Natural medicine assesses the symptoms as a sign or reflection of a deeper instability within the person, and it tries to restore the physical and mental harmony that will then alleviate the symptoms. Holistic medicine recognizes that the human body is superbly equipped to resist disease and heal injuries. But when disease does take hold, or an injury occurs, the first instinct in holistic healing is to see what might be done to strengthen those natural resistance and healing agents so they can act against the disease more effectively. Results are not expected to occur overnight. But neither are they expected to occur at the expense of dangerous side effects.
Natural healing is more or less an attitude.
For example, when you have a headache, instead of immediately reaching for aspirin, which may injure the lining of your stomach or cause even more serious side effects, you reach for a pillow and try taking a nap. Instead of reaching right away for valium, which can cause fatigue, loss of coordination, and worse, try relaxing those muscles with local applications of heat. Instead of going immediately to potentially addictive pain relievers, consider an osteopathic manipulation, which will often remove the cause of the pain. Before going to surgery, consider first an exercise program, which in many cases can make surgery unnecessary. Some heart attack patients never reach the hospital alive, not just because of the condition itself, but because panic may cause further constriction of the blood vessels, imposing an intolerable additional burden.