These days it can seem as though even a simple term like natural can be spun and twisted until what it means is distorted. With a glut of “go green” projects and entire grocery stores selling pre-packaged “natural foods” it can be difficult to tell what exactly is natural. Especially with the rise of medicalization, the process by which people turn natural conditions into treatable medical conditions, this question of naturalness can be extremely difficult to navigate particularly in terms of health. Since medicine has become such a profitable industry it has invaded every aspect of human life, with wide ranging political and social consequences. This is especially unfortunate because holistic health treatments are the oldest form of medicine, and for thousands of years were used to treat everything from broken bones to cancer.
Fortunately, new studies on holistic health treatments like relaxation-visualization therapy have forced doctors to become increasingly aware of the effectiveness of using holistic treatments, especially for cancer patients. In fact, more and more doctors are recommending holistic health treatments as part of a multi-layered approach to fighting cancer, alongside conventional treatments like chemo- and radiation therapy. The best way to explain how complementary and holistic treatments can complement each other is through the example of “filling the holes.” This theory states is based on the premise that cancer, like holes, can’t form on its own. Similar to how holes are formed only either by digging or weak soil composition, cancer is formed by underlying issues. While conventional cancer therapy sees this problem in a simplistic way and aims to simply “fill the hole” by destroying the tumor by any means necessary, this treatment often only causes tumors to re-appear in the future. Holistic treatments, meanwhile, are focused primarily on the underlying issues that caused the tumor and aim to fix “the soil-imbalance” and prevent the cancer from recurring. This is exactly where taking a multi-layered approach including holistic treatments can be such an important part of cancer treatment. Treatments like yoga, Reiki, relaxation-visualization therapy and hypnosis have been proven to help as complementary treatments.
Particularly for patients with extremely aggressive cancers like non-hodgkin’s lymphoma or pleural mesothelioma the use of holistic treatments alongside their cancer treatments can be essential. Because these cancers have short life expectancies and relatively low survival rates patients more and more doctors have begun using holistic health treatments, prompting many hospitals to offer in-house homeopathic consultants and alternative therapy practitioners.
