Allopathic Essay

The practice of medicine has vastly developed since the beginning of its time. Dating all the way back to the ancient eras of the Chinese, Babylonians, and Greek traditions, there have been undeniable medical advances that have grown from these building blocks of well-being. These advances and traditions over time have established the way healthcare is practiced across the globe today. Modern medicine can be exemplified in a scientific and technological approach, called allopathic, or it can be practiced in a more traditional holistic nature. These two practices are becoming more relevant as patients are developing further knowledge about their healthcare needs. So, which is the better of the two? Does one stick to the hard facts that science

Shirazi (2012) defines allopathic medicine as the “practice of conventional medicine that uses pharmacologically active agents or physical interventions (like surgery) to treat or suppress symptoms or pathophysiologic processes of disease” (Definitions, para. 1). An example of the allopathic approach can be simplified into a patient’s visit to their primary care provider for knee pain. The patient is asked a series of questions regarding their symptoms. The provider will then address that specific knee pain issue and then treat accordingly, whether it is a prescription to alleviate the pain or recommending a series of exercises to mobilize the joint. The patient will then return to their clinic if that treatment is unsuccessful in which the provider will re-assess the symptoms and look for any underlying causes to continue with further treatment. On the contrary, according to Shirazi, the holistic approach “represents the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, social, etc.) cannot be truly determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines how the parts

To continue with the example of knee pain in the holistic approach, there was a study conducted on massage therapy and osteoarthritis in the knee. This study gathered the participant’s responses to the quality of their care when treated with massage therapy in stating that “responses noted empowerment with an improved ability to perform activities of daily living after experiencing massage therapy. The majority of statements were consistent with their quantitative changes on standard osteoarthritis measures” (Ali, Rosenberger, Weiss, Milak, & Perlman, 2016). This study demonstrates that those individuals treated by massage therapy for osteoarthritis in their knees had success in relieving the discomfort. Meanwhile, a closely related commentary discusses the allopathic side in regards to patients taking prescriptions for osteoarthritis derived knee pain. This commentary declares that while oral anti-inflammatory medications are nearly the most common treatment for pain management, “ regular use of these agents has no impact on disease progression and, in fact, they may accelerate OA [osteoarthritis] progression due to higher resulting forces across the knee joint [37-40]. Therefore, their long-term benefit on HRQoL [health-related quality of life] is doubtful.” (Farr, Miller, & Block,