The Integral Vision of Health

It is well known that a change in our inner world will inevitably translate into a change in our outer world.

Current orientations in the field of health defend the need for a holistic vision of the human being, proposing a broader intervention model that unifies and integrates all the variables that make up our reality. Important changes have taken place both in our conception of health and in our understanding of disease.

The new medicine opts for an integral vision of disease, which looks at the person as a whole, taking into account his or her physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual dimensions. The human being is no longer considered the result of a mere biological function.

Today we are aware that we can produce changes in our organism and manage our own health. This is perhaps the main advance in current therapeutics that marks a real difference with traditional medicine, which is more mechanistic and materialistic, and where the patient plays a merely passive role.

Offering a good intervention strategy implies contemplating all the aspects that used to constitute and encompass the reality of the oncological patient, from the purely physiological and mechanical dimension to other more personal and subtle dimensions.

Effective therapy cannot be offered without delving into the psychic reality of the patient.

Beyond the boundaries of the physical body

For many years, conventional medicine relied on an exclusively biomedical model, defending an exclusively biological perspective of health and disease that neglected psychological, emotional and social aspects in its evaluations and therapeutic measures.

Between psyche and body there is an intimate connection that we must keep in mind at all times, both to understand the underlying causes of the disease and to awaken the healing potential of the sick person.

Those who maintain a merely functional and mechanical view of themselves will see nothing more than a breakdown in their organism, but illness can offer us valuable information that allows us to have a greater understanding of how we are psychologically and emotionally, how we are treating and caring for our organism and ourselves, and also how we feel about our existence and the life we lead. Illness is not an isolated phenomenon that concerns only the reality of the physical body. Many times, it exposes us and reveals the existence of a lack of coherence between what we do, what we feel and think. A kind of disagreement and contradiction with ourselves that ends up leading us to a loss of balance that demands, as an immediate and urgent measure, a time of retreat where we can reorder our values and real needs more in line with our inner feelings. Illness could then become a useful element that helps us to rescue our abandoned authenticity. Illness can become your teacher.

It is known that a high percentage of cancers are due to our behavioral patterns. Cancer could be avoided if we could modify many of our behavioral habits and come to understand the fundamental concepts surrounding health.

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The medical profession is learning that you can’t understand disease unless you understand

the disease unless you understand the person who has the disease

because the body and the mind are a unit that can only be understood by the person who has the disease.

is maintained through the mediation of nerves and molecules.

Dr. Bernie Siegel

Mind-body therapies of unquestionable efficacy and validity are now included in the treatment of cancer. Many healing procedures through mental activity such as meditation, relaxation, visualizations, hypnosis, bioinformation or the use of bionergetic therapies are being incorporated into traditional medical treatments.

The human mind, our thinking, is capable of producing biochemical changes in the brain for or against our well-being. The mind and the body constitute a single, essential whole. There is no separation between what happens in the mind, such as thoughts, feelings, emotions, and what happens in the body. Our mental state can change the state of our body through the central nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system.

Of course the influence goes both ways. The body influences our mental states in the same way that mental states influence the body. Our thought is the product of an electromagnetic wave which in turn is transformed into chemical energy which in turn is transformed into mechanical energy which allows for a physical response. At the same time, every mechanical action is accompanied by a chemical reaction that produces a thought and generates a concrete mental state. It is not possible to separate the psyche from the soma.

Cortisol, known as “the stress hormone” is produced by our adrenal glands when we are faced with a situation that puts our physical integrity or our mental health at risk, and is responsible for regulating blood pressure and the immune system. It is known that high levels of cortisol can block the production and action of cytokines (proteins that mediate immune activity) and consequently weaken our defenses.

Recent research in the field of psycho-neuroendocrine-immunology (PNEI), a new specialty of medicine focused on the analysis of the interrelationships between the psyche and the nervous, endocrine and immune systems, has made important advances in this aspect.

Positive thoughts and emotions activate and strengthen areas of the brain related to the immune system. Mind, brain and body interact with each other at the molecular, cellular and organic levels, and can also impact our health.