Integrating complementary and alternative medicine [CAM] with conventional medicine, which is termed integrative medicine, aims to combine the benefits of the two approaches to create a more holistic and effective healthcare system. This approach recognises that conventional medicine [viz., medications and surgery] and CAM therapies [viz., acupuncture, Ayurveda, homeopathy and herbal remedies] can work together, or in unison, under one umbrella, to improve patient outcomes and their well-being.
The fact is most complementary therapies are as yet resented by the American Medical Association [AMA]. Yet, some medical schools in the US first began to include study courses on patients’ emotional issues, nutrition, and so on, while acknowledging that there was a certain mind-body connection — a credo long espoused by complementary and alternative medicine [CAM].
Bernie Siegel, MD, the renowned paediatric surgeon, and best-selling author, who documented his clinical experiences, with what he says represents a connection between the palpable, visible, audible human body and mysterious forces and mechanisms interpreted as ‘mind,’ is one among a galaxy of distinguished physicians that have reported “their findings support such a doctrine.” The list is representative, not complete: from Deepak Chopra, Larry Dossey, Andrew Weil, Brian Weiss, Dean Ornish, to Norman Shealy, and several others.
Mind-body ideas have not only have resurfaced, they have also established themselves as much as they were set forth by our ancients — Aristotle, Plato, Acharya Suśruta, and Galen — aside from Florence Nightingale, several centuries later, who suggested that health is a balance of mind, body and spirit, and that illness is as much an outcome caused by emotional needs as the disease per se.
Rudolph Ballentine, MD, the acclaimed author of Radical Healing: Integrating the World’s Great Therapeutic Traditions to Create a New Transformative Medicine, upholds the view that the integration and interaction of Western and Eastern medicine make for an exciting path: “‘Radical Healing’ is built on these unifying concepts; they are the practical essence of a medicine that is simple and universal, rooted in the perennial principle of healing as personal evolution,” Ballentine adds, “Each of the great healing traditions has arisen in its own culture to help resolve problems peculiar to that setting, so each — e.g., Ayurveda, homeopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine [TCM], European and Native American herbology, nutrition, and psychotherapeutic bodywork — has its weaknesses as well as strengths. By integrating them, superimposing one upon another in layer after layer of complementary perspectives and techniques, we can arrive at an amalgam that is far more potent and thorough than any one of them taken alone.”
Veda Andrus, the former president of the American Holistic Nursing Association, once said that resistance to alternative medicine in part is related to the ‘set ways’ of the American healthcare system and lack of education. But those set ways are changing as the concept of mind-body connection grows stronger. Even West Point ‘plebes’ are instructed in The West Point Candidate Book, by William Smallwood, to realise that academic, military, and virtually any success evolves from a positive mind-set in the face of difficulty and daunting challenge.
Phillip McGraw, PhD, the author and television personality, is one of the most influential and beloved proponents of positive life change — a fulcrum based on a better educated attitude. In Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside, McGraw provides the basis for a self-improvement strategy that easily applies to choosing healthcare: “Trust that you are the best judge, by far, of what is best for you. At the same time, be ruthless about testing your thoughts. Verify that your own internal responses and interpretations will stand up to the test of authenticity. Give yourself permission to generate as many alternative responses as possible. Pursue only those that are Triple-A [Authentically Accurate Alternative]. Replace any response that causes you trouble and pain with one that moves you towards what you want, need, and deserve.” With all that is available to us in our hungry-for-information culture, McGraw advocates accountability and the courage to identify and evaluate options. “Insight without action,” he argues, “is worse than being totally asleep at the switch.”
The Encyclopedia of Complementary and Alternative Medicine is just the right antidote for lack of awareness, or information, on the subject. It provides a comprehensive source of definitions, explanations, and perspectives from ancient to modern in an accessible format. If you come across an isolated term pertaining to alternative, or complementary, medicine, you’d look it up within its pages for identification and cross-reference. The Appendixes also provide all-at-a-glance information on various aspects of the CAM and integrative approach in illness and wellness.
The AMA encourages the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health to determine by objective scientific evaluation the efficacy and safety of practices and procedures of unconventional medicine; it also encourages its members to become better informed regarding the practices and techniques of alternative, or unconventional medicine.
As Richard Gerber, MD, author of A Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine, contends, “According to the new perspective of Einsteinian and quantum physics, the biochemical molecules that make up the physical body are actually a form of vibrating energy.” He observes, “During the early part of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein came up to the startling conclusion that matter and energy were actually interconvertible and interchangeable. His famous E = mc2 mathematically described how matter and energy were interrelated. Einstein said matter and energy were, in fact, two different forms of the same thing. At the time Einstein came up with this conclusion, a few scientists could entirely understand its magnitude. [That] since all energy vibrates and oscillates at different rates, then, at least at the atomic level, the human body is really composed of different kinds of vibrating energy.”
“Vibrational medicine is an approach to the diagnosis and treatment of illness based upon the idea that we are all unique energy systems. The concept of the body as a complex energetic system is part of a new scientific worldview gradually gaining acceptance in the eyes of modern medicine.” More so, in the eyes of mainstream America as well. When one highlights the spirit of Frank Sinatra’s pleasant remark, “I’m for whatever gets you through the night,” it comes as no surprise that eight of ten patients have tried alternative treatments, and of those, three-quarters reported success. Given the prospect of thousands, of alternative practitioners, Americans — as also several other folks in India and elsewhere, especially in traditional societies — seem more than willing to try ‘whatever works.’ This only translates to combining conventional [Western] medicine with alternatives.
Dr Herbert Benson, a pioneer in mind-body medicine and author of Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief, observed that alternative medicine is given serious due in light of the traditional practice of Western medicine. He said, “Writer Luigi Barzini suggests that Americans are compelled to act because we believe ‘the main purpose of a man’s life is to solve problems.’ Despite the fact that the body is the grandest problem-solver there is, quietly and perpetually sustaining life, overcoming billions of obstacles without our conscious imperatives for it to do so, we don’t trust it. Instead we turn to our medicine cabinets. Our doctors’ first impulse is to prescribe something for us, and we fully expect to emerge from these visits with a prescription in hand. But, at the same time, record numbers of Americans are spending record numbers of their healthcare dollars on unconventional healers — chiropractors, acupuncturists, herbalists, and so on — who they trust will care more about them as individuals than as sums of parts. While some studies show that patients are generally happy with their own doctors, managed care, with its provider lists and required numbers of patients a doctor must see each day, makes this relationship between doctor and patient harder to preserve.”
C Norman Shealy, MD, PhD, author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Natural Remedies, and a well-known neurosurgeon, argued that the physician’s role is to be a ‘triage officer,’ someone who quickly assesses the status of patients and what immediate treatment they need. Triage is usually associated with victims of accidents, war, or natural disaster and is geared to saving as many people as possible. As Eugene Stead, Jr, PhD, Shealy’s professor of medicine, said, “A triage officer would stand at the door when a patient was significantly ill and advise when medicine, or surgery, was truly needed to save life, or function.” He often advised that when life and function are not at risk, as in the vast majority of symptomatic illnesses, the patient should “go into the department stores and choose that which most appeals.” The ‘department store,’ of course, was his analogy for all the CAM methods of healing that are now available to us.
Think about it — with a clear, open mind, and without bias. It’d help bridge the therapeutic ‘gap’ — for ushering good health and well-being to all.
— First published in India First
