7 Tips To Support Your Integrative Treatment

Congratulations! You’ve taken the first crucial step in making a full recovery from an injury or illness by working with an integrative medicine specialist. You realize that healing requires a personalized approach and is like a puzzle. No one piece of the puzzle alone is likely to restore your optimal health. 

Whether it’s surgery or drugs or more complementary modalities such as yoga, acupuncture, meditation, affirmations or massage, several pieces of the integrative healing puzzle will usuallybe required. Perhaps the most important piece is you. 

Here are 7 tips for supporting your integrative treatment. 

Tip 1: Make A Full Recovery Priority #1

There is a simple equation to keep in mind when you first embark on a new treatment plan and it looks like this:

Percentage of Recovery Desired = Level of Commitment

If you want to experience a 100% successful integrative therapy treatment plan, then you need to fully commit to it. 

Here’s an example of full commitment…

Let’s say you have a vacation scheduled to the Turks and Caicos. The luxurious trip was scheduled months ago but now is set just after your integrative treatment plan commences. Do you decide to embrace the carpe diem spirit on your trip as scheduled, sipping tropical cocktails poolside? Or do you place healing first and postpone your trip until after homeostasis has been achieved? 

If you want to support your integrative treatment, look forward to the day when you can travel in a state of perfect health. 

Are you somebody who emphasizes the well-being of others before your own? It’s time to break that pattern. Now is the time to prioritize your health and wellness before anybody else’s. You can only be operating at your fullest potential and highest vibration by placing your healing first. When you make a full recovery, you’ll be of better service to those you care about. 

2. Be Patient & Trust The Process

Just like with weight loss and strength training, the process of healing can be stymied by plateaus or even setbacks. But keep in mind that healing is not like running the bases in baseball. Sometimes, setbacks occur and just when you think you’ve rounded third base and headed for home, you trip and get tagged out, so to speak. 

In other words, even with integrative therapies, healing is not always linear. Just because your preconception of integrative therapy and innovative medicine is that it’s more holistic and therefore more in alignment with your values than allopathic medicine (conventional Western medicine), it doesn’t mean that your healing process will occur in logical increments. 

So be patient and trust in the process. It’s natural to have doubts. After all, even Mother Teresa’s personal diary revealed that she sometimes experienced crises of a lack of faith. However, the saintly humanitarian always reverted to a bedrock position of belief. 

And when it comes to your integrative therapy, it helps to trust in the process even if setbacks occur. 

3. Have A Strong Support System 

Are the people in your life being fully supportive of your healing? Or are they energetically interfering with the recovery process? As difficult as it is to break the yoke of strong family bonds and that of friends with whom you have a long history, it’s crucial to surround yourself only with people who will support your integrative treatment. 

If your integrative health specialist, for example, recommends biofeedback therapy for stress and a family member or friend ridicules it, this negative reinforcement can interfere with your healing potential. 

Seek people who are also fully committed to functioning at their highest level. Just as some people who desire great wealth affiliate with wealthy people, surround yourself with other wellness ambassadors. 

Listen to natural health podcasts. Instead of binge-watching a zombie apocalypse series, devote time to watching videos on wellness, stress management, brain entrainment, nutrition, etc. 

4. Support Integrative Treatment With Proper Nutrition

Speaking of nutrition, you’ll increase your chances of making a full recovery if you eat right. 

If you want your body to have normal inflammatory reactions instead of hyper-inflammation, then you need to eat high-nutrient dense foods that are right for your body and your level of healing. 

Eliminating foods and drinks with added sugars will support this goal. So start paying attention to nutrition labels when you go food shopping. Since 2016, “added sugars” has been required by food manufacturers to help consumers keep track of their sugar intake. 

As part of your integrative treatment, you may have food sensitivity and/or food allergy testing. If the testing reveals you’re sensitive or allergic to a specific food, then avoid it. In order to support your integrative treatment, there is no cheat day.

5. Get Enough Restful Sleep 

An integrative/innovative medicine specialist is like a symphony conductor, not a magician. This means that your specialist can help guide your treatment plan but can’t do it without your help. 

Quality sleep, which means that when you wake up you feel refreshed, is one of the most underrated pieces of the healing puzzle. 

On a basic level, you already know that getting enough sleep is required to avoid feeling tired. But there’s so much more to sleep. For example, getting enough restful sleep is necessary to remove toxins from the brain and to support the immune system. 

Use all the tools available to help you get better quality sleep. 

• Make the room cool and as dark as possible. 
• Cocoon yourself in blankets. 
• Use an eye pillow infused with relaxing essential oils. 
• Use a white-noise machine to drown out car alarms, noisy neighbors, and sirens. 
• Power off all blue-light-emitting electronics such as smartphones, TVs and laptops. 
• Go to sleep well before midnight and don’t look at any electronic screens for at least an hour before bed. 
• If necessary, listen to a deep-sleep meditation app on your phone (in airplane mode, if possible). 
• Take constructive rests such as mini-meditation breaks during the day if you feel mentally drained. 

6. Positive Thinking For Integrative Treatment Recovery

It’s important to be aware of fear mode or negative thoughts that can manifest as inflammation in the body. 

Even if you’re having a moment of doubt, quickly revert your thinking back to a state of positivity. You will make a full recovery. You deserve to make a full recovery. And through the power of positive thinking, you will eventually achieve a state of perfect homeostasis and feel like you’re once again living in full alignment with the universe. 

This isn’t just New Age cheerleading. Numerous research studies (such as this one) bear this out. 

7. Believe In Yourself

None of these tips for supporting your integrative treatment will be as effective unless you fully believe not only in the process but also in yourself. Your body and mind have a tremendous potential to heal. Don’t doubt this fact. You may have moments of doubt. After all, as mentioned, so did Mother Teresa. But never stray from the core belief that you have the capacity to make a full recovery and live the pain-free and symptom-free life you deserve.