I am often asked “what is Integrative Medicine.” The answer is “everything” – it’s doing what works, what helps, what’s effective. It’s anything that helps the body, mind and spirit heal. It uses both Eastern and Western practices including pharmaceuticals, supplements, healthy diets, exercise…. It also includes a wide variety of therapies. Its' main interest is in using whatever works in healing and managing disease so that the condition becomes just one factor in our lives, it doesn’t take over our lives. It creates space for us to dream and live into our dreams again. It’s a different way of thinking about disease that includes looking at a person and focusing on cellular health and overall body system interactions and how they work in support of each other or may be out of step.
Functional Medicine, that often goes hand-in-hand with Integrative Medicine, is a systems biology-based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease with the goal of looking for changes that can be corrected before disease occurs. Functional Medicine Doctors have been trained in traditional medical schools and do more traditional residencies before taking additional training in Functional Medicine. Naturopathic Medicine is very similar, and focuses on the body's innate ability to heal itself.
As Dr. Andrew Weil said “We don’t have a healthcare system in America, we have a disease management system, one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and other therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.” Often there are many pathways to health and feeling better and it’s important to work collaboratively with each person individually to discover what works for them and what’s helpful It’s looking at the person from the top to bottom, bottom to top, inside out and outside in. It doesn’t mean you have to do something exotic to create better health, many simple everyday things can have a huge benefit.
As a Certified Integrative Mental Health Professional I work collaboratively with you in many ways. I help you look at your mental health, your thought processes, your environment, your stressors and your diet to find opportunities for change. I use the tools gained both in my therapy training and in my Integrative Mental Health training to help you deal more effectively with what’s going on. Sometimes that means working collaboratively with other health providers such as your physician. Sometimes that means treating past traumatic experiences that may be causing symptoms and disease. It’s helping you relearn how to care for yourself, which isn’t at all selfish, it’s smart. If we aren’t caring for ourselves we have little to give others. Often it means collaborating with you to create a customized plan of care that best suit your needs. I have heard this as described as and have personally experienced this as a journey of self-discovery. On that journey you pick up information and create tools and skills for you to better mitigate life, not only now but for the future.
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