Tue | Oct 15, 2024

Benefits of holistic therapy

Published:Wednesday | August 7, 2024 | 12:06 AM

HOLISTIC MEDICINE is a whole-body approach to wellness and healthcare, meaning that the goal is to treat a person as a whole: body, mind, and spirit. Optimal health is much more than the absence of sickness. According to holistic medicine practitioners, all aspects of a person’s health are interrelated, and being unwell in one can affect all others.

Holistic treatments are more about identifying the root of an ailment instead of just addressing symptoms; it is a more realistic approach to healing. It focuses on wellness and prevention, rather than just treating disease.

Dermatologist-turned-holistic medicine expert Dr Arlene Rose said the goal of holistic healing is to improve the body’s natural healing abilities, along with empowering the patient to take charge of their health. This approach, she said, takes into consideration the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of an illness. These aspects are then corrected so that the disease can be managed and treated.

“We do not become ill because we are low in medication levels and need to top up. There is an actual deficiency of nutrients or toxins present, inability to absorb or produce energy, hidden sources of germs or disruption to the communication within the body that is at the root of every disease,” Dr Rose said.

“It makes sense, therefore, that while managing the symptoms you have to also manage the root causes, repair the damage, and stop doing what triggered the illness in the first place. Sadly, we, as a people, are not taught about these aspects of medicine, and so we end up taking medication for life and end up with side effects from them,” she added.

Dr Rose’s journey towards a holistic approach to medicine was born out of her personal struggle to find effective treatment for a medical diagnosis she faced. When numerous visits to medical specialists and recommended treatments proved futile, she embarked on a personal quest to explore more holistic and root cause-oriented treatments to find a long-term solution that worked.

Body scan

“Once the major causes are found, holistic treatment is very effective. We do a particular body scan that is good at finding the root causes within the body, for example, deficiencies, gut issues, dental issues, toxins and specific germs that hide away in the body and are missed by the standard medical tests. This scan technology immediately begins to treat the root cause even while the patient is still being scanned. We combine this with a diet that reverses the root causes, as well by supplying the deficient nutrients,” Dr Rose said.

Dr Rose has over 25 years as a medical professional and businesswoman, and has teamed up with her tech-savvy son, Jason Johnson, to launch the Jamaica Centre of Advanced Medicine (JCAM), the newest integrative medical centre focused on functional medicine.

More persons, she said, are seeking healthier approaches to traditional medicine with a guarantee of the highest quality of care and results. It is very rare, she said, for anyone to come through their doors, follow their recommendations, and not improve.

“We had a patient who came to us who had been told the only option for her knees was surgery. She walked out one month later, [she] was quite fine, and years later is still walking up and down pain-free in her business place without having done the surgery. We have many instances of patients no longer needing walking sticks or crutches after our treatments,” Dr Rose said.

“We have so many patients who were afraid to eat, because of gut issues, who have recovered, as well as many with circulation issues, numbness, and the list goes on. We once had a diabetic, hypertensive who walked in with those issues and a month later they were no more, but in her case her root cause was easy to remedy,” Dr Rose added.

Health coaching, nutrition planning and individualised programmes are standard offerings for each patient. The centre’s medical services include head-to-toe body scan technology; microcurrent, near, far and filtered infrared; different types of lasers; pulsed electromagnetic; and other therapies.

“They are easy, painless, have no downtime, but they give the body what it needs in a form that it both recognises and wants without harmful radiation. We do these usually in combination with whatever medical interventions their doctor is doing to accelerate their recovery,” Dr Rose said.

Dr Rose and her team have treated patients with many different types of autoimmune diseases, including SLE, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, neuropathy, poor circulation, degenerative disk and spinal issues that cause pain and numbness, acid reflux, IBS, colitis, speed healing of muscle injuries and sprains, anxiety, brain fog, and more.

“Many patients we treat are patients who are not responding to the medicines or who either do not desire, or are not suitable for, the medical options available. Many of our patients are on medication that are not working when they get to us, and we allow the disease to improve and their doctors to wean or take them off of them.

Some patients desire a holistic approach right off the bat,” Dr Rose said.

Most patients, she said, show significant improvement within four weeks, and some need up to six weeks for very severe, long-standing issues. Some patients, she said, do a maintenance session every three or so months; and some come back in a few years, or whenever an unrelated issue come up.

For more information on the Jamaica Centre of Advanced Medicine, call

876-754-8719, 876-908-4945 or WhatsApp at 876-819-2365; Website: jcamhealth.com

keisha.hill@gleanerjm.com