What is Integrative Health
Integrative Health (otherwise known as Integrative Medicine) is a form of medicine that views the body as a complex web of interconnected systems and uses the analysis of all potential factors to determine the cause of an individual’s condition. These factors are comprised of physical, mental, social, and environmental factors.
How does Integrative Health/Medicine differ from Traditional
Medicine?
Traditional medicine has a more specialized focus on the human body with an emphasis on deeply understanding its components independently of one another. This is the reason why when you have an issue that cannot be properly fixed by either yourself or your doctor, they (your doctor) will typically send you to a specialist (such as an Optometrist or an ENT).
Integrative health, on the other hand, focuses on the human body in its entirety. The emphasis is much broader than that of traditional medicine. By viewing the body as a set of interconnected systems, integrative health recognizes that one area of the body can be affected by seemingly unrelated parts of the body, as they are all part of the same system.
What are some examples of Integrative Health being used in
practice?
Since integrative health is just an approach to medicine, it is used in a variety of different applications. Here are a few of the most notable examples where the integrative health approach is utilized:
- Functional Medicine
- Acupuncture
- Massage Therapy
- Meditation
- Yoga