Defining Principles of Integrative Medicine

Integrative Medicine focuses on the full individual, including all parts of their lifestyle. It emphasized the therapeutic interaction between the practitioner and the patient. It is a patient-centered treatment approach that includes both evidence-based and experience-based therapies. Integrative medicine combines several disciplines to deliver safe and effective health care, including alternative and standard Western medical approaches.

Such practitioners treat their patients as partners, working together with them to ensure they receive the therapies they need to stay well. Integrative medicine considers a variety of variables that influence a person’s health, including physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental aspects.

Integrative medicine focuses on the wider principles of health (such as maintaining a healthy lifestyle) that improve a person’s total health and well-being now and in the future, besides delivering treatments that address acute health concerns.

In the United Kingdom, the House of Lords’ select committee on science and technology recently acknowledged that the use of Integrative medicine therapy is widespread and growing.

What differentiates Integrative Medicine from Alternative Medicine?

Alternative medicine refers to a treatment that is used instead of traditional medicine. We have not subjected alternative medicine to the same level of scientific review as mainstream medical therapies in order to ensure that they are both safe and effective.

There are several stories on the internet about cancer patients who have received miracle cures from alternative therapy. Alternative treatments are unlikely to cure cancer, and some of them can be harmful to your health.

Alternative treatments can be costly, and health insurance might not cover them. Coffee enemas, high doses of intravenous vitamin infusions, and magnet treatment are examples of alternative medicine. 

So, what is Integrative Medicine if it isn’t an alternative medicine?

Integrative medicine is a modern word for a specialized field of medicine that prioritizes the combination of supplementary and traditional therapy. Integrative medicine brings the best of both worlds together, with a focus on safety and scientific proof.

A good deal of integrative medicine specialists has received special training in safe, evidence-based integrative therapies. Integrative medicine doctors will work with your oncologist or other healthcare providers to offer you the best overall treatment and support possible, combining traditional medicine and complementary therapies.

Integrative medicine practitioners offer approaches and remedies that are well researched for their safety and effectiveness. Some integrative treatments may help cancer patients and survivors cope with some of the negative effects of cancer and cancer treatment. The following are some examples of integrative medicine: Acupuncture for neuropathy and hot flashes Healing touch therapy for pain and anxiety, with a focus on a good diet, and a few supplements for overall health.

What did it include?

Integrative medicine focuses on the practitioner-patient interaction and is based on a health and wellness-focused model rather than a disease-focused model. Integrative medicine treats more than just the symptoms by tailoring therapy to each individual.

You and your practitioner work together to address the causes of illness, such as biological, psychological, environmental, and psychosocial characteristics, as well as disease prevention. Integrative medicine considers both your present health demands and the other elements that affect your long-term health and well-being.

Types Of Integrative Medicine

Integrative medicine practitioners combine the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies with traditional treatments. Using CAM therapies is workable only if they have been effective, safe, and appropriate for a person’s specific health condition.

The following are examples of evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine therapies that are frequently used in combination with traditional medical care:

• Acupuncture
• Hypnotherapy
• Supplements made from natural ingredients
• Guide imagery
• Mindfulness
• Massage therapy
• Yoga
• Functional medicine 

Principles of Integrative Medicine

• Optimal Health

The fundamental goal of integrative medical practice is to achieve optimal health. It is the willful quest for optimal functioning and balance in the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, and social. Along with spiritual components of human existence, culminating in a dynamic condition of being fully alive. This provides a sense of well-being, whether the sickness is present. Possibilities for learning For both patients and health care providers, all life experiences, including birth, joy, suffering, and the dying process, are profound learning opportunities.

• Therapeutic Power Of Love

Integrative health care practitioners see people as a unified whole of body, mind, spirit, and the systems in which they live.

Integrative holistic health care practitioners strive to meet patients with grace, kindness, acceptance, and spirit, without conditions. Because love is the most powerful healer in the world.

• Teaching by example

Integrative health care practitioners strive to incorporate the ideals of integrative health into their own lives. These concepts have a significant impact on healing relationships. Teaching by example also needs practitioners attempting to achieve a balance in their own lives in order to be teachers of balance and optimal health. Integrative healthcare practitioners adjust patient care to the individual requirements and characteristics of the person with a disease, rather than the sickness itself. This entails being aware of being receptive to others while avoiding projection. Being a detective and a scientist while listening with your heart open is what this involves.

• Care that is centered on relationships

The ideal practitioner-patient relationship is one that promotes patient liberty while also valuing both parties’ needs and perspectives. The quality of this friendship aids the healing process. A genuine, humanistic adult-to-adult (or kid) connection of equality is preferable to a role-playing relationship (patient and physician) or a transference relationship. The idea is to establish and maintain a genuine friendship. It has been shown that maintaining patient equality improves time and behavioral management. Also increases awareness of patient worries and anxiety, and improves flexibility and patient-centered treatment.

• Innate healing ability

Everyone possesses natural healing abilities in their bodies, minds, and spirits. Integrative holistic health care practitioners induce and assist patients in using these powers to influence the healing process. Treatment and prevention. Rather than just treating symptoms, integrative holistic health care practitioners promote health, prevent illness, and help raise awareness of dis-ease in our lives. An integrative holistic approach eases symptoms, changes contributing factors, and improves the patient’s life system in order to boost future well-being.

Conventional medicine has become overly reliant on costly technological solutions to health problems, even when they are ineffective. In its pursuit of technology, it has abandoned wholeness and simple methods of intervention, such as dietary modification and relaxation training. These are common in many alternative systems of medicine and are frequently effective.

The consultation process and holistic approach used by integrative medicine practitioners make patients feel more in control of their illness. A good deal of Integrative medicine therapy options ranges from the sensible and worthwhile to the ridiculous and even dangerous. Patients require physicians with biomedical knowledge to differentiate between them.