Language of Medicine

Redefining medicine

This formidable combination of conventional and alternative medicine is fast gaining mainstream acceptance. In fact, insurance companies and HMOs now provide coverage for acupuncture, massage and other treatments that were considered "unconventional" when Lisa Duhl was diagnosed with breast cancer.

As early as 1993, researchers at Harvard Medical School reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that one-third of all Americans used some form of unconventional medicine, such as mind/body therapies, chiropractic, massage, spiritual healing, nutritional and herbal medicine, homeopathy or acupuncture.

Most medical universities and hospitals are now incorporating many of these practices. At the same time, patients are demanding them. And, under the direction of integrative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil, the first formal training program in integrative medicine for physicians is in full swing at the University of Arizona. With this atmosphere, medical students across the country are appealing for more education in the alternative arena.

By any other name

The pleas of patients and medical students are not without basis. Since the 1980s, researchers have been mounting scientific evidence that integrative medicine often works better than conventional treatment alone.

Dr. Dean Ornish's program at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California is famous for reversing heart disease with a combination of diet, moderate exercise, stress management, meditation, group support, yoga, and conventional diagnostic procedures and drugs as needed.

At the Stanford University Medical School, Dr. David Spiegel and his team of researchers have found that women with advanced breast cancer doubled their survival time by participating in group therapy while undergoing conventional treatments.

People living with AIDS are also benefiting from integrative medicine. Dr. Jon Kaiser, at the Davies Medical Center in San Francisco, California, starts his patients on a program of diet, nutritional supplementation, herbs, acupuncture, exercise and mind/body medicine. He then incorporates drug therapies only if the rest of the program proves not to be sufficient. Almost 90 percent of Kaiser's patients improved or have been able to keep the disease at bay.

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