Holistic Health

By Dr. Dany Lousky

A critical presentation of scientific health alongside the holistic approach and the description of the relationship between body and mind in the holistic approach are the rationale for the encounter between scientific medicine and lousky medicine, for the purpose of creating integrated medicine.
According to the Hebrew Encyclopedia (1961), the origin of the word ‘holism’ is Greek and the meaning of the word is ‘whole’. Holism perceives the entirety as a basic factor in the structure of the world. Holism sees the objects in nature, animate and inanimate, as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The whole is the primary and unique reality. An encounter of different elements at a defined time and space creates a unique outcome: the discovery of new traits that cannot be expected beforehand on the basis of an analysis of every part of reality separately. Holistic health is a way of life and a perception of the world that sees the person to be in the center.
To understand the special role of holistic health, it is necessary to compare it to scientific medicine. Ben Dov (2005), a scientist and researcher who addresses the questions of body and mind, maintains, “When we speak of healing, we must address the whole person and not only his discrete components. This is the fundamental difference between the method of scientific medicine and the methods of alternative medicine”. According to Ben Dov, scientific medicine is based on the assumption that it is possible to address separate phenomena in the human system. Indeed, the method of scientific medicine divides the person into systems, each of which is a subject of distinct medical specialization. An ophthalmologist, for example, does not specialize in cardiologic problems; nor does the cardiologist specialize in the eye. Therefore, if we go to a physician with an illness that impairs a system found in his field of specialization then he can propose an adequate solution. However, if, as happens, we go to a scientific physician with an illness that impairs systems affiliated with other areas of specialization, then we must go to other expert physicians, each of whom can say different things and sometimes can prescribe medicines – statements and medicines that may conflict with what a different expert said and prescribed.
This difference can be understood if we observe the role that the whole human body fills in healing. In the method of scientific medicine, the body has no role and it even appears as an impeding factor. For instance, the primary actions of the operating physician are cutting the body tissues to reach the damaged part and therefore the fact that this part is within the living body is perceived as a problem and not as an advantage. Similarly, the side effects of medicines appear because of the complicated reciprocal relations between the different systems in the body and the ideal situation for the medication’s action is in the ‘test tube’, when the cells upon which it acts are isolated from their environment. In contrast, Lousky medicine sees the whole person and is based on natural healing processes, with the goal of strengthening the four dimensions (physical, emotional, intellective, and spiritual), so as to allow it to cope with the illness with greater success.
From the perspective of body – mind, “when we go to a physician, we do not leave the emotions or thoughts outside of the treatment room. The mental aspects of the illness constitute an important part both in the development of the illness and in the healing process” (Ben Dov, 2005). The principled difference between the scientist and the physician is the commitment to ‘scientific truth’, or in other words, the truth that the investigation methods of science can discover. The physician is committed to healing and will prefer a situation in which the patient will be cured by the ‘wrong’ reasons over the situation in which he dies from the ‘right’ reasons