Holistic medicine explained by applied nutrition practitioner

Jolandi Dreyer, a certified Live and Dried Blood Analyst and Applied Nutrition practitioner aims to encourage people to live a healthier life and look after their bodies.

Although holistic and natural is the way to go for the 39-year-old, she respects and honours the choices of those who prefer to follow the modern medicine path.

“Holistic medicine works for virtually anything and people usually turn to this type of medication when they feel that modern medicine didn’t work for them.”

She explained while growing up, her mother favoured natural remedies so she was used to holistic medicine and knew about it from a young age. In 2016 she started struggling with her health and needed to have her gallbladder removed, but because she had a five-month-old baby she didn’t want to go this route.

She consulted a homeopath and did research about how natural remedies could assist her with her problem. Five years later she still has her gallbladder which is healthy and functioning well.

“It made me feel satisfied that I had fixed what I had broken just by diet and natural remedies, and I haven’t used allopathic medicine since.”

She stated that this did not mean that she would never use allopathic medicine again, because it has its place, but it hasn’t been necessary for her since they adopted this kind of lifestyle. She explained that holistic medicine has many modalities such as homeopathy, herbalism, kinesiology and iridology but they all have one thing in common – they aim to restore harmony between the mind, body and soul in order to heal.

According to Jolandi, holistic medicine sees the body as an ecosystem that strives to be in perfect balance and harmony every day, but if one of the elements is off balance, it will affect the other elements if not corrected.

“Your body will remain healthy or heal itself if it has everything it needs, like proper nutrition in the form of natural foods, water, air, rest as well as the correct energy flow, but your body also needs a joyful mind and to be at ease.”

She said holistic medicine is based on knowledge passed on through time and generations such as boererate, African Medicine, Chinese Medicine and Indian Ayurvedic.

“Because of modern medicine and science, ancient medicines and healing methods have been sidelined because there is too little or no proof that they work. Scientific studies are expensive and usually funded by pharmaceutical companies.”

Jolandi explained that because natural medicines cannot be patented it is no use to do expensive scientific studies, but thousands of small scientific studies about natural remedies have been published.

“Many chemical drugs are produced by isolating a chemical compound from a plant to create a synthetic version of that compound, which can be patented.”

She explained that the benefit of holistic medicine is that it works with the body and not against it, and instead of giving medication to suppress the symptom, a holistic practitioner aims to fix the imbalance by asking what imbalance is causing the symptom.

According to Jolandi, this type of medicine is useful for lifestyle diseases like diabetes, auto-immune conditions, cancer and digestive problems, just to name a few. She added that this does not mean that a person should not receive medical treatment, but that holistic medicine with diet and lifestyle changes could get the body back to optimal health.

“I like the way holistic medicine puts you in charge of your choices and own body, and gives you a sense of power which is needed for healing.”