What is anthroposophical medicine?
Anthroposophical medicine is described as a holistic and human-centered approach to medicine integrating physical and spiritual components. This system of health care recognizes and uses information acquired by modern medicine in the fields of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and diagnosis to evaluate and treat the living organism, psyche, and spirit. Therapies include conventional cancer care, homeopathics, plants such as mistletoe, rhythmic massage, movement with eurythmy, music, art, psychotherapy, spiritual care, and other approaches.
What are the potential benefits of anthroposophical medicine?
Studies evaluating anthroposophical medicine suggest that this integrative form of health care improves quality of life in people with cancer. In particular, many studies have evaluated the potential benefits of mistletoe as a cancer treatment. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on a variety of host trees such as fir, oak, apple, pine, elm, and others with a long history of medical usage. Research indicates that mistletoe enhances natural killer cell and other T-cell functions supporting the immune system. Study results suggest improved quality of life, reduction of cancer side effects from chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, and possibly increased survival. The largest studies that suggest increased cancer survival with mistletoe used an individually adapted and rhythmically alternated dosage schedule1-4.
What is the organizational structure of anthroposophical medicine as it relates to integrative cancer care?
Integrative cancer care through anthroposophical medicine incorporates four systemic levels that interact together within the human being as a whole—structures and functions of the physical body, regulation of life functions, processes within the soul, and activity of the spirit1.
Matter
Elimination of pathological structures through conventional cancer treatments
Improvement of physical functions
Life
Improvement of health related life functions through mistletoe, other plants, homeopathy, movement with eurythmy, rhythmic massage
Soul
Art therapy with music, painting, poetry recitation, psychotherapy, empathy, dedication
Spirit
Activation of cognitive and spiritual forces through cognitive coping strategies, biography work, meditation, spirituality, meaning, destiny, and religion
What is anthroposophical medicine's perspective about health and disease, especially in cancer?
"...health and disease are not only due to normal or abnormal interactions of molecules but also due to harmonious or disharmonious interactions of processes in the physical life, soul, or spirit organizations of the individual. And casually not only bottom-up, but also top-down processes between the four systems of body, life, soul, and spirit are responsible for what appears as processes of health and disease. This view can be practically applied in anamnesis, diagnosis, and therapy within a systemic and integrative approach to medicine, especially in oncology."
-Anthroposophical Medicine and Integrative Oncology chapter in Integrative Oncology
What is the history of anthroposophical medicine?
Rudolf Steiner founded anthroposophical medicine in the 1920s in Switzerland. Today, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Austria offer this form of health care more than any other countries and anthroposophical medicine is fairly well integrated into their mainstream academic medicine. Today, mistletoe is one of the most popular, extensively prescribed, and investigated integrative cancer treatments in Central Europe1.
"In congruence with the principle of natural science as developed in the occident since Aristotle, anthroposophy relies on empirical cognitive approach to the human being and nature, based on observation and logical thinking. However, in contrast to the reductionist method of restricting science to external observations and the realm of matter only, anthroposophy extends in the fields of inner observations and the phenomena of life, soul, and spirit. In medicine, this results in a rational form of holism in theory and practice that is compatible with conventional medicine and forms an extension thereof."
-Anthroposophical Medicine and Integrative Oncology chapter in Integrative Oncology
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References
- Integrative Oncology by Donald Abrams, MD and Andy Weil, MD
- Kienle GS, Kiene H. Influence of Viscum Album L (European Mistletoe) Extracts on Quality of Life in Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review of Controlled Clinical Studies. Integr Cancer Ther. 2010 May 18. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 20483874.
- Kienle GS, Kiene H. Complementary cancer therapy: a systematic review of prospective clinical trials on anthroposophic mistletoe extracts. Eur J Med Res. 2007 Mar 26;12(3):103-19. Review. PubMed PMID: 17507307.
- Kienle GS, Berrino F, Büssing A, Portalupi E, Rosenzweig S, Kiene H. Mistletoe in cancer - a systematic review on controlled clinical trials. Eur J Med Res. 2003 Mar 27;8(3):109-19. Review. PubMed PMID: 12730032.
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