What does Holistic even mean?
- “Holistic” can be defined as the belief that the parts of something are interconnected and can be explained only by reference to the whole.
What is Holistic Health?
- Holistic Health looks at the body as an interconnected system rather than looking at one specific symptom or issue.
- While the western medical belief is to use medication to resolve a symptom, holistic health looks at the entire body to get to the root cause of the issue that is causing the symptom.
How is the body all connected if there are individual systems responsible for certain bodily functions?
- While the body is composed of 11 different systems like the cardiovascular system, the skeletal system, and the respiratory system, only one system is in charge of everything that your body does and that system is called the nervous system.
- Your nervous system consists of your brain, your spinal cord and the nerves that exit the spinal cord. These nerves send electrical impulses or messages to your entire body, allowing your body to do the things that it needs to do to function. Without your nervous system functioning properly your body can not function properly.
- For example, if the nerves that exit the spine at T1-4 are somehow severed or are no longer functioning, the heart and lungs will no longer function correctly because those nerves send the messages to the heart to pump blood in and out of the lungs and out to the body!
How does Chiropractic care tie into Holistic Wellness?
- Chiropractic care directly affects the nervous system through the spine with specific chiropractic adjustments to the spine and the spinal joints.
- Chiropractic adjustments use precise speed and accuracy to create movement in the spine that may not be functioning properly which can create dysfunction in the entire body.
- With these adjustments, chiropractic allows your body to be the self healing, self regulating organism that it was created to be.
Examples of Western Medicine Vs Holistic Medicine:
- When you have a mild fever, western medicine tells you to take some kind of fever reducer like tylenol. Holistic medicine will tell you to let your body go through the fever, allowing it to rid itself of whatever virus or bacteria that may be inside.
- When experiencing any digestion delays, western medicine tells you to take miralax to get you to go to the bathroom while holistic health will look at how your diet is affecting your digestion, how stress may be affecting digestion and how misalignments in your spine may be causing dysfunction in the digestive system.