(Part 1) WHAT is Green Medicine?

Joanne Sienko Ott, CFA
Nov 6 · 3 min read

Why Aligning #SDG3 Good Health & Wellbeing with #GreenMedicine will have the most Impact

To achieve the 2030 Agenda towards sustainable development, large investors, NGOs, enterprises, and governmental agencies aim to target theUN’s Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) by aligning funding and tracking their impact to each of the SDGs. As they attempt to push the needle further to make real impact with SDG3 Good Health & Wellbeing outcomes — #GreenMedicine will be the game-changer.

The 3-part series will explain the WHAT, WHY, & HOW of #GreenMedicine to impact SDG3.

(Part 1): WHAT is Green Medicine?

(Part 2): WHY Green Medicine matters?

(Part 3): HOW alignment towards Green Medicine for SDG3 impact is the game-changer

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(Part1) WHAT is Green Medicine?

Akin to its cousin #GreenEnergy, #GreenMedicine is biologically centered, sustainable in treating ‘root-cause,’ and non-toxic. Likewise, they both require their biological ecosystem to be balanced to maintain health.

Biologically Centered

Green Medicine is a biologically centered approach that addresses the complexity of disease and health. It is person-centered care that treats the whole-person as a complex-adaptive system and promotes the innate healing capacity of our bodies to restore optimal health. Green Medicine is a science-based approach grounded in systems-biology, where ‘the whole is bigger than the sum-of-parts’ when treating patients.

Sustainable

Green Medicine is sustainable in treating ‘root-cause’. Its approach is to understand the underlying cause of dysfunction and then focus on restoring the structural bio-integrity of the body. The patient is engaged and empowered through an individualized treatment plan. In contrast, conventional medicine focuses on disease-management to treating chronic symptoms, often requiring life-time annuity payments to #BigPharma or on-going expensive interventions that don’t get at the ‘root-cause’ of disease.

Non-Toxic

Green Medicine is biologically safe. It ascribes to a Therapeutic Order of treatment that first maximizes benefit and reduces the potential for damage or harm in the process of re-engineering health. Often, conventional medicine is associated with negative side-effects that recur in the process of suppressing symptoms. Green Medicine is the ultimate “Hippocratic Oath = Do No Harm.”

Green Medicine (an appropriated meme) is synonymous to Integrative Medicine(IM). These practices frame treatment from a wholistic (salutogensis) approach in addressing the physical, mental, spiritual, social, and environmental factors that influence health. They treat root-cause to restore optimal health and depend upon unique biomarkers that indicate where there might be dysfunction (i.e. inflammation, microbiome imbalance, environmental toxins, and vital life energy). Non-invasive treatments are preferred, but when necessary conventional medicine that is invasive is combined with Integrative Medicine toprovide the best synergistic effort towards optimal health.

Green Medicine = Integrative Medicine (IM)

Common IM approaches are:

· Functional Medicine

· Naturopathy

· Traditional Chinese Medicine/Acupuncture

· Chiropractic

· Etc.

#GreenMedicine practices are evidence-based-medicine for treating chronic conditions and are biologically centered, sustainable in treating root-cause, and are non-toxic.

Find out WHY Green Medicine is necessary to impact SDG3 in Part 2 of this blog series.

Tags:

#SDG3 #HealthWellbeing #GreenMedicine #IntegrativeMedicine #SDG3Alignment #sustainability #Medicine

Joanne Sienko Ott, CFA

Written by

SDG 3.0 Strategist & #GreenMedicine Activist. Pioneering futurist at the intersection of behavioral finance and integrative medicine.

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