Natural describes the remedy, while holistic describes how you treat the whole person

Key takeaways

• “Natural” describes the tools used, such as food, plants and movement, while “holistic” describes the scope of care: body, mind, relationships and surroundings.
• The two can split apart: an herbal capsule for one symptom is natural but not holistic, while hospital cardiac rehab, which an NIH center calls “a holistic approach,” relies on conventional medicine¹.
• South African statesman Jan Smuts coined the word “holism” in 1926, and “holistic health” broke through as a popular movement in the late 1970s⁵.
• The FDA’s informal “natural” policy for food never considered health benefits, and “holistic” has no legal definition on pet food or, as far as we found, anywhere else²¹².
• Before you book a “holistic” practitioner, ask about their license, what they will assess, how they work with your doctor and whether they sell products.

Picture a hospital rehab gym after a heart attack: treadmills, a nutrition class, a counselor down the hall and patients who still take their prescribed heart medicines. That is the basic shape of cardiac rehabilitation.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health, describes this kind of program as “a holistic approach”¹. It treats exercise, food and the mind as connected parts of one recovery.

Now picture a bottle of herbal capsules ordered online to calm one symptom. Nothing in it may be synthetic. But nobody asked about your sleep, your stress, your job or your family before you clicked “buy.”

The first scene is holistic but not especially natural. The second is natural but not holistic. Most people treat the two words as twins. They are closer to neighbors.

Knowing the difference does two useful things. It helps you find the kind of care you want. It also helps you notice when a word is doing marketing work instead of describing anything real.

One word describes your tools, and the other describes how wide the lens is

“Natural” is about means. It points to tools that come from nature or are lightly processed: whole foods, plants, water, sunlight, movement and rest.

On food labels, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never written a formal definition. Its longstanding informal policy says only that nothing artificial or synthetic was added that you would not normally expect in that food².

That policy is narrow by design. The FDA says it was not meant to cover farming methods such as pesticide use, or processing steps such as pasteurization. The agency also never considered whether “natural” should signal a health benefit².

“Holistic” is about scope. It comes from the Greek word for “whole.” In health care, it means looking at the whole person rather than one organ or one symptom.

Holistic nursing, for example, is commonly defined as any nursing practice that aims to heal the whole person. Holistic nurses attend to body, mind, spirit, emotions and environment together³.

So one word answers, “What are you using?” The other answers, “How much of my life are you paying attention to?”

NIH’s own plain-language page defining complementary, alternative and integrative health never uses the word. It talks about “treating the whole person” instead⁴. NIH now calls that idea “whole person health,” which our companion article explores in depth.

A 1926 philosophy book gave us the word “holism”

The word is younger than many people assume. Jan Smuts, a South African statesman and botanist, coined “holism” in his 1926 book Holism and Evolution⁵. He used it for what he saw as a basic drive in the universe to build wholes that are more than the sum of their parts⁵.

Smuts’s own record was mixed. In a 2025 history of the word, Lund University scholar Bruno Hamnell notes that Smuts defended internationalism and human rights, yet also supported the racist repression of Black South Africans⁵.

The word’s associations kept shifting after him. Hamnell traces how holism was tied to totalitarian thinking between the world wars, then to environmentalism and New Age spirituality from the 1970s on⁵.

Medicine picked it up early. Among the first medical writings on the idea were British Medical Journal pieces starting in 1936 and a 1948 JAMA editorial titled “Holistic Medicine”⁵. Still, the term stayed mostly inside academic circles for decades.

The boom came in the 1970s. In 1978, The New York Times covered a “Holistic Health” conference, the paper’s first mention of that phrase⁵. Research records using “holism” or “holistic” in the Web of Science index jumped from 40 in 1975 to 246 in 1980⁵.

Also in 1978, the American Holistic Medical Association held its first meeting, in Denver. Physician Norman Shealy served as its first president⁷. That group later became today’s Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine⁷.

The movement was never one thing

A 1984 analysis in The Journal of Family Practice by Harold Vanderpool, a medical humanities scholar at the University of Texas Medical Branch, found at least four strands under one banner⁶:

• Doctors who wanted medicine to treat patients as people, a thread going back to a well-known 1927 essay by physician Francis Peabody.
• Chaplains, social workers and hospices that set out to care for the whole person.
• The “high-level wellness” idea that Halbert Dunn introduced in the late 1950s: health as thriving, not just the absence of disease.
• Unconventional therapies such as acupuncture, reflexology, iridology and homeopathy.

Vanderpool argued that the shared label hid real differences. No single set of holistic theories or therapies existed, he wrote, and he suggested retiring the word in favor of more descriptive labels⁶.

Critics, among them Arnold Relman in a 1979 New England Journal of Medicine editorial, charged the movement with mysticism. Supporters replied that therapies should be tested before being dismissed⁵. That old debate still holds a lesson: “holistic” was a fair protest against rushed, organ-by-organ care, but it never proved that any one therapy worked.

Nurses turned holism into a credential

One branch of the movement became formal. The American Holistic Nurses Association formed at the start of the 1980s, and a separate credentialing body was incorporated in 1997³⁸. In 2006, the American Nurses Association officially recognized holistic nursing as a specialty³⁸.

That detail matters. Holistic nurses are licensed nurses first. The two nursing groups publish shared scope and standards of practice, and holistic nursing is practiced in every kind of care setting³.

Here, “holistic” sits on top of a regulated license, not in place of one. That is a useful model to look for in any practitioner.

Mainstream medicine has its own version of holism

In 1977, University of Rochester physician George Engel published a paper in the journal Science that challenged his own field⁹. The standard biomedical model, he argued, explained illness only through measurable body changes. It left no room for the psychological and social sides of being sick⁹.

His alternative was the biopsychosocial model: biology, psychology and social life all shape illness and recovery. Engel used diabetes as an example. A biochemical defect is needed for the disease, he wrote, but it is not enough by itself. The conditions of a person’s life can affect when illness shows up, and the patient’s relationship with the doctor can shape how well treatment works⁹.

He also warned that doctors were leaning on lab tests at the expense of listening to patients⁹. Many natural-health readers have made the same complaint.

The idea now shapes real programs

A 2015 Cochrane review, published in The BMJ, pooled 41 randomized trials, where people are assigned by chance to one group or another. The trials covered 6,858 people with long-lasting low back pain¹⁰.

Programs that paired physical treatment with psychological and social support beat usual care, but modestly. The average gain was about half a point on a 10-point pain scale¹⁰. In two trials that compared these programs with surgery, results were similar, and surgery carried more risk of complications¹⁰.

Palliative care is another example. The World Health Organization defines it as care that improves quality of life for patients and families facing life-threatening illness. It addresses physical, psychological, social and spiritual problems, including grief support¹¹.

It also depends on strong prescription medicines. WHO calls opioids essential for managing pain, and it estimates that only about 14% of people who need palliative care worldwide receive it¹¹. That is holistic care in the fullest sense, and it is not “natural” in the way most people use the word.

Four ways the two ideas combine

Treat “natural” and “holistic” as two separate questions. Asked together, they sort almost any product, program or practitioner into one of four boxes.

Combination	Example	What it gets right	What to watch for
Natural and holistic	A lifestyle program pairing whole-food cooking and group walks with help for sleep, stress and family strain	Matches both values at once	Serious or new symptoms still need a clinician’s exam
Natural, not holistic	An herbal capsule picked to quiet one symptom, with no look at sleep, stress or causes	Simple, low-tech, often cheap	It can cover up a problem; ask about drug interactions
Holistic, not natural	Cardiac rehab or palliative care, with counseling and family support alongside prescription drugs	Sees the whole person and uses proven medical tools	May feel clinical; ask which nondrug options are included
Neither	A rushed visit that ends with a new prescription and no questions about your life	Fast for simple problems	Ask for more time or a follow-up if your concern is complex

Picture a hypothetical reader who can’t sleep. A natural-only fix might be a melatonin gummy. A holistic-only fix might be a clinic visit that explores stress, screens for sleep apnea and reviews medicines, then offers a prescription.

The care that fits both values asks about the whole picture first and reaches for the gentlest tool that works. Sometimes that is a bedtime routine. Sometimes it is a breathing machine for apnea. The question is not which word wins, but whether both questions got asked.

“Holistic” on a label or a sign is not regulated

The word costs nothing to print. Susan Nelson, a veterinarian and clinical professor at Kansas State University, has pointed out that “holistic” on pet food has no legal definition from the FDA or from the officials who set pet food label standards¹².

“Natural” on pet food, by contrast, does have a defined meaning. So if a bag says both, only one of those words is doing any legal work¹². We found no federal rule that defines “holistic” for food, supplements or services sold to people, either.

For practitioners, a holistic title is not a license. Minnesota offers a clear example of how one state handles this. It lets unlicensed complementary and alternative practitioners work, but before the first session they must give you a written bill of rights¹³.

That document must state, in bold print, that Minnesota has not adopted education or training standards for them. It must also list their training, their fees, a plain-language summary of their approach and where to file a complaint¹³. The law bars them from giving a medical diagnosis or telling you to stop a prescribed treatment¹³.

Minnesota’s rules apply only in Minnesota. But its list makes a smart model for questions you can ask anywhere.

What the evidence says about each idea

The research supports the core insight of holism, with honest limits. It does not support treating either word as a seal of quality.

Claim	Evidence level	What the research shows
Pain programs that address body, mind and work help chronic low back pain	Strong evidence (benefit is modest)	A Cochrane review of 41 trials found small gains over usual care10
Those programs can match surgery for chronic back pain	Promising but early	Only two trials; similar results with fewer complications10
A “holistic” label guarantees training or quality	Evidence says no	The word has no legal definition on pet food, and one state makes unlicensed practitioners say it sets no training standards1213
A “natural” food label promises a health benefit	Evidence says no	The FDA says its policy never considered health benefits2

Questions to ask before you book a “holistic” practitioner

Use this script on the phone or at the first visit. Good practitioners will welcome it.

1. “What will you ask me about besides my symptoms?” A good answer covers sleep, food, movement, stress, relationships, work, current medicines and health history.
2. “What is your training, and which license do you hold?” A good answer names a specific license you can look up with your state board. If they hold none, they say so plainly.
3. “How will you work with my doctor?” A good answer is a clear yes, with notes shared on request and no pressure to stop prescribed care.
4. “Do you sell the products you recommend?” A good answer is honest disclosure plus permission to buy elsewhere.
5. “How will we know if this is working, and by when?” A good answer names a specific sign of progress and a time frame.
6. “What would make you send me to someone else?” A good answer lists warning signs that need a medical exam.
7. “What will this cost, start to finish?” A good answer is a written fee list.

If you have new, severe or worsening symptoms, see a licensed clinician first. Chest pain, trouble breathing, sudden weakness or confusion means calling 911.

Two good instincts, kept and sharpened

Both words grew from instincts worth keeping. “Natural” reflects respect for the body and a preference for the gentlest tool that does the job. “Holistic” reflects a refusal to be reduced to a lab value or a body part.

You don’t have to choose between them. You can ask for holistic care inside a hospital, as cardiac rehab and palliative care show. You can also ask natural remedies to answer to evidence, the same way you would ask a drug.

The fullest care usually does both. It looks at your whole life, and then it uses whatever works best, starting with gentle tools when they are enough.

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

Natural describes the tools. Holistic describes how much of your life gets attention. The two often travel together, but they don’t have to, and you’ll choose better when you ask about each one separately.

Neither word is a quality guarantee on its own. Look for care that sees your whole life, uses tools that have earned trust, and is offered by someone whose training you can check.

Related reading

• What complementary care means, and why the word misleads
• How to tell real integrative care from a marketing label
• What the letters after a practitioner’s name mean
• Why “natural” on a food label guarantees almost nothing
• Most of your health is shaped outside the exam room

Sources

1. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. “Reframing How We Think About Natural Products and Mind and Body Practices.” NCCIH Strategic Plan FY 2021–2025, 2021. nccih.nih.gov
2. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Use of the Term Natural on Food Labeling.” FDA. fda.gov
3. Klebanoff NA, Hess D. “Holistic nursing: Focusing on the whole person.” American Nurse, 2013. myamericannurse.com
4. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. “Complementary, Alternative, or Integrative Health: What’s In a Name?” NCCIH, updated April 2021. nccih.nih.gov
5. Hamnell B. “The Interdisciplinary Circulation of ‘Holism’: From the Interwar Era to the 1980s.” Lychnos, 2025. tidskriftenlychnos.se
6. Vanderpool HY. “The Holistic Hodgepodge: A Critical Analysis of Holistic Medicine and Health in America Today.” The Journal of Family Practice, 1984;19(6):773–781. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
7. Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine. “Honoring the passing of Norman Shealy, MD, PhD, 12/4/32-7/8/24.” AIHM. aihm.org
8. American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation. “AHNCC Mission and Purpose.” AHNCC. ahncc.org
9. Engel GL. “The need for a new medical model: a challenge for biomedicine.” Science, 1977;196(4286):129–136. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
10. Kamper SJ, Apeldoorn AT, Chiarotto A, et al. “Multidisciplinary biopsychosocial rehabilitation for chronic low back pain: Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis.” BMJ, 2015;350:h444. research.vu.nl
11. World Health Organization. “Palliative care.” Fact sheet, 2020. who.int
12. Kansas State University. “K-State veterinarian shares tips on picking right pet food for cat, dog.” K-State News, 2022. k-state.edu
13. Minnesota Legislature, Office of the Revisor of Statutes. “146A.11 Complementary and Alternative Health Care Client Bill of Rights.” Minnesota Statutes 2025. revisor.mn.gov