Benefitting from the best medicine

For decades there has been a chasm between conventional medicine and so called “alternative” health care. In this article I’d like to look at these two types of medicine, which can be blended together for an optimal “integrative medicine” approach to health care.

The chasm

I work in a busy Urgent Care practice nearly full-time. In this setting I recommend prescription medications and perform minor surgical interventions to solve these acute problems. Many of these same patients also have chronic conditions which I don’t delve into in the Urgent Care — but which could be greatly improved with proper education and natural interventions, also called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

I was trained in conventional medicine. I went to Tulane University School of Medicine and a 3 year family practice residency training program in Salinas, California. Several years later I began a path of learning about natural or “alternative” medicine. Just before my total colectomy surgery in 1997, I discovered natural therapy was touted as a valid option for difficult to treat illnesses. But the Ulcerative Colitis I suffered with had already progressed for many years. I was convinced by my doctor at the time that I needed to undergo surgical removal of my large intestine in order to prevent an already escalated risk of colon cancer.

Then in 2002 I broke away from my family practice physician group and began working alongside natural health practitioners in a multidisciplinary health clinic that I founded. I brought together a board-certified family physician trained in CAM, a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, chiropractor, massage therapist, and nutrition educator. I discovered first hand that using conventional medicine and worthy natural interventions together, called integrative medicine, is the best of both worlds for healing chronic illness.

Let’s consider alternative medicine interventions that are the most effective from my experience. I’ll also touch on the broken aspects of a conventional-only medicine approach.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) defines CAM as a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional (allopathic) medicine. ¹ That would include acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathy, massage, nutrient supplementation, and anything that has evidence of being valuable to reverse or prevent disease. Now, CAM therapies are becoming universally accepted in a primary care setting, but few doctors take the time to learn about or use these methods with their patients.

To avoid CAM based on fears of patient safety is extremely short-sighted. The Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database can identify a mere 1,600 potential interactions between natural products and conventional drugs — the worse supplement offenders being those aimed at weight loss, sexual enhancement and bodybuilding.

In contrast we know there are approximately 2 million seriously adverse prescription drug reactions in hospitalized patients each year and more than 106,000 deaths, making adverse drug reactions the fourth leading cause of death in America — ahead of lung disease, diabetes, AIDS, and automobile deaths.

One might claim that CAM is not effective. While it is true that we don’t see rapid symptom reversal with natural therapies compared to conventional drugs and surgery, healing using CAM is superior in many areas.

There are a few different names for what I call a “discover the causes and reverse the disease” approach to healthcare. One is known as functional medicine. Another is called anti-aging and restorative medicine. These are founded on science, but some of these may lack large, expensive placebo-controlled clinical trials.

Moreover, anti-aging and regenerative medicine is the early detection, prevention, treatment and reversal of illness and age-related disorders. Similarly, functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease and engages both patient and physician in detecting “pre disease.” Testing in this arena was explained in my recent articles on advanced testing here and here. For example, gut microbiome tests tell you about developing disease from an intestinal health perspective. Even the simple understanding that the foods you eat influence the genetic expression of your disease does not even fit into the conventional allopathic medicine, but is CAM, functional medicine, and anti-aging/restorative medicine. Again, the logical approach is to combine the best of both natural and conventional medicine, called integrative medicine.

Integrative medicine

Integrative medicine looks to uncover those contributing causes of your illness, whether they are nutritional, allergic, or biochemical imbalances that are making you sick. It uses cutting-edge lab testing and tailors the intervention to your specific needs as an individual. It looks closely at nutrition, supplements, lifestyle changes and medications to not only treat your illness but also to restore balance and encourage healing.

Additionally, the use of coaching makes a personalized healing approach that much more effective. Physicians don’t need to be the coach, but rather can hire a coach and correspond with the coach to stay informed and offer them guidance. The coach addresses personal challenges with relationships, predominant self-thoughts, feelings, exercise, and nutrition. The coach allows you to dig deeper into your thoughts, feelings and behaviors affecting your chronic illness. The coach also provides consistent accountability to the personal changes that you are making. Some of the topics a coach should address are:

• Emotions, intuition, power, love, mindfulness, and human connection
• How to balance body pH, the Nutritional Pyramid for optimal health, and how to improve nutrient digestion, absorption, and utilization
• Dietary lessons and food preparation techniques
• The immune system, toxins, detoxification and elimination
• Hormonal pathways and stress
• Rest & Rejuvenation techniques
• Shaping your belief systems to get powerful results

As for reimbursement by insurance companies, though there may be billing codes that could generate reimbursement, coaching generally is something worth paying for in order to achieve real lifestyle changes.

I strongly believe that using integrative medicine along with coaching is the most effective model of healthcare. It really should be the standard of care.

To feeling good for health,

Michael Cutler, M.D
Easy Health Options

[1] https://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/acquisitions/cdm/subjects24.html