HOLISTIC HEALTH

Introduction:
Holistic health approach is an ancient health approach which considers the whole person and how he interacts with his or her environment. It emphasizes the connection of mind, body and spirit.
Ancient healing traditions, as far back as 5000 years ago in India and China, stressed living a healthy way of life in harmony with mature Socrates (4th century BC). Warned against treating only one part of the body “for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.” Although the term holism was introduced by Jan Christraian Smuts in 1926, it wasn’t until the 1970s that holistic become a common adjective in our modern vocabulary.
Holistic health is based on the law of nature that a whole is made up of inter dependent parts. The earth is made up of systems, such as air, land, water, plants and animals. If life is to be sustained, they cannot be separated for what is happening to one is also felt by all of the other systems. In the same way an individual is a whole made up of inter dependents parts, which are the Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. When one part is not working at its best, it impacts all of the other part of that person. Holistic health supports searching higher level of wellness as well as preventing illness. People enjoy the vitality and well being that results from their positive life style changes and are motivated to continue this process throughout their lives.

Definitions:
Holism is a model in health, which involves identifying the interrelationships of the bio-psycho-social spiritual dimensions of the person, recognizing that the whole is greater than sum of its parts. (AHA).



Complementary and alternative modalities:
Complementary therapies are those therapies used in addition to conventional treatment recommended by the person’s health care provider. (AHA)

Holistic Nursing:
Holistic Nursing is defined as all nursing practice that has healing the whole person as its goal. (AHA)

Holistic Nursing:
Holistic nursing is defines as all nursing practice that has healing the hole person as its goal. (AHNA)
Holistic nursing is a specially practice that draws a nursing knowledge. Theories, expertise and intuition to guide nurses in becoming therapeutic partners with people in their case. This practice recognizes the totality of the human being the interconnectedness of body, mind, emotion, spirit, social/cultural, relationship, context and environment.
The holistic is an instrument of healing and a facilitator in the healing process. Holistic nurse’s honor each individual’s subjective experience about health belief and values.
Holistic nurses may integrate complementary/alternative modalities in to clinical practice to treat people physiological and spiritual needs. Doing so does not negate the validity of conventional medical therapies, but serves to complement broaden and enrich the scope of nursing practice and to help individuals access their greatest healing potential.
The practice of holistic nursing requires nurses to integrate self care, self responsibility, spirituality and reflection in their lives. This may lead the nurse to great awareness of the interconnectedness with self, others nature and spirit. This awareness may further enhance the nurses understanding of all individuals and their relationships to the human and global community and permits nurses to use this awareness to facilitate the healing process.
Holistic nursing is not necessity something that you do, it is an attitude a philosophy and a way of being.

AHNA Holistic Nursing Description:
American holistic nursing associates described five values based on which holistic nursing is practiced. And those core values are as follows; standards of Holistic Nursing Practice. American holistic Nurses Association has given five core values as standards of practice.

Core Values 1: Holistic Philosophy, Theories and Ethics:
Core value 1 presents the philosophies concepts that explore what access when the nurses honors knowledge and depends the understanding of inner knowledge and wisdom. It explores relationship centered care. It lays the foundation for transpersonal human easing, the art of holistic nursing and provides insight into how people create change and sustain these new health behaviour changes related to wellness, values classification and motivation theory. Holistic ethics is also addressed in both personal and professional.

Core Value 2: Holistic Education and Research:
A core value 2 addresses the psycho physiology of body mind healing spirituality and health. Energetic healing also is developed to expand further ones understanding and practice of holism. Guidelines for holistic research also are explored to provide a framework for establishing evidence based practice.

Core Value 3: Holistic Nurses Self Care:
Core value 3 develops and explores the concepts of therapeutic presence and the qualities and characteristics of becoming an instrument of healing. It also explores the importance of welfare.

Core Value 4: Holistic Communication, Environment:
Core value 4 explores therapeutic communication and the art and skills of helping. The necessary steps in creating an external as well as internal healing environment are expended to help nurses recognize that each person’s environment includes everything surrounding the individual both the external and internal. Concepts related to cultural diversity are presented so that nurse can recognize each person as a whole body mind spirit being such recognition facilities the development o a mutually concreted plan of care that addresses the cultural background, health beliefs, sexual orientation, values and preferences of each unique individual.

Core Value 5: Holistic Casing Process:
This expands the nursing process to the holistic casing process. The nursing process is a six point circular process assessment, patterns/challenges/needs, outcomes, therapeutic care plan, Implementation and evaluation.
Acupuncture:
Acupuncture literally means ‘needle piercing’ the practice of insisting very fine needles into the skin to stimulate specific automatic points in the body; called acceptant, for therapeutic purposes. Along with the usual method of puncturing the skin with the fine needles, the practioners of acupuncture also use heat, pressure, friction, suction or impulses of electromagnetic energy to stimulate the points. The acu points are stimulated to balance the movement of energy (qi) in the body to restore health.
In short acupuncture is the method to regulate and animation or corrects the flow of qi to restore health.

Philosophy of the Dao:
Dao is often described as the path o the way of life. The laws of the Dao advocate moderation, living in harmony with nature and striving for balance. They believe that moderation in all areas of life is essential to a long and fruitful life. We are fueled by these treasures. Qi or chi, shen and Jing. Chi is the energy or vital substance, shen is the spirit and Jing is our essence. Qi is both the life force and the orienting principle flowing through all things and establishing their inter connectedness. Chinese believe that every living thing has chi in the body. Shen is the treasure that gives brightness to life and is responsible for censcienseness and mental abilities. Sometimes it is compared o soul. Within the individual shen is manifested in personality thought, sensory pertplacen and the awareness of self. Jing is responsible for growth, development and reproduction. Jing represents a persons potential for development Chinese behaved that everyone is born with a firuite amount of Jing. As we go through life, we lose consume our Jing which is not replaceable. But acupuncture can reduce the loss of Jing.
Nutritional Therapy:
Nutritional therapy is a science based yet holistic, approach to illness and health. It promotes treatment of the whole person and focuses a causes and prevention of illness rather than merely suppression of symptoms. A major emphasis of the therapy is recognizing that each of us is bio chemically unique and that effective treatment needs to be custom tailored to each person’s individual needs.
The approach involves you and your practitioner working together to ascertain details of your health, both pat and present. Information will be gathered about your symptoms, family medical history, life style, diet and the environment in which you live and work. These have an important bearing on your well-being and will help yours practitioner to construct a comprehensive picture of your health and devise a programme of treatment for your needs.

Aromatherapy:
It is a holistic treatment of caring for the body with pleasant smelling botanical oils such as rose, lemon, lavender and peppermint. The essential oils are added to the bath or massaged in to the skin inhaled directly or diffused to scent an entire roam. Aromatherapy is used for the relief of pain care of the skin, alleviate stress and fatigue and invigorate the entire body. Essential oils are believed to affect the mood alleviate fatigue, reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. When inhaled, they work on the brain and nervous system through stimulation of the olfactory nerves.
The essential oils are aromatic essence extracted from plants, flowers, trees, fruits, grasses and seeds with distinctive tie, psychological and physiological properties. There are about 150 essential oils. Most of these oils have antiseptic properties, anti-inflammatory, analgesic antidepressant and expectorant. Aromatherapy is one of the fastest growing fields in alternative medicine. It is widely used at home, clinics and hospitals for a variety of applications such as pain relief for women in labour pain reliving pain caused by side effects of chemotherapy and also or rehabilitation of cordial patients.
Aromatherapy is already slowly getting in to the mainstream. In Japan, engineers are incorporating aroma systems in to new buildings. In one such application, the scent of lavender and rose is pumped in to the customer area to calm the waiting customers, which the perfumes from lemon and eucalyptus are used in the bank teller counters to keep the staff alert.

Reflexology:
In the early 1900, William Fitzgerald noted that application of pressure to certain points on the hands caused anesthesia in other parts of body. And this exploration led him to establish this technology.
Reflexology is based on the theory that ten equal longitudinal zones sum the length of the body from the top of the head to the tips of the toes. The purpose of this therapy is two fold, first, relaxation it self is an important goal. Reflexology is effective in helping the body mind restore and maintain its natural state of health because foot manipulation triggers deep relaxation.
The second goal of this therapy is to release congestion or tension along the longitudinal and lateral zones by pressure manipulation at the precise endpoints of the zones. This pressure stimulates the reflexes in the feet to cause a corresponding release.

Yoga:
Yoga is practiced as a way of life that includes ethical models for behaviour and mental and physical exercise aimed at producing spiritual enlightenment.
Yoga consists of various physical postures that are practiced to promote strength and flexibility, increase endurance, promote relaxation and reduce ones response to stress.

Nursing consideration:
Encourage patients to find a type of yoga that is compatible with their physical conditions and goals.

Naturopathy:
Naturopathic medicine is a way of life with emphasis an client responsibility, client education, health maintenance and disease prevention. Naturopaths believe in the vitalist doctrine which maintenance that the organism. Vitality and susceptibility are just as important as or more important than the causes of disease.

Chiropractic Therapy:
This is a manual healing art, developed in 1985 in lowa. Chiropractic science investigates the relationship between the structure (the spine) and function (mainly the nervous system) of the human body to restore and preserve health. The underlying principle is that the functions of the body are controlled by the system (nervous system) mainly 31 pairs of spinal nerves that fed all organs of the body, after branching off the spinal column. Since these nerves are surrounded by vertebrae and other musculoskeletal component any distortion of the structure of musculoskeletal system affects the nervous system. The central tenet of the chiropractic profession is intervertebral manipulation that is characterized by short-lever, specific, high-velocity controlled forceful thrusts deseeds at certain joints by the practiner using his hand or an instrument.

Mind – Body Modalities:
Most people acknowledge that there is a mind – body connection knowing how this communication occurs assists in the understanding of the mind – body modalities of relaxation, meditation and imagery.
Neuropeptides, the neuro chemicals, are behaved to be the messenger molecules that connect body and mind. Neuropeptides have properties that allow them to affect neurologic and physiologic tissue receptors.
Relaxation:
Relaxation is the state of generalized decreased cognitive, physiological and/or behavior all arousal. The relaxation response is characterized by decreased heart and respiratory rates, BP, O2 consumption and increased alpha brain activity and peripheral skin comparatives. The long term goal of relaxation therapy is for the person to continually monitor himself or herself for indicatives of tension and to consciously let go and release the tension contained in various body parts.

Imagery:
Visualization technique is the conscious mind to create mental images to evoke physical changes in the body, improve perceived well – being, and or enhance self awareness. For eg, the client may be directed to begin slow, abdominal breathing while focusing in the rhythm of breathing the client them instructed to visualization occur waves coming to shoes with each inspiration, them seeding with each expiration. Next the client is instructed to take notice of the smells and sounds that he is experiencing. As the imagery session progresses, the client may be instructed to visualization warmth entering the body during inspiration and tension is leaving during expiration.

Meditation:
Meditation seeks to change one’s physiology to a more relaxed state and alter one’s prescription to an increased acceptance of reality.

Nursing Considerations:
Patients seeking inpatient case might have a meditation practice they want to continue. Nurses can provide the time necessary for this.
Biofeedback:
This is a group of therapeutic procedures that use electronic or electro mechanical instruments to measure, process, and provide information to person about their neuromuscular and automatic nervous system activity. The information or feedback is given in the form of analog or binary or auditory/visual feedback. And clients are taught how to read their bodies signals more accurately and are empowered to make therapeutic changes. Educating client how to react more healthfully to their own stress is the work of biofeedback.

Therapeutic touch:
A healing modality that involves touching with the conscious intent to help or heal. Therapeutic touch decreases anxiety, relives pain, and facilitates healing process. The process of Therapeutic touch has four phases.
1. Centering one self physically and psychologically;
2. Exercising the natural sensitivity of the hand to assess the energy field of the client for clue to differentiate the quality of energy flow.
3. Mobilizing areas in the client’s energy field that appear to be men flowing.
4. Directing one’s excess body energies to assist the client to repattern his own energies.

Music Therapy:
Music has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing pain, decreasing anxiety, promoting relaxation etc. music consists of sound waves that vibrate at particular frequencies. When these frequencies are harmonious with our bodies we experience the music as pleasant.

Humor therapy:
Humor cousins was a well know editor of Saturday Review when he retracted spondylitis in 1964. He wrote about using humor therapy to treat his acute and debilitating illness. More secret research (Behnett) found that improved immune response was corrected with experiences of mirthful laughter.

Nursing Role in Complementary And Alternative Therapies:
The majority of people using and seeking information about CAM are well educated and have a strong desire to actively participate in the decision making about them health case. The integrative medicine approach is consistant with the holistic approach nurses are taught to practice Nurses have the potential for becoming essential participant in this type of health case philosophy. Many nurses already practice forms of CAM by offering relaxation, imagery massage and therapeutic touch to their clients. Nurses should be knowledgeable of CAM therapies to make appropriate recommendations to allopathic primary case provides about which therapies may be useful for clints. It is also important for nurses keep abreast of the current research being done in this area to provide accurate information to every one.

Conclusion:
The development of CAM continues to be a patient-driven phenomenon. Clients seem to be increasingly unsatisfied with allopathic treatments and are turning to CAM for relief of symptoms and heating. There is a great opportunity here for nurses to expand their practice to meet existing patient needs as well as to promote health. Holistic care for an identification of areas in which holistic nurses can improve patient care. As new modalities demonstrate their effectiveness, they can be added to the assessment. Nursing is expanding its knowledge base to include information that explains selected CAM. Higher education facilities are available in holistic nursing. It is expected that CAM will become a larger part of the practice of nurses.

Bibliography:
Books:
1. PotterPatricia A, Perry Anne Griffin;
“Fundamentals of Nursing” ;( 2005); 6th edn; Missouri; Mosby Ine 968 – 987.
2. Carol Tayler, Carol Lillis Le Mone;
“Fundamentals of Nursing”; 2004; 5th edn; Philadelphia; Lippircott Williams and Wilkings ; P P 685 – 705.
3. Lowis White; “Basic Nursing”; 2002; A1bany; Delmas Ine; PP 345-369.
4. Lewith G, Kenyen J, Lewis P;
“Complementary Medicine an integrated approach”1998; Oxford University Press; PP 36-38.
5. Dossey Montgomery B, Keegem L, Gazette Cathic; “Holistic Nursing, A Hared book for Practice”; 2004;4th edn; Massachusetts; Janes and Basllett Publishers; PP 5-898.
6. Adles C, Adles S; “Biofeedback and psychosomatic Disorders”; 1989; 2nd edn; Baltimore; Lippincott Williams and Wilkins; PP 10-89.

Journals:
1. Eisenberg D and others: Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997, JAMA 280:1569, 1998.
2. Good M: Effects of relaxation and music or post operative pain a review, Journal of Advanced Nursing 24:905, 1996.
3. Krieger D: Searching for evidence of physiological change, American Journal of Nursing 75:784; 1999.
4. Heidt P: Effects of therapeutic touch on anxiety level of hospital lived patients, Nursing Research 30:32, 2002.
5. Folders S: The basic concepts of alternative medicine and their impact on our views of health, Journal of Alternate and complementary medicine 4:147, 2004.

Wed Sites:
www.holistic.com
www.holisticnursing.org
www.AHNA.orgwww.AHA.com