integrative health

April 15, 2019

Something Happening Here: Spain, UK, France, Australia, Canada Move Against Alternatives Therapies

The recent global activity featured in the Integrator Blog News and Reports and re-posted by ISCMR, an international society of researchers in traditional, complementary, alternative and integrative medicine and health, has shown an unmistakable pattern: multiple governments are acting to remove recognition of homeopathy and certain of other complementary and integrative practice deemed “psuedo-scientific.” It’s not the only pattern. There hjave been recent positive governmental steps in Switzerland, India, the US and elsewhere. Still, the regulatory integrative ectomies in Spain, France, the UK, Australia, Canada – and here in the USA – are worth a collective heads up.
March 10, 2019

Integrative Health, The Medical Industry, and White Walkers: Regarding Berwick’s Reflections on 10 Years of the Triple Aim

Spoiler alert. The title of a recent column marking the 10th anniversary of Triple Aim efforts to move medical payment and delivery from volume toward value makes no bones about the effort’s shortcomings. This report card from the Triple Aim’s top cheer-leader is meaningful to the high touch, human-intensive movement for integrative health and medicine for one important reason: the field’s potential uptake is pegged to advance of the values orientation. Success is more broadly meaningful because the values-based war against the forces in the industry that causally associate it with 250,000 medical deaths each year – effectively medicine’s white walkers in Game of Thrones terms – is the bullseye point of reference on what is at stake.
February 23, 2019

Despite Harsh Letters, JAMA Oncology Maintains Malignant Role Arguing Complementary Therapies Kill

In July 2018, the Integrator published a series of articles challenging a JAMA Oncology study and stunning headlines that those using complementary therapies in cancer treatment die quicker. The integrative oncology community condemned the paper –  though oddly falling short of calling for retraction. (In the Integrator series, I urged retraction.) After 7 months and 193,000 downloads of this story, the JAMA Oncology finally published letters from researchers in 4 nations that led an Medscape article on the reaction to quote a scientist claiming the five letters “completely destroy(ed) the pseudoscience article.” Why is it not retracted? One wonders when the integrative oncology community will demand respect.
February 21, 2019

Boot-Strapping a Research-Base: Naturopathy’s Scientific Journey via a Journal Special Issue

Non-naturopathic doctors will have at least these reasons to explore the Special Focus Issue on Naturopathy. One is the review of the necessary scientific work by that whole system profession’s researchers to examine multimodal and whole person treatment. Its the best concerted effort of any integrative health profession. A second is to witness naturopathic medicine’s journey in the last 35 years to raise a scientific mission from scratch. A third is for insight into this still small profession’s outsized contributions to the evolution of integrative health. Their foundational work in linking science to natural health modalities is at its root. The February 2019 volume from JACM-Paradigm, Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine) is available in open access until March 20, 2019.