Holistic but Western

• John Vandivier

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holistic_health&oldid=621284891">Holistic health is a diverse field of alternative health which focuses on the health of the whole person, not just the malady itself.

Holistic health is also often contrasted with Western health, medicine, nutrition, or so on, but it doesn't need to be this way. In the first place, Western health could grow to include Holistic approaches, and I think that is happening to some extent. In the second place, which I will talk about here, Holistic approaches can perhaps improve by leveraging western thought.

<a href="http://www.holisticmedicine.org/content.asp?pl=2&sl=22&contentid=22">Three keys of Holistic health include:

  1. Open-mindedness about diverse treatment options.
  2. Health is well-being, not necessarily a lack of disease.
    3. Mind and spirit are connected to, and as important as, body.
My related points:

1. Open-mindedness

I won't spend too much time here, but basically my point here would be that regulatory bodies such as the FDA shouldn't exist. Private regulation can, will, and should occur. Deregulation is societal open-mindedness. The FDA serves to preclude a wide variety of safe options, even options accepted in developed nations, and it ends up being a big originator of cronyism, as well as frankly an outright inhibition to life for many people. Everyone knows this, so I don't find much value spending time on this topic.

2 and 3.

These two are where I want to focus, and they are related. The primary way a person can have well-being regardless of the absence or presence of disease is for them to have a sense of purpose and peace of mind. These stem directly from mental and spiritual beliefs. The part I want to point out is the fact that Christianity, a distinctly Western tradition, can fulfill the role of desirable and healing-generative religion, beliefs, and/or spirituality as well as, or I would argue even better than, Eastern and near-Eastern approaches.

Basically, the argument is that Christianity is a better religion, spiritual system, and system of beliefs, for the purposes of Holistic health. I would argue this in several ways:

  1. Christianity is true and all other religions, spiritual systems, and systems of belief which contradict Christianity are not. These include major worldviews such as Islam, many variants of Buddhism and Hinduism, atheism, and agnosticism.
  2. Christianity is the best way to eternal life, which is the epitome of health.
  3. If well-being is defined as the ability to do good, then Christianity maximizes this by accurately making clear and increasing proficiency in morality.
  4. Christianity is the ideal religion for accurately showing any person that they have purpose, exactly what that purpose is, why they have it, what they should do now, that they are special, that they are important, and that they are loved.
  5. Christianity is not incompatible with, and in fact historically provided the basis for, conventional medicine.