Relationship between Health and Culture - Essay Example

My second meeting aimed at forming a good relationship and good bonding with him so that he listens attentively to what I say to him without bringing any personal bias in between. His readily agreeing to thorough examination indicated that he is gaining confidence in me (Taylor, Shirley, 2006).

On diagnosis, I explained to him that he had prostatitis and he needed to take some medicine to cure the suffering. However, he conveyed to me that he would take the medicine along with some herbal treatment. As a health care provider, I knew that he would not like to give up his herbal treatments. In their belief system, it is woven that Western medicine alone may not be enough to support a holistic healing process.

I quickly realized that American Indian’s healing modalities and treatment processes are to be understood in a different context. The fundamental objective of all AI healing is to maintain a spiritual equilibrium between the environment and patient that is capable of transforming mental and physical health.

Kenneth Cohen who is not Native American by birth, presents his personal views from his working experience of 30 years in this tradition. He was trained by Keetoowah, an American Indian, giving him the name of "Bear Hawk" in various healing methods. His long immersion in this tradition gave him the inner sight that how these healing principles and modern scientific findings can unite and cure the disease from the holistic viewpoint of body, mind and spirit. The difference lies between the current medical practices and the American Indian healing processes in that the former takes into consideration only the body while the latter mainly deals with the inner part – mind and spirit (Broome, 2007).

Native American herbal science is worth investigating for it serves several of its purposes:
- Plants and herbs contain active components and do provide biological benefits in activating the body system; it focuses on health and healing the person in contrast to Western Medicine which mainly focuses on pathology and curing the disease (Cohen, Kenneth, 2003).
- They believe that plants possess spirit and provide the solution when they are connected to the patient. That is why the process of smudging has taken root in their traditions. However, physically the smudging processes do not cause any harm to the body and thus no harm in accepting the tradition.
- Native herbal specialists use plants that come in their dreams as they believe that it is the plant’s spirit that guides the healer and it is in their tradition to empower the plant’s healing potential by way of prayer, chants and some kind of rituals. Here, the healer simply behaves as a counsellor and advisor in contrast to the physicians considering them an authority (Cohen, Kenneth, 2003).

Cohen himself was of the view that though herbs can treat symptoms at a physical level without such empowerment they will not treat the deeper causes of illness. The healing process of American Indians is thus based on the principles of unification of spirit, mind and body. It empowers patients with awareness and confidence to take charge of their health; however, western medicine makes patients dependable on medication and its technology (Cohen, Kenneth, 2003).

Thus, the traditions of American Indians play such a crucial role that even the World Health Organization has recommended to integrate them into national healthcare policies and programs (Johnston, 2006). Based on the above insights, I realized that American Indian’s viewpoint is complementary to what modern science attempts to do. Moreover, AI traditions do not pose any threat if the modern treatment process is integrated with their old traditions.

I discussed all this in detail with Mr Wolf and his wife and they readily agreed to cooperate with me for they realized that I am giving due respect to their traditions and herbal treatment processes and they assured me that they will follow my guidelines in implementing the treatment methodologies which will take also care their traditions as and when found necessary. In the end, I conveyed my gratitude to them for having cooperated with me with their great understanding and trust in me.