Preventative Holistic Medicine

We’ve come a long way as a society. A few hundred years of America rooted in Europe rooted in … the confusion of Babylon, the Tower of Babel. Babbling in different languages and different ideas and unable to communicate - no longer able to build.

We’ve come a long way as the Jewish nation. A country of our own, total liberty in many others, reconnecting with lost tribes, lost members & lost traditions.

One of the most beautiful things we see in Israel is the delicious melting pot of cultures and what they are creating when united: Synergy. Fresh, new and downright revolutionary ideas, concepts, inventions and discoveries.

Here in America, a much larger and more spread-out land connecting cultures that have even less in common than the many streams of Israelites returning to Zion, we see a comparable pattern. Yet since America was founded through pure conquer and without claim to prior roots in the land, it perhaps has even more difficult work to do in the quest of solving the Babel Puzzles and finding the redemption we so strive for.

We all have work to do, wherever we are. Turning to the world of health, scientific discoveries and technological advances in the field of medicine are exciting for us to behold. That is, until we need it for ourselves or our loved ones. At that point it’s less exciting and more, well, daunting. That’s because we’ve entered the world of human experimentation. Medical sciences are constantly evolving. The pharmaceutical industry - morphing. Theories and methods of treating diseases, along with the very definitions of those diseases, proving versatile.

The way we view health, medicine, healing and many other such concepts here in America is unique. Yet we embody a philosophy of these concepts with our every move, choice & advancement. Just as Jews are not often taught of the inner complexities of other religions, so too we in the West are rarely exposed to the inner workings of Chinese, Indian, Native American, Herbal or countless other traditions of medicine. This is unfortunate.

If you are currently taking pharmaceutical medicine, even ibuprofen, as part of your dietary regimen, you are far from alone. It has become the norm, especially in the United States, however this is not ideal; I think we can all agree on that. As time goes by, citizens are being given more and more drugs; being sold more and more synthetic, sterile lives. In Western philosophy, we see it as normal to take a whole food, plant or resource and break it down, separate it and compartmentalize it. This creates profit. But maybe we’re going too far. For example, the nutritious molasses of cane sugar are removed and bottled separately. The byproduct is bleached to look pretty and there we have white sugar. We have taken raw cane sugar, a powerful, delicious clump of sweet, and turned it into refined white sugar, a main ingredient in so many processed foods. It has been discovered that this substance is actually highly addictive and arguably poisonous to the human body.

The way my Ayurveda (Tradition of Indian Medicine) teacher, Dr. Naina Marballi, explained it is that when the body receives these “partial” products such as refined sugar or even bottled vitamins, it knows from its generations of experience that that specific taste or vitamin is supposed to come in a cluster with other macro/micronutrients. When the body receives these “partial” products, it seeks out the missing parts in our body’s reserves in order to process, or digest, the “partial” products. This may result in deficiencies without understanding what caused them. It may also result in constant hunger and lack of satiety.

In a nutshell, the “partial” is one of the main themes of Western Medicine. In a brighter light, it is the “specialty,” “focused,” or “thorough” version of medicine. The Eye Doctor, the Foot Doctor, the Brain Doctor, the Tooth Doctor; the Skin Doctor, the Heart Doctor, the Ear, Nose & Throat Doctor. We are mastering invasive surgeries and complex procedures. We are living long lives. It is remarkable. It is undeniably an accomplishment for mankind. Contrasting Western Medicine is “Holistic” Health. Holistic Health sees individuals as microcosms of the world in which all parts are interconnected. The term “Holistic” is related to the word “Whole.” In Hebrew, the word for “Whole” is “Shalem,” related to the word “Shalom” - Peace. In order to attain maximum health, Holistic Health Practitioners study a person's physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies in order to find where additional balance and harmony may be attained. While Conventional Medicine treats the symptoms, Holistic Health aims to cure the cause.

As a Holistic Health Practitioner, my question to us is less about the numbers in our blood tests and more: Are we, as a society, culture, community and family living healthy lives? Do we feel good? Are we okay? Too many people cannot answer those questions in the affirmative, which is very upsetting. We have been focused on extending lives yet the quality of those lives is often unsatisfactory. Anxiety, depression, lethargy, weakness, inflammation, ADHD, PTSD, Autism and many other conditions have become normal in our society. Prescribed medications lead to other prescribed medications which all come with their related issues, namely “side effects.” Low quality, mass produced food replete with pesticides & herbicides bring their slew of problems. Antibiotics, Hormones and carcass-feed have infiltrated the meat & dairy industries, not to mention inhumane treatment of those animals. There are, in fact, many problems and dilemmas for us to face at this seemingly advanced moment in time.

I, for one, am not at peace with the state of health in our society. We can all do better. It is our duty. And there are many tools for us to learn, together.

#holistichealth #ayurveda #modernity #medical #pharmaceuticalmedicine