Hardly anyone will dispute the growing environmental consciousness that has taken place on a global scale in the past 10 years. The term green has become a part of our everyday lexicon. It should come as no surprise then that the “green awakening” has now trickled down to how we take care of our bodies.

What is green medicine, you ask? Green medicine is defined as taking a more holistic approach to healing. Green medicine goes beyond trying to understand the physical and encompasses the mental, emotional, environmental, energetic, psychic, and spiritual aspects of the human experience that can also impact our overall health and sense of well-being.

Much like the green movement taking place with the environment, advocates of green medicine strive to reduce the amount of toxins that enter our bodies. In this case, the toxins are the drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies. Advocates of green medicine believe that the body has the extraordinary ability and power to repair and rebuild itself and to help reverse even serious illness through diet, nutrients, and detoxification procedures as opposed to the use of synthetic drugs.

Green medicine could potentially grow in importance, not only from an ideological perspective, but also from an economic one, especially among consumers, who face rising healthcare costs. From a physician perspective, green medicine is definitely a revolutionary idea to embrace, because it completely reassesses and challenges the established methods and practices of Western medicine, which looks at the human body from a reductionist point of view, meaning the body is viewed as a component of parts. Green medicine views the body as a system, in which all the parts are interrelated and have one effect on our overall health.

Dora Rivera is VP, account planner at H4B Chelsea. This post originally ran on the Euro RSCG Life blog.

Image credit: Creative Commons/mhonpoo@flickr.com