Chronicles
1 September 2025
Toward Sustainable Health
Toward Sustainable Health: Combining Complementary and Environmental Medicine
What if healing wasn’t just about treating symptoms, but about understanding the full range of causes that affect our well-being? That’s the goal of the integrative approach, which combines complementary and environmental medicine. Together, they help shape a more global, more sustainable—and deeply human—vision of health.
An Approach That Takes the Environment Into Account
Environmental medicine is based on a simple yet fundamental idea: our health is influenced by what surrounds us. Air and water pollution, endocrine disruptors, household or food-related chemicals—all of these elements can have a real, often invisible, impact on our bodies. By identifying these risk factors and implementing strategies to reduce them—at both individual and collective levels—this form of medicine aims not only to treat but to prevent illness.
A Global View of the Individual
Complementary medicine, on the other hand, doesn’t focus solely on physical symptoms. It considers the person as a whole: body, mind, and emotions. Practices such as meditation, acupuncture, relaxation, herbal medicine, or yoga can help regulate stress, improve sleep quality, or relieve chronic pain. These methods support conventional medicine and contribute to a better quality of life.
A Promising Alliance
When these two approaches are integrated, they create a powerful synergy. On one side, they address environmental sources of imbalance. On the other, they strengthen the individual's inner resources. The patient becomes an active participant in their own health, guided by strategies that are both preventive, curative, and sustainable.
A Few Concrete Examples
- Reducing exposure to pollutants: teaching patients how to choose less toxic cleaning or personal care products, reduce plastic use, and improve indoor air quality through better ventilation.
- Managing stress: incorporating meditation, yoga, or breathing exercises into daily routines to calm the nervous system and better cope with environmental or emotional pressures.
- Adopting mindful eating: choosing local, organic, minimally processed, and seasonal foods to support health while reducing one’s ecological footprint.
A Medicine of the Future, Already Taking Shape
More than a trend, this integrated approach reflects a shift in how we view healthcare: a medicine that heals without harming, that prevents before treating, and that respects both people and the planet. It invites everyone to rethink their habits, to care for themselves—and for the world around them.