70. Holistic Health vs Modern Medicine - The Conversation We Actually Need

We challenge the false choice between holistic wellness and traditional medicine and argue for a balanced approach that uses the best tool for the job. We lay out how modern healthcare saves lives in crisis while lifestyle, recovery, and daily habits drive prevention, resilience, and better long-term health. 
• defining modern healthcare versus holistic health in plain terms 
• recognizing modern medicine’s strengths in acute care, imaging, diagnostics, medication, and surgery 
• understanding why many chronic issues tie back to lifestyle and daily decisions 
• separating prevention and optimization from crisis management 
• using strength training, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and recovery to support aging well 
• spotting how identity politics and social media reward extreme health takes 
• choosing context over tribes and matching the intervention to the situation 
• building discernment around misinformation, bias, and reading research claims 
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Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Live Transformed, the podcast from Transformed Health Initiative, where evidence-based truth meets real life transformation. Lead yourself, integrate health, value what matters, engage in the process. This is how you live transformed. And now here's your host, Adam Kelly.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

What is up, everybody? You wonderful people out there. Happy Friday. Well, if you're not listening to this on Friday, then uh happy whatever day it is. But I'm recording this and I am putting it out on a Friday. So happy Friday. Um, we're getting pretty good at getting back to consecutive weeks, uh, even though it's a different day, but you know, that's just kind of how life happens sometimes. It's been busy around here. My kiddos are finishing up school, and so we've got all the awards assemblies and all the activities and all that fun stuff on top of you know maintaining business and whatnot. So, anywho, I want to start this episode by saying I know in the past, you know, the last handful of episodes, I said that I'm gonna start doing episodes where it's just kind of off the top of the head. It's more of just like a discussion type of feel to it because I feel like that's you know, personally a little bit more authentic. It gives you guys a view of who I actually am as a person and what we truly stand for on more of a personal but yet business level. But with this episode, I wanted to do things a little bit differently. So I went ahead and actually built this episode and made sure that I have a bit of a script to follow because this is a very, very important subject. I would say this may be one of the most important episodes that I've ever released out of I don't know what, the 70 episodes. Now I think this is episode number 70. Out of all the episodes that I've done, I feel like this may be the most important topic because this really hits right where my business is and where

Holistic Vs Modern Care Defined

SPEAKER_01 2:05

a lot of people are confused and go back and forth. And I feel like if we can get some clarity on this subject, then it could potentially help change lives and at least impact your journey in a positive way. So today's episode is one of those that I've really want to talk about for quite a while now, especially with the direction that my practice has been growing in lately. So, as many of you may know, or maybe not, maybe you haven't caught the episodes. If not, go back and listen because what are you even doing? I recently added therapeutic massage and movement care into the practice alongside personal training and nutrition coaching, recovery work, and everything else that we already do here at Transform Health Initiative. And because of that, I've noticed more conversations have been popping up around the idea of holistic health versus traditional medicine. And it's almost like people kind of see that these two worlds are like enemies, or they you're they're good versus evil, or this one's right, this one has to be wrong. Kind of that extreme pendulum swing type of situation. And I really want to just sit down today and talk about why I personally don't believe that they have to be at odds at all. Okay. I do not feel that they're enemies, and I'm gonna show you guys the fact that they're not. All right, at least from my perspective. Maybe you have a different perspective, totally fine. We can see things differently, but I want to give you a little insight into how I see things. So, you know, in fact, I honestly believe that we're living in one of the greatest times in human history when it comes to our ability to improve our health, to improve our quality of life, and support ourselves both physically and mentally when it comes to our well-being, okay? Really the full spectrum of human health and well-being. But I think that a lot of people get trapped into this mindset that they have to pick a side between the two. So you're either typically completely natural, completely holistic, anti-medication, anti-medic, modern medicine, anti-hospital, all the things. Or you may be someone that's fully dependent on the medical system and completely disconnected from lifestyle, movement, nutrition, stress management, recovery, personal responsibility, and all of the things on more of the holistic side of health. And personally, I think both extremes can become unhealthy. You know, typically truth is found in the gray area in the middle, not on extremes. So today I want to have a real conversation about it. All right. This isn't political. I'm not trying to be argumentative. This is just practical information and perspective that may help you on your journey. Because at the end of the day, I think the goal should simply be to help people live better and to move better and to feel better and to stay healthy longer. So I hope we can accomplish that or at least get you thinking through this episode. So, first,

What Modern Medicine Does Best

SPEAKER_01 5:05

let's kind of define what we're talking about here, all right? Because maybe I already lost you when I said holistic versus traditional medicine. So when people talk about traditional or modern healthcare, they're usually referring to things like physicians, specialists, medications, surgeries, imaging, diagnostics, emergency medicine, hospitals, physical therapy, disease treatment, so on and so forth. But let me say this clearly right out of the gate. I mean, just think about it, all right? Emergency medicine, trauma care, antibiotics, life-saving surgeries, medical imaging, the ability to detect diseases early, the ability to replace joints and repair organs and save people after accidents, you know, stabilize infections, help manage serious illnesses. That stuff is pretty dang amazing, if you ask me. And honestly, I think sometimes people in the wellness industry tend to forget all of these good things about modern medicine. The fact that modern medicine has saved countless lives. So if someone gets into a serious car accident, I promise you, they're not going to be looking for turmeric or stretching exercises, all right? They need emergency intervention, right? They need trained medical professionals. And we should be grateful for those advances. But at the same time, when people talk about holistic health or wellness, they're usually talking about things like exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, body work, recovery, hydration, nervous system regulation, lifestyle habits, so on and so forth. And those things absolutely matter too. Deeply, deeply matter. Because when modern medicine is incredible at crisis management and acute care, a lot of the health struggles people deal with every single day are heavily tied to lifestyle. Okay. So we can see the two sides here. We can already see how the two sides can be beneficial together. So in our day and age, even though I feel like we lived in one of the best times as a human in human history, we're also seeing skyrocketing rates of things like obesity and type 2 diabetes and chronic stress

Lifestyle Health And Daily Habits

SPEAKER_01 7:25

and anxiety and poor sleep and inactivity and chronic pain and low energy and burnout and metabolic dysfunction. You know, a lot of these things are not solved by one pill or one surgery or one appointment, right? A lot of these things require daily habits, daily movement, daily decisions, daily care. And that's where I think wellness professionals, coaches, trainers, therapists, massage practitioners, and recovery specialists can play an incredibly valuable role. Not instead of medicine, all right. Don't get me wrong, not instead of medicine, but alongside it. That's the part I think people miss. These worlds don't always have to compete. Sometimes they can complement each other beautifully, right? At least I know from my own personal experience. I've had surgeries and obviously I am in the quote unquote holistic health practice world. So I've experienced both and have had success and uh not success with both. So one thing that I've really learned as I've gotten older and I've worked with more people is this prevention and optimization are different than crisis management. Okay. And both of them matter. Modern health care often steps in when something has already gone wrong. And thank God that it exists for that reason. Okay, it's more of like reactive care. But wellness practices help support the body before things spiral out of control. Okay, we can think of this as like preventative care. So strength training helps prevent uh preserve muscle mass, it helps support metabolism, it helps improve insulin sensitivity, and it helps improve the quality of life as we age, which I know everybody listening to this is interested in aging well and enjoying life in our latter years. So, cardiovascular exercise, it supports heart health. Um, nutrition supports energy and recovery, body composition, and overall health outcomes just in general. Sleep literally affects everything. Stress management matters more than people realize, and I think finally people are starting to realize the significance of stress management when it comes to their health and how their body operates. And I hope I'm playing some sort of part in that. And massage and body work can help people relax and reduce tension and improve movement quality and reconnect with their body. Okay, walking more matters, hydration matters, movement matters, and we now have overwhelming evidence supporting many of these things. That's the beauty of this. The science is finally catching up to what's always been. We know that regular physical activity is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality. Beautiful things there that physical activity can help us avoid. We know that resistance training becomes increasingly important as we age for maintaining muscle mass and bone density and function and just independence in life, you know, being able to do things for your own self and not have to have somebody take care of you. I think we all want that too, right? We know chronic stress affects inflammation and recovery and pain perception, sleep quality, mental health. This stuff isn't just wellness culture, okay? You can't see my quotations. A lot of it is well-supported science. Like I said, you can do the research now. We have access to a lot of information that we never had access

The Danger Of Health Tribalism

SPEAKER_01 10:55

to before we had the world wide web, or I guess now AI for a lot of people. And uh, you know, honestly, I think this is probably one of the biggest problems today is that people have started turning health into identity politics. So everybody wants to pick a tribe, right? We're we're tribal by nature, it's just ingrained in us, and everybody wants to pick a side or pick a tribe. That kind of like that um you're either with us or against us mentality, right? And that mentality is honestly dangerous, okay? It puts people at risk every single day because now people stop asking what's useful or what's evidence-based or what's appropriate for this situation, and instead they ask, which side am I supposed to support? You see this division that's here, just like we see in politics, just like we see in religion. But we need to understand that health doesn't work that way. Real life doesn't work that way, okay? I also think that social media has made this worse. I think you could probably agree with me here too, because extremes always get attention, okay? Extremes sell. The person saying modern medicine is poison, they get the attention, right? They get all the likes and shares and follows. And the person acting like, oh, lifestyle doesn't matter, just take this medication forever, just take these GLP ones, and you don't have to exercise and you don't have to change your diet. That also gets a lot of attention, right? That also gets all the likes and clicks and shares. But real practitioners working with real people every day usually live somewhere in the middle ground there, right? And that's where I like to stay. I like to just settle myself right in the middle because that's usually where the truth is. Well, at least the good ones do, okay? I'm not gonna act like all practitioners are here for the betterment of everybody and they just want to see people healthy and they're not have you know, not trying to stick to any bias or preconceived idea, and they just want to get to the root of the truth, even if it means that they have to admit that they were wrong and change their mind. Okay, that doesn't always happen. And I'll be honest with you, as someone working in training and nutrition movement and now therapeutic massage and body work, I see both sides helping people every single day that I come into work. I've seen exercise transforms people's confidence and health and energy, mobility, and their quality of life. I've seen stress reduction completely change how someone feels physically, that the two sides are actually connected to each other. I've seen body work help people reconnect with parts of their bodies that they've ignored for years, how their body actually moves and operates and how it feels on a day-to-day basis.

Bridging Training And Recovery At THI

SPEAKER_01 13:41

If your body feels tight, worn down, or just off more often than it should, that's not something you just have to live with. A lot of people are doing the workouts, trying to eat better, staying active, but they're still dealing with constant tension, nagging aches, low energy, and their body's just not responding the way it should. That's the gap. At THI, we bridge the gap between training and recovery, combining strength training, nutrition, and targeted body work to improve how your body actually functions. You don't just look better, but you actually feel better, move better, and perform better in your everyday life. If that's the piece you've been missing, we're here when you're ready. All right, back to the episode. I've seen strength training help people feel capable again. I've seen nutrition improve energy and daily function dramatically. But I've also seen people who generally need medical intervention, people who need imaging, people who need specialists, people who need medications, people who needed surgery. And pretending one size has all the answers is just not reality. All right. I think wisdom is learning how to use the best tool for the situation. Context is key. I say this about everything. Context is key. Context, context, context. That is maturity, that is balance. Okay, that's real health

Context Matters Choosing The Right Tool

SPEAKER_01 15:05

care. And honestly, I think we're incredibly blessed to live in a time where we have access to both worlds. Aren't we? Isn't it just amazing? You we just need to take a second, guys, and just really just count our blessings. How good is it that we can learn how our body functions, what's best for our body, how to take care of it. But not only that, but when things do go wrong, rather they be in our control or not in our control or caused by us or not caused by us, it doesn't we don't have to succumb to it because now we have these medical advancements. It's really just a beautiful thing. You know, we have access to better exercise science, big time in the last probably 10 to 20 years, better nutritional understanding, definitely growing there, better recovery methods, better mental health awareness. That's one thing I love about this new generation coming up, is they tend to be a little bit more in tune with mental health. Whereas my generation, and if you're older than me, I'm 36, possibly your generation and your parents' generation usually ignored mental health and just kind of swept it under the rug. And then when, you know, they were mentally chaotic and it just affected their family and trickles down, and now I think people are becoming more aware of it, and I'm happy about that. Uh, you know, we got things like wearable technology. We can track our steps, we can track our heart rate, we can track our glucose, we can track so many different things now. We have medical imaging where we can catch cancer ahead of time, you know, we can catch disease before it really sprouts and starts causing real damage in the body that can't be undone. You know, we've got advanced diagnostics, you know, lines right along with that. We've got surgical advancements, you know, things that used to cripple somebody or take someone out. Now we can actually go in and get fixed and get back to our normal activity. You know, we've got physical rehabilitation methods. So instead of just being broken forever, when something happens, we can actually start getting better and fixing these things. And we have more information than any generation before us. Okay. Way more information than anybody before us. Now, obviously, that also comes with a lot of misinformation, too. A lot of misinformation. I've spent the last at least 10 to 13 years of my life dispelling a lot of this false information, researching these things, studying these topics to see what's actually true. And I can tell you, fake news sells best, and there is a ton of false information out there. But the potential is also incredible, guys. If we learn how to stop seeing everything as opposing forces, it's amazing what we can do with what we have access to. And honestly, I think it's one of the reasons I've expanded what I do over time because I realize that transformation is not just about weight loss. It's not just about building muscle, it's not just about calories, it's not just about workouts. You know, it's also about things like stress and recovery and movement quality and nervous system state and sleep and pain and tension and mobility and mindset and you know how people actually feel in their bodies daily. And I want people to move better and to feel better and to recover better and perform better and to live better. That is the goal, folks. Not winning arguments online, but actually helping people. All right. So, no, I personally do not believe holistic wellness and traditional medicine have to be enemies at all. I think they both have strengths, I think they both have limitations. I think wisdom

Discernment, Bias, And Personalized Care

SPEAKER_01 18:45

is learning how to use both appropriately while staying grounded in evidence, common sense, and genuine care for people, for whoever is in front of you. And at the end of the day, your body is not political, okay? Your health is not a trend or a fad, and your well-being deserves more than extreme thinking. So I appreciate you guys for spending some time with me today. Hopefully, this episode gave you something to think about and kind of a different way to see the difference between the two. And hopefully it's also encouraged a little more balance and perspective when it comes to health and wellness, okay? That is the goal here is to see that we don't have to pick a side, okay? We're not deciding between what is right and what it's wrong. We need to assess both of these. We need to, what is it, not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need to eat the meat and spit out the bones. There's so many different phrases about what I'm saying here. We need to learn discernment and how to one read scientific journals and read studies and know, even if in a very, very, I'm not like an expert by any means of reading scientific information whatsoever. Um, I just am obsessive about things I care about. So I try my best to get to the best answer that we have in our modern time before science figures out more as we go along. Um, so I'm not any expert by any means, but I can take a conclusion of a study. I can look at some of the details in it and, you know, decipher, hey, were they being honest here? Like, were they actually considering all things? Was it a strong enough control group? You know, was it randomized, or you know, how was this study set up? And is the study actually showing what the person is claiming that the study's showing? And I think everybody, we all need to sharpen ourselves here. And if you don't have any idea how to read scientific literature, studies, journals, then this is a good place to go if you truly want to optimize your health and your well-being. Because, like I said, social media is a big problem here, and it really all industries have biases. Okay, let's not front about that. I have biases, you have biases, you all have biases. But do we want to just stay in those places just so we can be right when maybe we're actually harming our health in the process, or at best, neutralizing any benefit that we could get from that other side if we were to just try to figure out what actually works for us? Because a more holistic approach may work for me and not for you. A more traditional medicine approach may work for your sister and not for your child. You know, it doesn't mean that because it works for somebody else, that that's the best option for you. You have to learn your body, you have to learn what you need, you have to learn how your body operates, what environment you need to be putting yourself in, and what you need to do so you can truly maximize all the health benefits that we have at. access to between both worlds of holistic health and modern health

Share The Message And Closing

SPEAKER_01 22:05

modern medicine all right so as always if this help if this episode has helped you please please share it with somebody who might benefit from hearing it okay definitely helps us get the word out help more people because that's why we show up all right so until next time do something good for yourself something good for your health something good for those you care about and whatever you do make sure you live transform and win on purpose talk at you next time this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only we share general health and fitness information and professional experience not individualized medical advice this content does not replace professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine