Holistic care means the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional parts of each person are treated as a whole. By using this approach the possible causes of an illness are targeted, not just the symptoms. About.com states: “Holistic healing involves looking beyond the physical when choosing therapies and better choices to bring about balance to the ‘whole’ being.“ Another definition is: “Holistic relates to, or is concerned with, complete systems rather than with the details or parts that make up the system.”

Holistic care is less about fighting disease and more about restoring someone's health. It is less about fixing and more about healing, as it requires improving the condition, and addressing the root causes of a problem. Holistic care encourages people to use their internal self-healing ability.

Holistic care may involve things like:

Diet Nutritional supplements Homeopathy Cranial osteopathy Mindfulness meditations Yoga Tai Chi Acupuncture Psychotherapy

Holistic care is preventative. It seeks to correct what might be causing a problem. Holistic are requires you to be much more involved. Specific actions might need to be taken. In holistic care, pain is considered to be a sign that something is going wrong that needs to be corrected as a first step, and to not be masked with medication.

In holistic care a lot of patient education happens. You may receive information about healthy foods to eat, exercises to do, etc. Holistic care is not passive care. Each patient must be actively involved to carry out the recommendations, as each person is considered to be the source of his or her own healing.

There are holistic dentists, nutritionists, and massage therapists who focus on the whole person, and helping people heal what might be occurring, not just fixing what is seen as the problem.

In conventional or traditional medical care (allopathy), practitioners are trained to listen for symptoms, order tests, and then write prescriptions. Conventional medical care focuses on fixing what is wrong. This most often means that the symptoms should stop. This allows a large number of patients to be seen (12 or 20 minute appointments), medications and surgery are regularly prescribed.

Allopathy is considered to be biologically based, and includes scientific progress that includes vaccines and specific drugs used to treat disease. Biologically based means physical ailments and/or problems are primarily what is looked at and treated. In allopathic care treatments are generally medications or surgery. 

In allopathy mental illness and emotional disorders are usually seen as either brain diseases or, in earlier allopathic practices, as character flaws. Physicians seek to treat these disorders by affecting brain physiology with pharmaceuticals (first choice is medications) and/or with counseling or behavior modification. Allopathic medicine does not initially emphasize the mind’s impact on health or healing.

The term holistic also refers to a person who tends to be good at understanding the large picture, and at relating large areas of information to each other.