Holistic health considers all the factors that influence our health. These factors include nutrition, exercise, emotions, water intake and sunlight, job satisfaction, relationships, creativity, behaviors, nature, and spirituality among many others. In contrast, traditional western medical beliefs center around taking a pill to kill a pest, yet paying scant attention to factors that might be creating the pest in the first place. "Here, take this pill and go home and keep drinking that dirty water..."

Holistic nutrition is a collection of factors that need to be considered when we deal with nutrients that the body requires. For example, how many people consider their unique genetic make-up when making food choices?

Holistic nutrition takes into account our genetic requirements for nutrition as well as nutrients that are required for growth, regeneration from disease, stresses that we impose on our bodies and changes as we age. As the body of a menopausal woman changes, holistic nutrition would suggest an adjustment in diet to help herself feel balanced again. The body (chemistry) has changed and so might its nutritional requirements.

Holistic nutrition takes into consideration individual needs; each one of us is different.

Holism takes your career into consideration. For years it has been known that B vitamins are key when your body is under great stress. Holistic nutrition would ask, given this stress, what could you eat to satify your body's need for more B vitamins or for anything else that might help the individual you?