however surely this is the point that is made by holistic treatment, that by removing the emotional stress of an illness an individual is able to physically recover.

The issue that needs to be addressed in Western health care is that of choice and access to treatment. By integrating ‘holistic’ care into the NHS we are allowing broad access to treatments previously reserved for those who had the money to pay. By marrying the best of both Eastern and Western medicine we can only endeavour to cater more sensitively to all of those that require care.

Read the MyVillage Guide to Theraputic Treatments

Read the MyVillage Guide to Ayervedic Detox

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