Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Examining the Levels of Scale in Holistic Healing for People with Hypertension

Patient-Centered Care vs. Disease-Centered Care in High Blood Pressure

As we’ve discussed, in health care, our usual focus is the person level of organization. In conventional medicine, there is a perspective called “patient-centered care.” Patient-centered care, which concerns itself with the issues of who-has-the-disease, is distinguished from disease-centered care, which concerns itself with the issues of what-is-the-disease. In other words, the person is more important than his/her disease label. A person with high blood pressure or hypertension has a problem that manifests in the cardiovascular system. When the heart relaxes between beats, the pressure in the arteries does not fall back down into a normal healthy range.

Sometimes this elevated blood pressure comes from a stiffening of the the walls of the blood vessels. We also know that drinking too much caffeine, being under emotional stress, and many other factors can contribute to higher blood pressure.

Disease-centered thinking in conventional medicine revolves around the cellular and molecular level of scale. However, research has shown that many of us prefer to have a relationship with a provider who gives us patient-centered care in the sense that we are informed about our disease(s) and all of our treatment options and participate in decisions about how to proceed (rather than being told what to do).

Rather than focus just on the elevated blood pressure, which is risk factor for other health conditions such as heart disease and strokes, it is essential to look at the various levels of scale where the problem is showing up.

Organizational Levels of Scale
As said before, you are a system unto yourself, but you are made up of other systems at lower levels of organizational scale (e.g., circulatory system, immune system); and you are a part of still other systems at higher levels of organizational scale (e.g., families, communities, living creatures on earth).

* Higher Level of Organization: For a complex living system, each next higher level of organization has emergent properties, that is, behaviors that the higher level can generate, but that its component parts at a lower level cannot (a person has” behaviors” that a liver or heart by itself does not).

At the same time, there is a bidirectional feedback loop of information, from the global to the local level and back the other way. It is the feedback that allows the global (person level) and local (body parts level) to influence each other’s function, that is, to define your unique “you-ness.”

Levels of Scale from a Systems Perspective

Another way of understanding the holographic qualities of health and healing is to look at levels of scale from a systems perspective – true holism. Many systems, especially living systems, have a self-similarity or theme (also called “fractality”), at every level of scale. The self-similarity is a geometric concept, in which an object is irregular but similarly irregular at every degree of magnification, i.e., close up and far away.

In conventional anatomy, the self-similarity occurs in body parts such as different levels of organization of the bronchial tree. In complementary therapies, the self-similarity is not in physical structure so much as it is in patterns of function or dynamics (change). People can be in self-similar ruts of disease, just as they can be in ruts with relationships or jobs. The same idea is true for processes and functions – such as you, your body, and your health in your life.
Thus, under environmental stress (psychological or physical in nature), a person prone to asthma may experience an asthma attack. Their “rut” is responding with anxiety and asthma under certain environmental challenges. A different person might respond to the same environmental factors with irritability and a migraine attack.

You are literally “doing your own [unique] thing” in your world. And, in chronic illness, you are doing your own unhealthy thing over and over. The names and faces (specific content or details) may change from event to event, but the storyline repeats the same process through time.

Holistic Medicine: Learn About the Big Picture of Chronic Disease and Health Care

If you are looking to learn about the big picture of chronic disease and health care, you must first be aware of the bad, the ugly, and the good. These facts provide the foundation for building a personalized approach to holistic healing through what I call the ABC principle.

The Bad – The Problem of Chronic Conditions
In the past century, chronic diseases (those lasting 6 months or more) such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, lung diseases, arthritis, and many others have become a much larger health problem in the U.S. and other developed nations than are infectious diseases.

One out of every ten Americans suffers from a chronic disabling condition such as arthritis, back problems, a heart or lung condition that reduces quality of life over periods of years. Seventy percent of the deaths in the U.S. each year are due to a chronic disease. Seventy-eight percent of health care costs are for treatment of chronic diseases. In short, chronic disease eventually touches all of us — ourselves and our families.

The Ugly – The Risks and Confusion of Current Health Care
Although modern mainstream medicine has made many amazing advances in prolonging lives and controlling symptoms, people with chronic diseases know from their own experience that the available treatments often bring many limitations, side effects, and problems.

For example, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that over 2 million hospitalized patients in 1994 experienced adverse drug reactions, including over 100,000 fatal drug reactions.

The number of deaths from “properly” prescribed drugs placed prescription drugs as the sixth leading cause of death in this country, after heart disease, cancer, stroke, lung disease, and accidents and before pneumonia and diabetes. Yet, eighty percent of older adults take at least three medications daily. Patients on five drugs also have a 50-50 risk of suffering from an adverse drug interaction. The rates of adverse reactions seem to be rising even more in recent follow-up studies.

The Good – The Option of Personalized Holistic Healing with the ABC Principle

You can learn to build your own effective individualized program of holistic healing care that includes practitioner-provided and self-care interventions – but you have to understand where each option fits into the big picture.

Many publications on CAM are either introductory overview encyclopedias of treatment modalities or in depth explanations of one type of CAM. But, all CAM treatments — just as with Western medicine — are not the same, in terms of their potential to help different people with different types of health conditions.

By considering these elements first, people with chronic illnesses of all types can develop a big picture plan or roadmap of strategy and tactics before diving into the specifics of dealing with any life challenge — in health or another area.

Holistic Medicine: Using the ABC Principle to Create a Personalized Approach to Holistic Healing

You can learn to build your own effective individualized program of holistic healing care that includes practitioner-provided and self-care interventions – but you have to understand where each option fits into the big picture. A lot of publications on CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) are either introductory overview encyclopedias of treatment modalities or in depth explanations of one type of CAM. But, all CAM treatments — just as with Western medicine — are not the same, in terms of their potential to help different people with different types of health conditions.

As a consumer, you probably find it hard to decide what is best for you. Many people combine treatments without giving much thought to interactions — good or bad — between them, let alone the potential for the package of care to help them overall.

Picking treatments for a specific health problem just because you prefer something more familiar or easier to do, rather than something less familiar and harder to try could keep you from maximizing your results. And, picking treatments — or, sometimes, providers, because they helped Aunt Alma is no guarantee that you’ll get what you need to solve your problems.

For many people with chronic illnesses, putting together a handful of vitamins and minerals and herbs is a way to start, but it is usually not enough. True healing is a complex but rewarding journey, not an overnight cure from a magic pill. Putting your options into a larger perspective will make it much clearer for you to know what to do.

The ABC principles refers to three different concepts that are used as a basis to help you determine an effective treatment for specific health problems such as fibromyalgia, diabetes, thyroid, ms (multiple sclerosis), lyme disease, and lupus via alternative medicine methods.

The ABC Principle:

§ Assess: Assess your options and how they might help you. Re-assess the benefits and risks before you begin and periodically throughout treatment for each intervention and for the package of care that you choose.

§ Balance: Balance yourself as a living system whose body parts all play different, essential, and interrelated roles within you, by balancing the elements of your treatment package to serve your ability as a whole not only to survive, but also to thrive.

§ Coordinate: Coordinate the elements of your treatment plan as a whole, interconnected system of care intended to balance you, not as a patchwork collection of things-I’d-like-to-try-and-see-what-helps-each-separate-symptom.

The ABC Principle is a way to create your own individualized plan for getting the most benefit and least risk from the integrated package of care that you will develop.

Holistic Medicine: Thinking about Your Health Care Options As You Make Decisions

Mainstream conventional or Western medicine is the politically dominant form of health care in developed nations. The central world view assumption about nature in Western medicine is that the person is a physical entity in which some external cause produces an effect (disease manifestations).

Conventional Treatment vs. Alternative Medicine

Conventional treatment consists of doing something at the local physical level to block the cause from acting on the body. Disease is considered a foreign enemy attacking the body in a particular place. Conventional physicians rely on pharmaceutical drugs as their main tool. The focus of conventional medicine is looking for a single cause to produce a single effect.

However, it also is possible to use nutritional supplements and herbs or botanical supplements as though they were drugs. Many health care providers and patients can hang onto their world view that nature is just a physical place in which disease is an external enemy – and they simply substitute natural products for drugs.

The natural products may — or may not — be safer than the drugs, as supplements are also much less regulated and standardized. It is less certain what you are actually taking. With thoughtful research, however, you can find safe and effective supplements. How you use them is another matter.

CAM Healing Systems

Many CAM (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine) healing systems see chronic disease as a deeper problem with multiple causes that all possible “right living” may not prevent. A host of interactive factors may still enable the expression of disease. Inherited disease vulnerabilities (e.g., through genetics), unintentional dietary errors, environmental toxins, negative social settings with perceived daily hassles and stressful major life events (negative traumas or even major positive changes) can foster development of disease.

The spiritual challenges that you face in life and any impaired resilience in throwing off their effects to bounce back may play out in the specifics of these factors and lead to development of disease.

The CAM Whole-System-Oriented View

Many CAM therapies, even ones that are not derived from the Eastern cultures, have a different way of conceptualizing the world of nature and of healing. These therapies intervene to allow the network system to heal itself from within and thereby work better overall. Whole systems-oriented care is focused on healing the person from the inside out. The complexity of living systems makes it hard or impossible to find a simple single cause for events in the system.

There are levels into which health care options fall. Each has its own implicit assumptions, world view philosophies, and science behind it. Unfortunately, it is possible to use many of the CAM health care options in a conventional local way, that is, to force the body parts to stop manifesting disease.
For example, one Western way to use guided imagery tells one cell to attack and kill another cell within the person. A more systems-based way to use guided imagery or various forms of art expression asks the body part to dialogue with the whole person, tell the person what the larger message of the symptom or the disease is, and advise the best way to resolve the imbalance or problem for highest good of the person as a whole.

People who have used biofeedback can tell you that trying to make a body part behave in a certain way does not work. Trying to make something happen rather than let something happen causes stress in your mind and your body, and you cannot achieve the goal.

You have to allow the biofeedback from the body part teach you when you are passing through the desired state of being – then the equipment lets you know whenever you have achieved it. You can allow, but not force, the desired state to occur more often and more reliably.

Holistic Medicine: Are You Better or Worse?

Overnight cures are wonderful miracles. They do happen. Rarely. Gradual cures are far more common, especially with whole systems of CAM (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine). So, expect a possible miracle – or at least a solid improvement, but be prepared for a longer haul and perhaps less than a complete miracle. Many people are healed but not cured. Aim for both cure and healing. Do not settle for just coping better with your chronic disease unless you have given a systemic approach to treatment a good try for a reasonable period of time without success.

In the end, it may be that you do not get all the way to a cure, but you can still improve a great deal and experience much healing as a person.

How long to give your treatment options?

Any therapy could begin helping as quickly as within a few hours or days in a chronic condition. However, on average, you should be able to look back after six months and again after one year from when you set your intention and start your treatment program — especially the constitutional treatment — and realize that you have come a very long way. Nutritional supplements are not drugs and may require 4-6 months to begin hitting their maximum benefit, even if they start working sooner.

Five and ten years from now, you may look back and see that you have transformed or at least that you are in a wholly different place as a human being than you were at the worst of your chronic condition. In most cases, your healing process will have progressed noticeably.

Expect the Improvements to Last

Also, expect that the improvements are lasting, not that you are better one month and then back to where you started the next. If you get better and then relapse, the treatment is not acting at a sufficiently deep level of the system to hold. Discuss the situation with your providers and make adjustments in the overall plan. This may mean changing to another treatment option level or adding another type of care within a given level. It may also mean changing to another provider.

One approach that I like to use is applying major concepts from one field to another. Somehow deeper truths reveal themselves when you find the information pointing in the same direction. Thus, expand your reading beyond books on health and healing.

For instance, a short little book like The Dip (see Resources), one that many business entrepreneurs might read, can help you frame your own progress with your health care choices in terms of when it makes sense for you to stay with a treatment or a provider and when to quit and move on to a different treatment or a different provider of a treatment for which you still hold hope of benefit. Another simple but profound book, The Tipping Point, might help you see how many factors converged to set you off onto a path of illness and how many other factors and changes might converge to re-direct you onto a good healing path.

Pacing

Your disease and your healing will have their own pace. You will find it necessary to honor that pace. Trying to rush it is counterproductive and will be another lesson to learn along the way. The pace of systemic healing usually reflects the intrinsic way you are in life – perhaps fast and intense or slow and methodical. You heal in your own way just as you develop disease in your own way.