My grammatically challenged friend Angelo writes:
You are a [expletive] idiot along with your wife.. Holistic is the way our body is built dumbs hit holistic people live longer than other people your Article makes no sense at all coming from a stupid [expletive] piece of [expletive] Canadian like you are.. I am holistic bodybuilder and I have proven holistic is the right way to live.. I can also see you have no knowledge just like. Your wife..
James’s reply:
I suppose I could start off by getting all manly and protective over my wife, but she needs no protecting. I’d laugh my ass off to see this guy get in her face. She’s about to grade for her 2nd degree black belt and would destroy him.
So, I’ll just move along to my first point, which is: you know you wrote a good article when you’re still getting hate mail years later. The article in question was for my LA Times column (which has since been syndicated and moved to the Chicago Tribune) and was called “Holistic nutrition is weak on science, strong on selling supplements.”
I should start off by explaining that I have a love-hate relationship with the word “holistic.”
Merriam Webster defines holistic as: “Relating to or concerned with complete systems rather than with individual parts.” I think we should view our bodies from a more complete perspective. I almost never take any pills at all, and avoid doctors in favor of taking good care of myself. If you can’t sleep, I think you should look at things like stress, exercise level, diet, sleep hygiene, and what you’re doing before bed instead of reaching for a pill.
There are a lot of lifestyle changes that can alter that root cause of your need for a “mother’s little helper,” exercise is a critical component of battling Type 2 diabetes, and you can avoid things like cholesterol lowering drugs and (possibly) even anti-depressant medication by taking better care of yourself. Hell, I fixed my low back with exercise, not pills or surgery.
Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor.
But still, by eating well, taking time to exercise, not fretting about work so much and focusing more on life, you can do a helluva lot to keep you off medication and out of the doctor’s office. I get regular checkups to make sure I’m ticking along just fine, and generally get the “Why are you even here?” question from my doctor.
Yes, taking a whole body / whole life approach to your health is a good thing. Eating healthy, exercising and lowering your stress in order to avoid doctors and medications is also a good thing. I suppose you could say this is a holistic way of living. It’s the way I live. It’s the way I recommend everyone try to live.
But that word “holistic.” Damn. It pisses me off that it’s been co-opted by the friggin’ quacks.
Did you read the article that prompted such hate? You really should, because it explains my love-hate relationship with this word. I’ve read the work of plenty of holistic nutritionists, and there is a boatload of quackery going on.
Is everything they prescribe crap? Of course not. Focusing on unprocessed food is a great idea. It’s all the fear-mongering and supplement pushing and demonizing of food groups and repudiation of science that annoys me. These guys embrace alternative medicine, and a lot of that stuff is just plain old bullshit. If you disagree, and are a lover of alternative medicine, man are you ever reading the wrong website. Go be gullible some place else.
Are all holistic nutritionists quacks? No. Are all registered dietitians great? Also, no.
Yes, the association for RDs gets funding by food companies. That’s not cool, but most RDs think it’s not cool as well. Just because Coke sponsors the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics doesn’t mean that RDs recommend you drink Coke. The actions of the association do not reflect the actions of the myriad students who earn a four-year bachelor of science degree in nutrition from a real university, followed by a one-year internship. Then there is a qualifying exam, as well as annual continuing education requirements. It is a science-based designation, and while some have gone to the dark side, I believe most of them to be solid.
By comparison, a “holistic nutrition” designation often takes only a year and usually completed solely online with no practicum or internship. What’s more, the “universities” that grant these designations, while they espouse impressive sounding accreditations, are often not accredited by any federal government agencies. In other words, their whole accreditation story is a smoke screen where the schools own the accrediting body. Read the LA Times piece to learn more about this. The “PhD” I interviewed to get the other side got his “degree” online from a now defunct college that didn’t have any meaningful accreditations.
I didn’t even know what a holistic nutritionist was until about 2009 ago when I noticed that a lot of the writers for a site I had a column at had this designation. (I don’t write for them anymore.) The only reason I took notice was because of the incessant stream of unscientific hokum they spewed. I started looking deeper, and found that many HNs adopted a similar alternative view of nutrition, and pushed a lot of unnecessary and unproven supplements. The fear mongering was rampant, and I even saw one HN on TV do a ridiculous “rebirthing” ceremony with an obese kid.
In conclusion, if you eat mostly healthy food, don’t overeat, exercise regularly, and watch your stress level, this will go along way to preserving your health and preventing disease. Call this approach what you will; holistic or just common sense, you should do it. But if something IS wrong, then you need to consult with a science-based practitioner, and not some quack that did a multiple-choice exam online.
This piece was first published on my old website on October 10, 2013.
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James S. Fell, CSCS, is an internationally syndicated fitness columnist for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and AskMen.com. He is the author of Lose it Right: A Brutally Honest 3-Stage Program to Help You Get Fit and Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind, published by Random House Canada.