Dear Dr. Shawn:"Last year I started taking better care of myself. I've incorporated holistic therapies, and improved my diet by eating more organic foods and less processed products. While my husband does not share my enthusiasm, he is supportive of my healthier lifestyle. Here's my problem:I want to provide this same improved lifestyle for my dog and new kitten. My husband likes our current veterinarian who is strictly conventional and does not see any reason to find a holistic practitioner.
Can you provide an answer for me to give him when he asks what a holistic veterinarian does differently than a conventional doctor?"
A:"That's a good question. As you have experienced yourself, a more
holistic approach is making you healthier and feeling better. Instead of just supplying my thoughts to your question, I posed it to my holistic veterinary colleagues around the globe. Here are some of their answers, and I'll conclude with my own.
One holistic veterinarian answered your question this way: "The quick answer is that a holistic physician treats the patient and a conventional one treats the disease. A
"holistic" veterinarian looks at the "whole" animal and not just the "condition" that the owner is concerned about. With holistic treatment, you will generally see an improvement in the "whole" animal overall. In "traditional" care, we are trained to treat "X"
condition with "Y" treatment (very cook book method) as we learned in school or from a book. In "holistic" care, we treat the patient after evaluation of the individual, entire
patient."
Another doctor shares this: "Practitioners of complementary medicine have
more treatment choices. Because of this, they may be better able to use less toxic, more holistic therapies than veterinarians not trained in complementary care."
A third doctor replied that she uses therapies "with little to no side effects and tries with as little manipulation as possible to encourage the animal's own healing abilities." She believes that a holistic doctor approaches an animal thinking, "how can I help this animal become healthier?" rather than, "how can I diagnose and treat this disease?" and then, perhaps, the animal will be healthier.
Here's the answer I gave during a recent TV interview: When doctors only offer conventional therapies, if they can't help the pet that is the end of the story. With complementary
therapies, doctors have twice as many treatment options as before and can help many of the pets that previously were untreatable. Also, conventional doctors are trained to "treat" diseases and patients. By incorporating a holistic approach doctors have learned to "heal" pets rather than just treat them, increasing their ability to help their patients by improving their quality of life.
