What Holistic Health Care Should Look Like:

Health is more than just the absence of pain or illness—it’s about achieving balance in every aspect of life. Holistic health care takes this broader view, acknowledging that the body functions as an interconnected system rather than a collection of isolated parts. In the realm of musculoskeletal health, this means addressing more than just the site of pain & taking into consideration previous injuries, emotional stressors, previous periods of increased stress (physical or not), lifestyle habits, work, home life, etc.

What is Holistic Health Care?

Holistic health care is an approach that considers the whole person—body, mind, and environment—rather than just treating symptoms in isolation. It focuses on finding the root cause of health concerns by looking at multiple contributing factors, including; physical health, emotional well-being, lifestyle factors, environmental factors. This is what the biospychosocial model encompasses & why it is now the leading model practitioners use for health care. It considers that biology, psychology, & social aspects are all equally important in the expression of health.

In simplistic terms, holistic health care should appreciate the complexity of health & appreciate that there are an extraordinary amount of factors that contribute to someone's pain experience. Rather than relying solely on one form of treatment like medications or spinal adjustments, holistic health care promotes long-term healing and prevention by addressing multiple factors from different avenues of life.

Holistic Health Care in Musculoskeletal Treatment

When it comes to musculoskeletal health, pain is rarely just about one isolated joint or muscle. Instead, pain is often a complex construct of the entire body and its interactions with present daily life & the emotion tied to past experiences. A truly holistic approach considers not only the current issue at hand but a patient's entire story. Their previous injuries, their emotional stressors, work situation, home situation, lifestyle choices, hobbies, etc.

There are many factors to consider and at times it can get overwhelming. This is why it can be much more practical to worry about a few different systems throughout the body rather than trying to affect every potential factor. If we did this nothing would improve & we’d spend our time chasing our tails. So what does this mean for treatment? We’ll quite simply say it's about addressing the physical issues, the emotions tied up to movement & tasks, addressing belief systems that may be contributing to mal-adaptations.

Pain in one area can often stem from issues elsewhere. For example:

  • Knee pain may originate from the hip or foot & is just caught in the middle.

  • Lower back pain might be influenced by a maladaptive strategy of movement resulting in overloading, stress-related tension, previous beliefs ( example is hurting your back from bending over and then believing that bending your spine is bad for you), & much more.

  • Shoulder pain may not be a shoulder issue at all but could stem from altered breathing habits due to a stress response, poor muscle loading in the wrist & forearm, or even stiffness/restrictions through rib cage & pelvic movements.

By treating the body as a connected system—rather than isolated parts—a holistic approach tries to find and addresses the root cause rather than just managing symptoms.

Holistic Factors in Musculoskeletal Health

  1. Musculoskeletal Function
    The musculoskeletal system is an extremely complex system of muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, and connective tissue. There are many arcs and systems intertwined allowing us to deal with forces in real time in controlled & uncontrolled environments. At the basic level we need all muscles sharing load “equally” throughout any specific movement task & we also need our bones to have the ability to move through their full range of motion. Taking these basic principles into consideration we should always consider that one area completely unrelated to another may not be doing it’s job properly resulting in increased stress on another area or an overloading of that area.

  2. Nervous System & Stress Management
     Chronic stress can exacerbate pain by increasing muscle tension, reducing circulation, and triggering an inflammatory response. It can influence our emotional and belief systems which can also influence our pain experience. The nervous system plays a vital role in pain perception, healing, and movement coordination. It governs the output of the system along with the brain & quite often its emotional state will be a large contributor to pain. A holistic approach incorporates techniques like breathwork to regulate the nervous system, improve relaxation, and promote healing.

  3. Daily Habits & Lifestyle Factors
     Your daily movements, sleep quality, hydration levels, work habits all contribute to musculoskeletal health. If someone spends hours at a desk without moving, they are more likely to have an ongoing pain experience & even a well constructed treatment plan can have difficulty making long lasting changes. This is why addressing your lifestyle choices like sleep, ergonomics, hydration, and diet is so important as it helps to ensure longer-lasting relief, better health outcomes, and better quality of life.

What would a good treatment plan involve then?

A good approach to care should always take an individual approach to a person's care & combines a variety of treatment methods and lifestyle interventions. At Seib Chiropractic, we integrate multiple therapies to ensure long-term healing, including:

1. Manual therapy

While this is a broad term, manual therapy for us incorporates joint manipulations/adjustments, soft tissue releases, cupping, dry needling, IASTM, and more modalities. It’s important to have a wide variety of manual treatment options as one modality might work great for someone with low back pain but another person with the same back pain presentation might not have any relief from that same modality.

2. Breath Work & Nervous System Regulation

Many people don’t realize how much their breathing patterns can affect the pain experience. Maladaptive breathing patterns can create excess overloading or stiffness in the muscles around the neck and rib cage, movement of the rib cage, & the ability of the diaphragm to function well (which is an essential foundation to breathing). Learning how to breathe efficiently can enhance relaxation, reduce pain, improve movement patterns, help manage physical responses to stress.

3. Rehabilitation & Movement Therapy

Holistic musculoskeletal care doesn’t just aim to provide temporary relief; it focuses on long-term solutions. Rehab exercises help to solidify short term changes to implement long lasting change. Rehab is key to helping restore muscle function & load sharing throughout our system. This helps to distribute stress reducing the chances of overloading & injury.

4. Lifestyle Management

Healing requires energy, and what we put into our bodies significantly affects how we recover. Some of the things that should always be at the top of our concern is:

  • Nutrition

  • Sleep

  • Stress Management

  • General activity 

Good health care should be holistic.

For true, long-term well-being, an approach should consider all of the factors above and appreciates the complexity of pain & the human body. Addressing symptoms will alwasy be a short term management strategy but addressing potential root causes is key to long lasting change.