What do you think of Integrative Medicine?

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allendo

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Does anyone have any thoughts on Dr. Andrew Weil and his integrative medicine?

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I'm interested and skeptical too.
I purchased the definitive "Integrative Medicine" text by Rakel last year with leftover CME funds ($140 or so) and have been leafing through it. There's some good stuff in there.
In allopathic medicine, we spend so much time focusing on disease and abnormal states and traditional pharmacotherapies to treat these illnesses. There is just NO TIME LEFT to study herbal medicine. I would love to know more about herbal meds and feel this is a definite deficit in my knowledge.
I'm interested in the integrative medicine programs in Arizona (are there others? maybe) but will figure that out down the road when residency time comes.
Bottom line: patients will seek out non-traditional therapies. It doesn't hurt to know what they're taking and be able to comment intelligently whether they're safe, effective, or harmful and worthless.
Lisa PA-C
 
allendo said:
Does anyone have any thoughts on Dr. Andrew Weil and his integrative medicine?

Dr. Andrew Weil is an interesting cat. I would say that he's the first allopathic physician that "broke through" and popularized what was originally termed "alternative" medicine. From what I understand, he emphasizes a "common sense" approach to health--eat right, exercise, relax every once in a while, get massages, call your mother, etc--things that I think we all sometimes find ourselves wishing patients to do. He also was one of the first to integrate herbal and naturopathic remedies into clinical practice in an attempt to bring it under our science-oriented, evidence-based umbrella--essentially attempting to legitimize in the eyes of the medical world alternatives to pharmacotherapy. I do think, though, that by poising himself on "the edge," challenging "the norms," that he gives some the impression that he thinks quite highly of his work and that if you are unsure about integrative medicine then you are intolerant. Have I ever met the guy? No. Do I think that he's an innovator and a genius? Ehh. Seems very good at what he does, and what he does is to inform, to educate, and to challenge us as future physicians to desire to coerce our monolithic medical model to change.

What do I think about this approach? (Since you asked!) Traditional remedies are widely used and poorly understood. I think that it is important to possess some knowledge of what people are taking that is not perscribed by physicians and to understand what it means both physiologically and culturally. I'm in Texas, and I can tell you that there are huge populations of people that have wildly different conceptions of what "medicine" and "health" mean and what it means to "cure." That being said, we don't all have to prescribe herbals to practice good 21st century medicine. It's just important to take each patient as an individual case and to prescribe treatment that is medically, culturally, and of course economically appropriate.

Sorry for the long post--I am very interested to see how folks respond to your question!

DS
 
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