- John Weeks, Writer, Speaker, Change Agent. Click below to subscribe to the Integrator
- johnweeks@theintegratorblog.com
integrative medicine
November 5, 2018
The principle of using the least invasive methods first – a corollary of “first do no harm” – is central to integrative health and medicine. Also core is the idea of patient-centered, functionally-oriented outcomes. Each of these principles is being chucked out the window as the FDA is systematically removing multiple natural agents from an approved list for compounding pharmacists.
November 1, 2018
I have covered developments of the Society for Integrative Oncology over the 19 years since the organization placed its flag squarely in the emerging, evidence-based integrative medicine era. Many of its accomplishments have been remarkable for the broader integrative medicine field. SIO has had success in creating guidelines that have been endorsed by conventional oncology organizations. Internally, the organization has, since its beginning, fostered an interprofessional environment that has, for instance, included naturopathic physicians in the presidency and leading its marquis integrative breast cancer guideline initiative. I’d never attended their conference until this year when I was one of 380 souls at the October 27-29, 2019 conference in Phoenix. Here are some impressions. Credit the 19th century composer Mussorgsky for the title.
October 26, 2018
Organizations connected to two of the most significant researchers in the movement for integrative health and healing, Brian Berman, MD and Wayne Jonas, MD, held separate events recently to announce reports that offer insight into patients’ experience of health and healing. Samueli Integrative Health Programs, which Jonas directs, examined patient views of health in the context of their relationships with their primary care doctors. Berman’s Institute for Health and Healing – in collaboration with the Institute for Functional Medicine – dove deeply into selected patients’ perceptions of what their “healing journey” to develop a model. Both examinations highlight processes not typically part of the clinical encounter. Outcomes illuminate potential characteristics of a system focused on health creation.
October 26, 2018
First, a familial confession. I recall at sitting at my parents home in the waning hippy era of mid-1970s when a close friend of my elder siblings who had strong back-to-the-land inclinations faced a grilling about her life plans at our pressurized family table. Education? Employment? Contributions to community? The friend must have known she was thumbing her nose at her interrogators when she shared her counter-cultural goal: “I just want to be happy.”