How Holistic Health Can Transform Your Approach to Healing

Why Holistic Health Treats the Whole Person

Unlike conventional medicine, which typically focuses on treating each symptom and condition independently, holistic health focuses on treating all of you. For holistic health practitioners, the primary goal is helping you reach optimal health by achieving total balance. Holistic practitioners don’t merely treat your physical symptoms. Instead, they treat your body, your mind, and your spirit to ensure that you find that balance.

By treating the whole person, holistic health professionals acknowledge that you aren’t made up of parts or systems that function independently of each other. Instead, each component works interdependently, and a problem or breakdown in one system affects all others. This approach also acknowledges that mental and spiritual issues can cause physical symptoms, a connection that conventional medical studies have proven.

Although your awareness of holistic medicine may be recent, it isn’t a new practice. Instead, its roots lie in traditional Indian, Chinese, and Greek treatments that date back as many as 5,000 years ago. While holistic medicine decreased in popularity during the early 20th century, as scientific and medical advancements made new types of treatments possible, some people are now returning to a holistic approach.

As the American Holistic Health Association (AHHA) explains, this return to holistic health may be due to low levels of satisfaction with conventional medicine. According to the AHHA, the quality of your conventional medical care accounts for 10 percent of your health outcomes, while your lifestyle choices account for more than 50 percent. As a result, holistic health also encourages healthy lifestyle choices, such as eating a nutritious diet and avoiding alcohol and drugs, which contribute to overall good health and well-being.

How Holistic Medicine Approaches Healing

To address patients’ minds, bodies, and spirits, holistic medicine approaches healing from multiple angles, drawing from both conventional medicine and alternative therapies. These treatments and therapies allow practitioners to analyze every aspect of their patients, including nutrition, environment, spirituality, and lifestyle. Holistic health allows for highly individualized care, as practitioners get to know both the patient and the condition.

Over time, holistic practitioners typically develop a strong sense of support for their patients. Since holistic health considers unconditional love the highest form of medicine, practitioners approach patients with unconditional affection and use the power of hope, enthusiasm, and appreciation in their approaches to healing. Holistic practitioners typically use these positive powers to help heal and release harmful effects of anger, fear, and hostility.

To encourage optimal health, holistic practitioners also favor prevention and discovering underlying causes over responding directly to symptoms. Not only does this tend to be a more cost-effective approach to health care, but it also helps patients take control of their own health and well-being. Holistic practitioners give patients the additional power to reach optimal health by providing ample patient education and encouraging healthy lifestyle choices.

Ultimately, holistic practitioners believe that optimal health involves more than eradicating illnesses and curing patients. Instead, it encourages patients to pursue wellness by seeking out their best possible physical, mental, and spiritual qualities.

How a Health Tracker Can Help You Embrace Holistic Health

If you want to take your health into your own hands, embracing holistic health and identifying an effective practitioner could be a smart decision. You can also start taking steps independently to regain power over your well-being by tracking your daily activities and experiences.

Rather than taking notes on paper or monitoring various components in different places, try using a health tracker app to keep every aspect of your wellness in one convenient place. With this type of smartphone app, you can track everything from your nutrition and exercise to your hydration and well-being to understand how each aspect affects the others. You can also use a health tracker app to share your progress with your holistic health practitioner and a larger health-focused community. This community-focused approach can inspire you to take your health and fitness to the next level.

When you first get started with a health tracker, you’ll want to establish your daily calorie intake and begin logging the meals and snacks you eat each day. As you record what you eat, you’ll quickly determine whether you’re eating just enough, too much, or not enough to support your health-related goals. Of course, tracking calories alone can’t tell you how healthy you are. You can also select a meal or diet plan to ensure that you’re getting the right balance of macronutrients each day.

Along with the calories you consume, be sure to record the amounts of water you drink. Doing this will help to ensure that you’re staying hydrated throughout the day and that the water you drink supports your optimal health. The best calorie counter app makes water tracking easy. Why not try Lifesum?

The most effective health trackers also integrate with a variety of external fitness apps so you can also monitor your exercise and movement each day. This integrated approach makes it easy to understand how your nutritional intake and your energy output affect each other as you strive to feel, perform, and look your best.

With a health tracker, you can seek the balance you crave in each aspect of your life. As you monitor your progress and identify patterns with a health tracker, you can easily identify why you feel the way you do and take steps to make any necessary changes. Ultimately, you can strive to achieve the physical, mental, and spiritual wellness you desire.

If you have been unsatisfied with the results of conventional medicine, you could attain an entirely new level of wellness with holistic medicine. Start using a health tracker to care for your whole self, and find a holistic practitioner to learn more about treating your body, mind, and spirit.