Homeopathy and Integrative Medicine
From the narrative of One Health to One Medicine
From the narrative of One Health to One Medicine
One Health has become a significant concept in the field of medicine and healthcare, especially in discussions relating to strategies aimed at resolving Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).
Initially, One Health promoted the coming together of medical experts in the human and veterinary fields in order to drive progress in medicine. This initial understanding has broadened over the years and resulted in the current definition of One Health proposed in an article by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel in 2022[1].
In point 5 of their key underlying principles, they advocate the broad representation of all perspectives including the traditional sector (see below).
In the article, the authors acknowledge that much still has to happen for all specialties and knowledge fields, which need to join up to improve the health of people and the planet, to be able to cooperate in a fully developed One Health framework in order to achieve the anticipated positive outcomes of this approach. This is also the central theme of a report produced by the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors[2].
Health versus absence of illness
The word health is central to the principle of One Health and therefore needs to be understood in the same way by all who wish to cooperate.
It is usual to consider health to be the absence of illness. This is understandable because medicine or, more specifically, modern medical interventions, are very much focused on diagnosing, treating or preventing illness. As a consequence, health services tend to be organised around the treatment and prevention of illness (diagnoses).
More modern propositions, such as the Huber proposal, state that the emphasis of a definition of health needs to be on the ability to adapt and self-manage in the face of social, physical, and emotional challenges[2].
The emphasis on self-management is essential in this modern view of health: health is considered as the means and capabilities of a living being, or a living system, to cope with both the expected and unexpected challenges of life.
If this view of health is preferred, then the main aim of medicine needs to be to foster health and resilience. Instead of focusing on removing, curing or preventing an illness, the approach is to support the patient, or living system, in such a way that its internal regulation, repair and general resilience mechanisms regain their ability to either overcome an unhealthy state or to be better prepared for the challenges of life.
In this approach to health, the diagnosis, or the identification of the illness, is the reason the patient seeks a consultation. A treatment plan has to be established based on the specific needs, individual sensitivities and environment of the patient aimed at supporting the normal natural innate mechanisms that assure the patient’s health.
No patient can be seen as isolated from their environment. Every individual is in constant exchange with, and needs a rich contact with, their environment, which is in its own right preferably healthy, in order to maintain their health. The term One Health comes fully into its own in this view as one of its key underlying principles is: social equilibrium that seeks a harmonious balance between human-animal-environment and acknowledgement of the importance of biodiversity, access to sufficient natural space and resources, and the intrinsic value of all living things within the ecosystem.
Life hygiene
The importance of general life hygiene undoubtedly plays a major role in the health of a population. In cases where this hygiene is not as ideal as it might be or individual sensitivities mean that some do not enjoy a sufficient quality of life, health services need to propose methodologies that can help each individual to improve their health balance and resilience, regardless of their life situation.
Individuality
When the patient is considered in their specificity and personal environment, each patient becomes an individual who will benefit from an individual plan for achieving the best possible outcome for their care.
Current approaches in healthcare which focus on treating patients based on their diagnoses tend to be ill-adapted to this individuality principle. Integrative Medicine is a modern movement searching for ways to provide more individual-specific help to improve care outcomes.
Fostering health and the Traditional and Complementary Integrative Health care sector
The perspective of fostering health proposes that all interventions, whether social, political, economic or medical, aim at the improvement of the health of people, animals and the environment.
Traditional and complementary medicines (TCM) have developed techniques that adapt to the individuality and complexity of each patient and their relationship with their environment. These techniques principally aim at helping patients to regain health and are less oriented on a treatment or diagnosis which does not take the whole patient into consideration.
The different TCM modalities offer a variety of approaches to achieve this, thus providing a rich field of concepts and expertise that can be used to develop an Integrative Medicine based on One Health principles. These modalities express themselves as Traditional and Complementary Integrative Healthcare (TCIH) when they cooperate with modern medicine in healthcare settings[4].
The particular example of AntiMicrobial Resistance (AMR)
This fostering health and resilience approach ought to receive much more attention in relation to AMR and other current health issues.
In the case of AMR, the main approach and strategies are built on a classical view of infectious illness sometimes referred to as the Germ Theory[5,6]. This approach seeks to treat and avoid infectious illness by concentrating on the infectious agents themselves and on ways to avoid or eliminate the infectious agent from the patient.
This tends to ignore or overlook the role of the host and the specific pathogen-host relationships at work in infectious illness. It does not answer the question of why some may fall ill, or very ill, after contact with an infectious agent, while others may suffer no ill effects at all.
It needs to be realised that the Germ Theory approach, which focuses principally on the infectious agent, has resulted in AMR; hence a different approach merits due consideration. It is well-known that any antibiotic pressure results in more resistance.
A health approach that seeks to foster health and resilience will reduce reliance on antibiotic medicine and consequently reduce AMR.
One Health towards One Medicine
In order to comply fully with One Health principles, medical techniques must be able to adapt to the individuality of patients, be non-toxic for the patient and the environment, and be useful in the fostering of health of the environment (i.e. farming and other ecosystems). Homeopathic medicine complies with all of these criteria.
References
1) One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) One Health: A new definition for a sustainable and healthy future. https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1010537
2) Report by the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors. https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/document/download/22fb9028-d9ca-466d-a6fd-02b34226f44a_en
3) Huber definition of health https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4163
4) The People’s Declaration forTraditional, Complementary and Integrative Healthcare www.tcih.org
5) The Germ Theory Paradigm https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-38941-2_2
6) A systems approach to infectious disease https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-020-0212-5
