• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

What makes a therapy "holistic"?

Big Al

Mage Questor
Big Al
Joined
Sep 26, 2006
Messages
1,125
This is something I'd really like to understand.

A doctor asks a patient what is wrong. He looks over the patient, takes a temperature, does some blood tests, takes some x-rays, diagnoses a disease and prescribes a pharmaceutical remedy. The doctor's patient gets better.

A homeopath asks a patient what is wrong. He consults a book and prescribes a homeopathic "remedy" (sorry, I really can't bring myself not to put that in quotes). The homeopath's patient takes longer to get better (if at all), and the homeopath takes the credit.

We're told that the homeopath's procedure is "holistic", that it embraces body, mind and soul, whereas the doctor's "allopathic" process is crudely mechanistic and doesn't address the underlying issues.

I really want to know what makes a procedure "holistic". No waffle, no blah - how is the homeopath (or any other holistic practitioner) addressing the patient's mind and spirit? (or even his body, in fact).
 
I don't think most homeopaths just consult a book and prescribe a remedy. They also talk to the client and what is happening in their life and give informal counselling. In many cases this probably accounts for patient satisfaction, over and above any placebo effect from the 'remedy'.

Of course doctors can do this too, but may be prevented through time constraints, or perhaps sometimes patients feel more intimidated and less inclined to discuss issues that don't seem directly related to physical symptoms.

I had a friend who visited a homeopath regularly although in general she was a sceptic. She admitted that she was going for counselling, although the pretence of a medical consultation made it less embarassing than an 'official' counsellor.
 
"Holistic" is a euphemism for not accepted by "western medicine."

"Western medicine", of course, is a (somewhat racist) euphemism for evidence, science, and thinking.
 
Big Al said:
We're told that the homeopath's procedure is "holistic", that it embraces body, mind and soul, whereas the doctor's "allopathic" process is crudely mechanistic and doesn't address the underlying issues.
Click to expand...
The thing is, while homoeopathy claims to be "holistic", it actually does nothing but address the symptoms exhibited. While medicines a real doctor prescribes may in fact deal with an underlying cause (for example antibiotics will kill the bacteria causing an infection) hooeopathy doesn't do this. It just attempts to encourage the body to heal itself by giving the patient a remedy that might produce similar symptoms to those already exhibited.

As far as holistic diagnosis is concerned, any doctor who is any good will be looking at the whole patient rather than just what they are actually complaining of, and will be looking for underlying causes. The classic question that a doctor will ask, after the patient has said what they think is wrong, is something along the lines of "any other little aches and pains?"

"Holistic" is just used by alternative medicine as a buzz-word. It doesn't really mean anything in this context.
 
Elaedith said:
I don't think most homeopaths just consult a book and prescribe a remedy. They also talk to the client and what is happening in their life and give informal counselling. In many cases this probably accounts for patient satisfaction, over and above any placebo effect from the 'remedy'.

Of course doctors can do this too, but may be prevented through time constraints, or perhaps sometimes patients feel more intimidated and less inclined to discuss issues that don't seem directly related to physical symptoms.

I had a friend who visited a homeopath regularly although in general she was a sceptic. She admitted that she was going for counselling, although the pretence of a medical consultation made it less embarassing than an 'official' counsellor.
Click to expand...
What a homoeopath does is something a bit like this:
He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting.
When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Douglas Adams: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Click to expand...
But without the examination, analysis and experiment, of course.
 
Mojo said:
"Western medicine" doesn't include, for some reason, certain medical systems invented in Germany. ;)
Click to expand...

Mmmm... I think those are generally banned. However, homeopathy was invented in Germany and is very much not banned.
 
Big Al said:
However, homeopathy was invented in Germany and is very much not banned.
Click to expand...
That's the one I meant.

I notice that I've missed the "m" out of the word "homoeopathy" back in post #4. I don't think I'll bother editing it; I kind of like the effect...
 
Big Al said:
I really want to know what makes a procedure "holistic". No waffle, no blah - how is the homeopath (or any other holistic practitioner) addressing the patient's mind and spirit? (or even his body, in fact).
Click to expand...
The promotion of holism (as opposed to ‘wholism’) is simply a way for holistic
practitioners to subtly disparage orthodox medicine in order to puff up their own pseudoscientific practices:
Wholism implies, for example, that there is no single doctrine of care that is better than any other and that no one practitioner or type of practitioner has a monopoly of wisdom; in many cases a team approach can be highly beneficial, provided that the team works together as a single functioning unit. Holism, on the other hand, gives those whose therapies lack a strong evidential base a rationale for claiming that their approach is in some way superior because it (unprovably) adds something that cannot be quantified. This argument is implicit when anyone says that they will adopt a holistic approach; it is an argument of which we should be wary.

http://journals.medicinescomplete.com/journals/fact/current/fact0804a03t01.htm
Click to expand...
 
I think that a major purpose of the 'holistic' approach of alternative medicine is that it removes the need to make a medical diagnosis.

Most alt. meddlers are not medically qualified and are wholly incapable of diagnosing medical conditions in patients; even when they are displaying classic symptoms.

The word 'holistic' is used as a virtue word (or hooray word) and is often used with something like, "we treat the whole person, we don't treat them as a set of symptoms" as if it actually had some meaning. In reality, it's just a smokescreen which hides the fact that, medically, most alt. meddlers know little or nothing about diagnosing and treating real illness and disease.

Anyway, here's a little rant on the subject.
 
Mojo said:
That's the one I meant.

I notice that I've missed the "m" out of the word "homoeopathy" back in post #4. I don't think I'll bother editing it; I kind of like the effect...
Click to expand...

I like the spelling too, although it might benefit from changing the "h" to a "w".

Thanks for the response, guys. I just hope a "troobeleever" will pop up to tell me the full inside gen on this important philosophical issue. I've asked this one before but have never had more than waffle and evasion.
 
In mathematical terms: Holistic medical treatment = SFB (where F=for and B=brains.

Homeopathic medical treatment = WTFWYT (Where WYT is codefined with Were You Thinking.
 
Holistic = alluding to the old ways of doing things, even meaning back in the holy days of witch doctoring, guesswork and attributing causes of illness to evil spirits or bad energy before we knew what things like cancer or microbes were.

So, nowadays they've upgraded to the bullshznitz that medical doctors neglect the body as a "whole", and that the body as a whole needs to be treated, not just the broken arm or the microbe causing something like whooping cough.

Thing is, if you fight the microbe causing whooping cough, then the body can heal itself along with rest and the proper nutrition. If you get hospitalized for it, then you not only get meds to help fight the bacterium, but you get proper fluids and nutrition to help the body heal thyself. So I don't understand how anyone can claim mainstream medicine neglects any part.

The mind, huh. Well, if you need your bible or something, then no doc will object to you bringing it into the hospital. But the sCAM practitioners want to convince you that they need to wave their hands or a crystal over your body to align your chakras or something. http://www.holisticshop.co.uk/

If I need counselling, then I'll go to a trained therapist that hopefully won't tell me I just need some perty crystal to help me deal with my mom's craziness.
 
Last edited:
Arrrgh...Alternate medicine. Don't get me started. A good friend of mine has high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and diabetes. Does she restrict what she eats and follow an exercise program? No, instead she consults a woo-woo "medical" practitioner and gets a whole lot of weird dietary supplements. If she just stop eating the Jim Dandy's at Friendly's she'd be a whole lot better than spending hundreds of dollars on weird supplements. I despair. :(
 
Alternative medicines are absolutely amazing. You know, if you're in the market for a placebo. Otherwise they really are just stopping sick people from going to get proper medical treatment...
 
I hate the fact that alternative medicine hides behind this guise of treating the "whole" person. Although we shouldn't think of such a concept as bad. And luckily modern medicine is starting to correct this.

Previously, MDs focused on knowing symptoms and relating them to diseases. Doctors focused on being repositories of causal evidence. CUrrent education is focusing more on looking for the underlieing cause of the symptoms being evidenced and this will often include knowing more patient history beyond just symptoms.

So, i'd claim that modern allopathic medicine is holistic. that's the advantage of being science based. We can adjust our practices as we learn more on how things work. Woo-doctors don't change. can't change. for faith can't be wrong.
 
Allopathic was a term current at Hahnemann's time and referred to a treatment which combats disease by introducing remedies which produce effects different from the disease being treated.
Allopathy does not describe modern scientific medical practices and is constantly misused by hooeopaths*.

*(Great typo from some other thread.)
 
I can't find the link at the moment, but there was a programme recently (referenced on the bad science website), where they were testing the holistic nature of homeopathy. Ten homeopaths and three GPs were approached and asked about malaria prevention. The GPs surgery not only provided anti-malarial drugs, but information about prevention, how best to avoid being bitten, checking the bedroom for mosquitos etc. None of the homeopaths did anything other than provide homeopathic anti-malarial treatments.

So not only was the homeopathic medicine completely useless, the doctors were the only ones who actually provided a holistic treatment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom