Alternative Healing | Dr. Stephen Sinatra's Heart MD Institute

Alternative Healing

At the end of the medicinal spectrum opposite conventional healthcare lies alternative medicine. Alternative healing focuses on the prevention and treatment of illness through subtle means designed to manage the person, as opposed to his or her symptoms. It is based upon Holistic methods, which concentrate upon treating the whole person, or the unity of the person’s body, spirit, mind, and the environment or system in which s/he lives.

Health trends over the past two decades have demonstrated a significant rise in consumer visits to alternative health care practitioners, despite lack of health insurance coverage. Although traditional medicinal systems are slowly incorporating alternative medicinal practices, such treatments still remain, for the most part, “alternative.” The integrative medicinal model focuses upon the marriage of conventional and alternative medicine.

While traditional medicinal methods are still very much needed to treat acute injury, and to treat and diagnose more advanced stages of disease, alternative treatments can help prevent disease as well as compliment allopathic treatment with another dimension of the healing process: wellness via awareness, education, and personal growth. As means of helping patients awaken their intrinsic healing mechanisms, alternative therapies are at the heart of integrative medicine.

Once functionally defined as that which is not generally taught in medical schools nor is widely available in hospitals in the U.S., alternative medicine encompasses nutrition, supplementation, and various mind/body techniques, as addressed within other Heart Healthy Lifestyle pages. Alternative healing has also branched into energy, or vibrational, medicine, as well as meridian systems, which comprise our focus in this section.

Vibrational medicine is literally about “good” and “bad” vibes and centers around the frequencies belonging to certain bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. As all physical matter, including cells and tissues, is energy which vibrates to a particular frequency, such frequencies, which parallel biological and biochemical processes within the body, can mean the difference between health and disease. While some vibrational medicine involves frequencies created through natural processes such as sunlight, other techniques are electro-medicinal by nature.

Electro-medicine, which is more prevalent in Europe than the U.S., involves using devices to generate fields of electromagnetic radiation in order to improve pulsation within the body through such forms as magnetism, electricity, heat, and visible light. In addition to such electroceuticals on the forefront of alternative healing, energy medicine also accommodates grounding and use of flower essences.

Other alternative health practices, such as Electro-Dermal Screening and Acupuncture, revolve around meridian systems of the body. In Chinese Medicine, meridian systems are believed to carry “chi” or life energy through the body and disruptions in the flow of chi are thought to cause disease. Disruptions may result from imbalances or energy blocks within the body. Alternative healing techniques like massage and chiropractic work help release tensions stored within muscles and between bones which may cause energy blockages and possible subsequent dis-ease.

With enough awareness and public demand, “alternative” medicine may eventually become the norm in health care. Shifting from a crisis and disease model of medicine entails taking responsibility for individual health through a prevention-focused lifestyle. Alternative therapies serve to facilitate subtle energetic changes toward health, both within and without conscious awareness.

Additional References:

“The Principles of Holistic Medicine” available on the American Holistic Medicine Association website at http://www.holisticmedicine.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=1.

Eisenberg DM, Davis RB, et. al. Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States, 1990-1997. JAMA 1998;280:1569-1575 at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez.

Sylver N. Frequency Healing with Electromedicine and Sound.

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JComments

Many of the practices we now call alternative medicine are actually mainstream healing methods that we’ve abandoned in our age of technology. Indigenous and advanced cultures alike still use these therapies appropriately and with good results.