- John Weeks, Writer, Speaker, Change Agent. Click below to subscribe to the Integrator
- johnweeks@theintegratorblog.com
functional medicine
March 28, 2020
Amidst of the waves of information on local, national and global developments related to COVID-19, efforts stand out of a few organizations to capture and bundle content that targets the integrative practice communities. Among the entities that have established resources pages are the University of Arizona Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, and the American Nutrition Association. In contradistinction to the advisories of the United States’ federal agencies and state governments, these organizations have in common that their leaders believe that there is more that an individual can do than “healthy waiting” (sleep, exercise, don’t smoke, limit sugar) as the virus continues its course through their communities. Each organization directly suggests multiple steps that might be indicated, and the science supporting it.
March 7, 2020
When members of Congress established what is now the NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, they cared about whole things. Eight times in two pages, the new Center was charged to examine not just basic research or reductive trials on individual modalities. They pointedly sought to turn the NIH’s attention to the value of complementary and alternative “systems and disciplines … in health care delivery systems in the United States.” This shift of focus was resisted. The first director Stephen Straus, MD famously shouted down his former NCCIH advisory council member Carlo Calabrese, ND, MPH when Calabrese courageously asked for research whole disciplines and whole practices like those of licensed naturopathic and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. All integrative disciplines urged Straus’ successor Josie Briggs, MD to focus her 2011-2015 strategic plan on “researching the way we practice”. Briggs showed interest but showed no one the money to engage these questions. So when the NCCIH’s current director Helene Langevin, MD opened the NCCIH 2021-2025 strategic planning process with a February 18, 2020 video-cast webinar by focusing on “whole person health,” there was, among many, a great deal of anticipation and pent-up-demand. What might this mean?
March 6, 2020
In the mid-1980s, editor of Holistic Primary Care Erik Goldman began a career as a medical reporter. It was a boom-time for pharma-sponsored print publications. Each month mounds of media arrived at each medical doctor’s doorstep. Goldman’s first reporter job was with Dermatology News. It was what he calls “the height of unfettered spending” by big pharma. Goldman”s personal interests in natural medicine made him feel “an imposter – like they’d find out about me somehow.” By the early 1990s he was encouraging his editors to dip into the emerging “CAM” world. He unsuccessfully shopped the idea of focused holistic medicine publication to publishers before realizing that the “someone” just might be him. In 2000, he teamed up with with publisher Meg Sinclair and co-founded Holistic Primary Care which now goes out to 60,000 mainly conventional practitioners. I caught up with this fellow who is the integrative field’s most legit and enduring medical reporter – and presently sponsor of the Practitioner Channel Forum – to reflect on the two decades and look forward.
February 20, 2020
First, some self-declarations. Since 1992 I have benefited financially from in-office sales of dietary supplements via the integrative medical practice of my spouse. On multiple occasions over 30 years, I have helped mount or been associated with medical conferences in which the business model relied on exhibits from dietary supplements companies. I have in multiple instances secured grants from natural products companies to support initiatives of various professional organizations, research projects, and for The Integrator Blog. Such relationship are often the rule across the functional, naturopathic, integrative, chiropractic and traditional Chinese medicine communities. What’s new now is that those involved in integrative and functional medicine continuing medical education are increasingly in the spotlight of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) via new application of old rules, and new ACCME rules under consideration. These may – for better and for worse – shake-up the way integrative CME is offered, and potentially not only for medical doctors.