Why are more and more conventional practitioners “seeing the light” when it comes to integrative medicine?
Last year I attended the International Conference on Integrative Medicine in Jerusalem, where one of the speakers, a board member of the Israeli Society for Complementary Medicine, spoke about his personal experience as a pediatrician for one of the Israeli HMOs.
Several years ago, he said, he encountered an interesting situation where patients that he used to see frequently for various childhood illnesses (such as severe colds, ear infections, etc.) would start to come to him only for regular checkups and inoculations. When he asked the children’s parents why he had not seem them for so long, they would tell him, somewhat apologetically, that they were seeing alternative therapists for these illnesses, or that the child had improved with a special diet recommended to them by a holistic practitioner. And today the speaker, now a child neurologist and behaviorist, combines integrative, homeopathic medicine into his patients’ treatment plans.
The doctor’s speech continues to reverberate with me, and not just because he is among many doctors who have undergone this “conversion”. The speaker happens to be my daughter’s former pediatrician, someone who had often prescribed antibiotics for her frequent ear infections.
[During that time, my daughter was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease (a diagnosis that was later overturned by a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston), and placed on a course of daily antibiotics. While I continued her conventional care, I also went to see a naturopath because my daughter had shown unusual signs of fatigue and weight loss. This naturopath suggested that my daughter undergo a series of blood tests to check my daughter’s iron levels and other blood chemistry, as well as to see how the antibiotics might be affecting her general wellbeing.
The naturopath’s concerns were justified – my daughter’s blood results showed an alarming decline in her iron levels. After placing my daughter on a strict diet and supplements, and with frequent follow up testing (to which the doctor agreed to even though he thought I was out of my mind), my daughter soon recovered and today is a healthy teenager (albeit still rather thin).]
Why is my daughter’s medical history relevant to this post? Because today the aforementioned doctor is my son’s neurologist, who diagnosed my son with mild ADD and then placed him on a treatment of homeopathic drugs and diet (and yes, we did try a course of Ritalin, but my son had a poor reaction to the drug). Today my son attends one of the top schools in the region, maintains decent grades, and is an overall happy person (he discontinued use of the homeopathic treatment at some point but maintains the diet with significant success).
My children’s experience is not unique. My sister seeing a general practitioner who uses supplements and other integrative treatments in her practice; my own GP frequently refers patients to integrative practitioners – even before sending them to a conventional specialist. Even my father, a psychiatrist, has prescribed St. John’s Wart (Hypericum perforatum) for patients who are reluctant to take chemical antidepressants.
My greatest hope for a future lays with the next generation of doctors. Today’s medical students are studying medicine in a new reality, where patients are better informed, often seek alternative treatments, and are not afraid to tell their doctors that they are using these treatments (in fact, many medical students even supplement their incomes by teaching physiology and anatomy in holistic and integrative programs throughout the country).
One young intern, who was filling in for my GP while she was on vacation, surprised me when he remained unfazed by my explanation for my bouts of throat infections. I explained to him that while the infection was an actual medical condition, the actual cause of the problem was my inability to voice my dissatisfaction at work. I was further surprised when he suggested that beyond treating my actual infection (yes, with antibiotics but insisted that I combine them with probiotics), I should try a known folk medicine for throat pain, and consider adding exercise and meditation to help me cope with my stress.
My hope is that as these young doctors take on roles as specialists, department heads, medical directors, and hospital directors, they will help remove the barriers between conventional and alternative medicine, and create a truly integrative medical approach.
May our future be an enlightened one.