Wholism in Healing
I’ve been doing the type of work I do for over a decade. There are a lot of questions that come up over and over again.
I love educating about so many different things in the health realm and I wanted a way to share with you information that will illuminate why I practice the way I do.
What I have decided to do is to share more of my thoughts on different health topics.
My plan is to start with the basics, just like I do when I am writing the first lab order. Each post I will highlight a different nutrient whether it be vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, etc. I will give you tons of information of why each is important and how they affect your daily life. I will go into ways that you can implement them.
I believe that our nutrients are basic needs in our health and unfortunately are rarely discussed in a health appointment. This is a disservice to you. When you have nutrient deficiencies, they can greatly affect how your body functions much like the different fluids affect a machine’s engine. It frustrates me incredibly that mechanics spend more time looking over the basics of a car than many health care providers do for our bodies.
My goal is to synthesize a ton of information that I have learned and while making it as simple as possible.
A Little History
Before I start sharing my thoughts on future things, though, I would like to start out with a discussion on how I practice and why. I know you may know this because I’m pretty vocal about it but I thought maybe putting it in an post would help.
Keith and I had a very interesting conversation with some patients over the weekend about the term I use for my practice.
My training, both masters and doctoral degree, was done in a conventional medicine setting at Vanderbilt University. I had significant issues in my pharmacology courses because I was always asking why something was happening so that I could treat the why and alleviate use of medication. This did not go over well. Lol
This was an issue for me because I had studied herbs long before I started into nursing and so I was jaded against the use of medication as a first line of response to an illness. But I did my due diligence, passed the exams, finished my education and became a nurse practitioner.
I started in conventional medicine seeing 25 to 30 patients a day. During this time, I was very frustrated because the things that I had learned to do in school did not work with patient symptoms.
It became abundantly clear that I was not going to be able to continue seeing this many patients and give them the attention that they needed for their chronic illnesses. While I practiced differently than most practitioners, I was finding that I would get hormones balanced somewhat and yet patients still felt fatigue, having hair loss, and other symptoms. My innate desire to find the why continued and I set out to change things.
Thankfully at CHC I was given a pretty long leash on what I could do and was given the opportunity for a lot of continuing education that allowed me to study functional medicine and herbal studies. This was the true beginning of what I do today. After 4 1/2 years, I left CHC to go into private practice where I could give time to my patients, and we could really dive deeply into their health issues.
So back to the discussion Keith and I had over the weekend. It’s only a matter of semantics, but I struggled with what to call my practice.
I had a lot of training in functional medicine which was very important. It gave me the basics for how the body works synergistically. It taught me how to look at how one vitamin worked in so many different pathways in the body rather than just having one job. And if that one vitamin was not there, it affected the absorption of other nutrients, energy levels, cellular function, hormone balance, etc…you get the picture.
But I felt like functional medicine didn’t go deep enough. It was looking at the function of everything in the body, but it seemed to only give lip service to emotions and stress and mental health. These pieces are as important, if not more so, than the physical pieces. While functional medicine looks at way more parts than conventional medicine, it’s still not a complete picture in my opinion.
The other term that we have used off and on is integrative. This term isn’t wrong. I do believe that we can integrate conventional and functional medicine because there are times that we need medications. I don’t think throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the best thing and often in alternative medicine you will see the discontinuation of medications that may be needed. My goal is to have as few as medications as possible, but I am completely aware that there are times that a body needs them. Integrative doesn’t really explain my practice either.
So I used the term holistic. This is a point of disagreement in our household LOL
Mainly because holistic has become the term used by many alternative practitioners offering nebulous treatments that aren’t always backed in science or fact. There are many of these practices that are valuable and there are many that are just plain dangerous.
This not what the term holistic means. The Cambridge Dictionary defines holistic as “dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part.”
The suggestion made in our conversation over the weekend was “why not put a W in front of holistic?”
Again, this is a matter of semantics, but I had to look this up. If you tend towards the nerdy side, you’ll appreciate this paragraph.
Apparently both holistic and wholistic are correct. What is interesting is that they come from two different roots. Holistic comes from the Greek word holos meaning whole (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). Wholistic is an English word hl which means sound or uninjured and is related to health and healing.
No matter how you spell it, the word describes an all-inclusive, universal approach that looks at how the body can work synergistically to bring about optimal health.
So why did I take you down this rabbit hole? Lol
Primarily to tell you how I choose to practice. My practice is more than functional, and I believe it is more than integrative, it truly is Wholistic.
I like to know everything I can about you even though that may take a lot of time. You may have heard me say that when I start to work with a person, I feel like I am sitting at a puzzle table and gathering pieces and putting them together so that the puzzle can emerge. In any puzzle there is many shades of each color, many pieces that have the same color, and there are many differences. Each piece has a big part in the puzzle. If it is missing, we notice it. What I want to share with you is the partnership of putting your puzzle together and seeing how it comes out.
I see the upcoming posts I make as a description of the puzzle pieces and why each of them is important. I want to share with you how they interact and intertwine to be a whole.
I hope that each post will help you in some way and give you more insight into the power you have to be your own health advocate.
I hope you’re as excited as I am about this new venture as I am!
One Comment
Dawn Leone
I love these posts Sarah!! Thank you so much for all of your hard work and understanding for all of us!
XO