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Holistic Health Care and
Yoga
Improving
Health Naturally with
Lifestyle & Alternative Health Care Techniques by Marianne Woods Cirone, M.S.,
R.Y.T., Certified Yoga Teacher
As the name implies, holistic health
care typically
incorporates all aspects of a person: physical, emotional and
spiritual. In today's Western style of medicine, known as allopathic
medicine, the focus tends to be reductionist, i.e., emphasis on the
pathology or disease of a specific body part. Some of the greatest successes
of allopathic medicine are heroic in nature, that is in the
emergency room, with antibiotics or surgically after a serious disease process has been
established. When we are in need of these treatments, we applaud modern medicine. However, our society tends to be overly reliant on
these heroic and often very expensive methods. We have overused treatments
such as antibiotics to the point that we have endangered their
efficacy. In addition, allopathic treatments often have
negative side effects, as in the area of prescription drugs. Holistic,
or alternative, medicine as it is often called, tends to be
less flashy and more preventative in nature, addressing more subtle
signals from the body before advanced disease takes hold.
Holistic treatments, which often take longer for results to appear, also
often have side effects. However, in general they tend to be
positive: making one change positively effects multiple aspects of
the mind and body. Simple examples include the use of diet and
exercise to treat certain medical conditions: e.g., a dietary change
to treat heart disease may also improve resistance to other diseases and
improve digestive problems. Holistic health solutions tend to have
proven their efficacy over time through practical use and are now being
studied by the scientific community. Because there has been more
economic incentive to develop pharmaceuticals than to study natural
treatments, many physicians today don't feel that they have the data to
back up the use of natural or holistic modalities. With pressure
mounting to keep medical costs down as well as a grass roots effort by
patients to receive the best and least invasive care possible, this
situation is rapidly changing. Probably
the oldest known system of medicine is the "sister science" of
yoga known as Ayurveda, literally, "science of life". This
system, which dates back at least 5,000 years, uses primary groupings to
categorize people (body and personality types), foods, and
activities. The objective in Ayurveda is always to bring balance,
which allows the individual to heal naturally. Yoga, meaning to yoke
or join, is a system that blends naturally with Ayurveda and other systems
of medicine to balance the individual on all levels. This section of
this website offers information on studies, techniques and resources on
holistic health care which will help to empower you to enjoy the best
possible health. This information is intended to be strictly
educational and not a substitute for medical advice: any information
found here or elsewhere should be discussed with your health care team to
ensure its potential and proper application for your specific needs.
Holistic Health Care
Topics
The following list our topics
for Holistic Health Care -- care of your own mind, body and spirit through
lifestyle choices and appropriate expert inventions. We have started
with the two processes which are most basic to sustaining life:
breathing and drinking water. Benefits and information on the
benefits of proper breathing techniques and proper water consumption are
described. Click on the links below to continue with
each topic.
- Breathing
- Proper breathing is vital to our health, and this page
describes breathing resources and yogic (and other) breathing
techniques to improve our breathing and our health.
- Benefits
of Drinking Water - There are
many health benefits to drinking water and this page describes
the various ways that drinking enough water will improve your
health, the benefits of drinking plain or lemon water,
ways to calculate how much water to drink and what counts as a
glass of water in your intake.
- Water
Filters - The benefits of
drinking pure water are many, and this page offers a variety
of water filters to assist in filtering your tap water to make
it healthier. Counter-top and faucet-connected water
filters and replacement filter cartridges are shown, plus
reusable water bottles.
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