grim was the doctor summoned. Some feel that doctors didn't always know the answers anyway. And that was OK. They, too, relied on an invisible force for the answers. But today, the practice of Western medicine has far surpassed such folksy remedies. It took the doctor out of the village and threw this once familiar healer into the vast hive of buzzing competition and technology. Our grandmothers easily diagnosed the difference between croup and pneumonia. But the post- World War II era tossed common sense out the window. And we lost a sense of generational wisdom. We invalidated the lessons of generations before us. Old people were old, not smart. We were young, hip, and strong. Times were good. We had jobs, money, and education. We had color television, and the world got smaller as technology progressed. Our families split: a brother "in California; his wife and children in Indiana; a sister in Florida; parents up North. We kept moving so fast that no one from the class reunion committee would ever be able to find us again. We were lost in the blur of express living and fun times. And now we're all alone.
A MEETING OF THE MINDS:
A NEW APPROACH TO HEALING
For thousands of years, healers have been trying to uncover the ever changing mysteries of the human body. Both the Eastern and Western traditions go back many centuries. The Eastern tradition is steeped in philosophy and spirituality, and, in its approach to healing, the body is seen as a microcosm of nature, a landscape of the seen and the unseen, whose seasons and temperatures, deficiencies and excesses need to be gauged and understood in order to promote health. At one time the Western tradition had some similar beliefs, the Greeks, for example, seeing disease as an imbalance in the four humors, but since the 1800s, a lot of that tradition has been overshadowed by the Cartesian thinking of modern medicine, which views the body as a machine, a mechanical structure that can be diagnosed based on cause-and-effect thinking, and whose parts can be removed and replaced or molded or zapped into shape; and which views disease as a separate entity with its own patterns and cycles that are to be disrupted and put out of commission through drugs or surgery. The healing wisdom of centuries in the West was overshadowed by this approach to medicine. But practitioners and patients are now regaining a sense that the systems and organs of the human body are interdependent parts of an organic whole, and that curing what ails us involves encouraging the body to fight for wholeness rather than target and destroy symptoms. Medicine is so intriguing today because the West is continuing to learn more about cells, immunity, disease, and genetics, while it eagerly explores Eastern medicine, tapping into the wealth of wisdom it offers. The prospect of our getting the benefit of all these systems, practices, and wisdom bodes well for our general health and well-being.
Medicine's emerging heroes—Bernie Siegel, Andrew Weil, Larry Dossey, Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Christiane Northrup, and Sandra McLanahan, to name a few—have, through experimentation, new findings, and ancient teachings extracted the prime nectar of all the available medical worlds. The pilgrimage to integrative medicine, to wellness, has just begun.
"There are some very good things about Western medicine, but many times it is used to treat patients across the board. Everybody gets the same treatment. Healing depends on the person, and everyone needs custom-designed health care. I let patients talk for the first hour or so, so they can unload and get it all out. They talk, they cry, and from that point on I go into my complete physical, which combines Eastern and Western diagnostic tools. Using Eastern principles in treatment is not some fly-by-night, silly little therapy. It's not New Agey; it's Old Agey. It's been around for more than 2,500 years."
—Carolyn Jaffe, nationally certified acupuncturist,
registered with the Pennsylvania State Department of
Osteopathic Medicine, Diplomat of acupuncture
The birth of integrative medicine will force the medical establishment to form previously unheard of alliances with practitioners once shunned by Western medicine. Transforming the course of our nation's curative path, our sick care system will become obsolete. New strategies, blending the spiritual, emotional, and natural with high-tech procedures, will evolve. Although it may seem overwhelming, this change is close at hand.
OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS NOT EMULATED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
People in the U.S. think of Western medicine as the standard method of care, often assuming that the rest of the world practices medicine as we do. In actuality, estimates reveal that only TO to 30 percent of the world's health care is delivered by conventional Western methods; the remaining 70 to 90 percent is rendered by alternative modes of treatment.12
THE BIRTH OF INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE: GESTATION, TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS
"Most of the people who come to me are ready for something different because they have tried what doesn't work. We don't have a health care system; we have an illness system. One thing integrative medicine can do is teach people. And that will begin to provide the tools for change." —Sandra McLanahan, M.D., executive medical director of the Integral Health Center in Buckingham, Virginia, and physician to the world-renowned spiritual healer Reverend Sri Swami Satchidananda
1971 New York Times columnist James Reston brings the concept of acupuncture and Chinese herbs to America's shores.
1983 The Alternative Health Plan is established in California by Steve and Sherry Gorman. The company's goal is to provide medical plans offering freedom of choice and including coverage for alternative and complementary medicine such as acupuncture, massage, and herbal remedies.
1986 The Oriental Medical Center in Los Angeles studies the efficacy of Chinese herbs and acupuncture in treating ARC and AIDS.
1992 The nation's first federally funded alternative medicine HIV public health clinic project gets underway in San Francisco.
The Office of Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, is created by Congress. This is the first federal agency focusing on alternative treatments.
1993 Harvard University researcher Dr. David Eisenberg releases findings in the New England Journal of Medicine on Americans' use of alternative therapies. This landmark study reports that one in three Americans used at least one form of unconventional therapy.
American Western Life Insurance Company offers its first wellness plan, which promotes self-care and reimbursements for visits to alternative practitioners.
1994 A Gallup poll finds that 17 percent of Americans use herbal supplements, a 14 percent increase over the previous year.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act is passed by Congress, deregulating herbal remedies.
The first two specialty research centers—Bastyr University AIDS Research Center, Seattle, and Minneapolis Medical Research Center for Addictions Study—are established by the NIH to study the effects of alternative therapies. Health insurance giant Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Washington and Alaska launches a year long pilot program, Alterna Path, which provides coverage for alternative treatments.
1995 Kaiser Permanente, the country's largest health maintenance organization, opens the doors of its first alternative medicine clinic in Vallejo, California.
Harvard Medical School hosts the first-of-its-kind mind/body conference for doctors, who can receive continuing education credits for attending.
Eight specialty research centers have now joined the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine in its efforts to study alternative medicine.
The State of Washington
