Because a lifetime of sugar abuse can cause significant damage to the body, some sugar addicts struggle with serious medical conditions resulting from years of an abusive diet. Improving your diet and getting some regular exercise are great first steps toward improving your health, but you may consider widening the scope of your health improvements to include stress management, personal growth, and holistic medical care.
Conventional medicine — prescribing prescription drugs — hasn’t proven to be very effective in improving the health and well-being of those who struggle with nutrition and lifestyle issues; these drugs don’t have an impressive track record for assisting people with stress, anxiety, or emotional wellness.
Drugs can come with harsh side effects, too. Because doctors generally prescribe these prescription medications to treat lifestyle diseases, you may get more comprehensive advice about improving your health through nutrition and lifestyle changes by building a team of complementary medicine providers around you.
Complementary medicine (sometimes called integrative medicine or holistic medicine) is a catchall term used to describe a method of patient care that combines conventional Western medicine with complementary treatments such as nutrition supplements, acupuncture, massage therapy, yoga, and stress reduction techniques.
Complementary medicine strives to treat the whole person, not just the disease symptoms. Examples of some integrative medicine therapies that have proven to create positive patient outcomes are:
Acupuncture
Biofeedback
Chiropractic
Exercise programs
Health coaching
Massage therapy
Meditation and mindfulness practice
Mind-body therapies
Naturopathic medicine
Nutrition counseling
Tai chi
Yoga
Integrative medicine is no longer considered fringe because it has proven to be a smashing success in medical centers that have implemented it within their systems. The number of hospitals that now offer complementary therapies has more than tripled in the last ten years, and another one-fourth of hospitals say they plan to add complementary therapies in the future.
Duke Integrative Medicine and the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative Health are pioneers in the field, serving as successful role models for other medical centers seeking to develop their own integrative medicine programs.