Dr. Andrew Weil sums it up for me...
“Integrative medicine is just good medicine. We shouldn’t have to separate it out from conventional medicine, but in this medical climate, that is what we are forced to do.”
When people come to me looking to improve their health, I need to examine their symptoms through a wider lens than just blood work, diet history, and which medications they're taking.
These things are important, but I also need to look at their relationships, their lifestyle, what and how they're eating, their sleep patterns, their stressors, their beliefs, and their support systems. Only then can multi-level, lasting healing begin.
More often than not, the major chronic diseases of today are reversible through diet, exercise, and stress management. Yet most doctors, dietitians and other allied health do not have the time or the training to help their patients in this manner. This is such a shame.
Until we demand more of the mainstream approach of symptom treatment, drug prescription and mediocre fixes, people will need to continue to go out of their way to seek wholistic health care - or just good medicine. Thankfully, it is becoming easier to find. It's my hope that the integrative and functional approach to medicine - that includes nutrition, physical therapies, psychology and all areas of allied medical health - becomes more accessible to everyone in the very near future.