INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE: Stay Healthy!

After receiving my MD from the University of Michigan, and following an internship at Highland Hospital in Oakland, I began my own “country” practice in West Marin during 1974. My medical career has been quite an exciting journey, spanning four decades and integrating conventional Western medicine with natural, Oriental and preventive approaches. Throughout this evolution, I have practiced, written and taught about the evolving field of integrative healthcare.

Early in my medical career I realized that I wanted to do more than “treat symptoms”--I wanted to help people at the core of their health and healing. I felt it was important to learn how to motivate people to change habits and care for themselves in healthy ways. For this, I needed first to be my own patient, and to learn as much as possible about health and healing. So, I began studying about nutrition, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, fitness training, mind/body healing, and guided imagery. I worked with Marty Rossman, MD, in West Marin, where we practiced using varied healing approaches with our mentor Irving Oyle, DO.

During those early years, much of what I was learning and experiencing seemed important and useful. I became increasingly convinced that these traditional systems should be part of mainstream medicine, I told myself, because they seem to know much more about keeping people healthy than the conventional approaches that I learned in medical school. I also sensed that I needed these disciplines for myself as well as for my patients. As a result of these experiences and revelations, I began to write about all of these systems, integrating them into my practice and my first book, Staying Healthy with the Seasons (1981, 2004).

In 1982, I began calling my practice “integrated medicine,” long before the term and the overall concept became popular. I used this term because I didn’t believe the terms “alternative medicine” or “holistic medicine” truly captured the essence of this new field. I wasn’t strictly “alternative” in my approach to healthcare, since I did use Western approaches when called for, such as ordering diagnostic testing and prescribing drugs. Likewise, I didn’t feel that my practice was best defined as “holistic medicine” because that term was still quite vague, and it embraced many untested approaches.

In my view, bringing true integrative healthcare into the family practice setting--and coupling that care with education--was extremely important. This integrated approach has proven essential to helping people move from a “symptom fixing” model toward true preventive medicine and long-term sustainable health.

I am pleased to have been active in the forefront of this pioneering health movement back in the 1970s and early 1980s. The term for this field has circled back around to become known as “integrative holistic medicine,” and it has its own board (see www.abihm.org).

How might we define the main features of Integrative Medicine (IM)? My own answer is to say that IM:

• Blends family practice with health-supportive preventive medicine disciplines, including prescriptive medicines (when needed), herbal and nutritional remedies, acupuncture, body therapies, and counseling/psychotherapy.
• Takes a multidisciplinary approach to health and uses a variety of medical approaches and services: Western and Eastern, natural and pharmaceutical, body therapies, and psychotherapy (mind/body/emotion integration).
• Incorporates all levels of a person’s life and lifestyle, all as components of health, including mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, nutritional, habits, stress and genetics.
• Uses a new approach in treating symptoms and illness. Instead of merely asking, “What can I take to make this problem or symptom go away?” IM poses a new question: “Why do I have this problem or symptom in the first place?” IM moves from the “attack and conquer” approach to the idea that problems represent conflicts within us, while health involves re-integration and healing of unresolved issues, conflicts and emotions. IM ideally looks at underlying causes and addresses them at their source.

After years of testing and refining my own form of IM, I have observed, learned, and now believe that most causes of ill health have their roots in our lifestyle. With this, I employ four principles that I think are basically good common sense:

 How we look and how we feel are primarily based on how we live: what we eat, whether we exercise and stay fit, how we sleep, how well we manage stress, and our overall attitude, which also affects how we apply the other aspects of a healthy lifestyle. I call these the “five keys to staying healthy.”

• Health is feeling good and having energy and vitality for life without many symptoms or medical issues, although of course, we can have medical problems and still feel healthy.
• If we want to feel healthier in many ways, we need to change how we live. Most often, different actions will create different results, whether it’s related to blood pressure and cholesterol levels or getting sick easily or not.
• My therapeutic approach is Lifestyle first, Natural Therapies next, and Drugs last. This is almost the reverse of the approach taken in modern Western medicine, where drugs are often the first choice of doctors to treat patients, and natural and lifestyle approaches are often given less priority.

Entering my fifth decade of practice as a physician, I am focusing more on the process by which I--and others--might spread awareness of the true power of integrative healthcare to the medical community and to the population of those who need true healing and care. How can we all work together to change and improve healthcare, which to me means keeping both our selves and our patients healthy?

It’s important for all health practitioners to know and apply more in regard to lifestyle and to be educators, which is the core Latin meaning of the word: doctor comes from docere, meaning “teach.” My hope is that future primary care practices will be given the respect they have earned and deserve in the medical community, and that primary care providers can afford staff to support and motivate patients to make positive lifestyle adaptations. I also believe that patients need to take more personal responsibility for their own health. Self-reliance is crucial to attaining and maintaining good health. This also should go along with some greater financial responsibility in that somehow we find a way to build in more rewards and penalties for the way we take care of ourselves as individuals.

The practice of medicine is always evolving, and in many respects we are also at a crossroads today in terms of the future of our healthcare system and the quality of affordable care and education we provide to our citizens. To be sure, we have made great strides in the past 40 years, with improvements in technology for testing and treatment, vaccines and surgical procedures--all of which have proved to be amazing in helping us handle many health problems. Yet, keeping people healthy before they need such medical advances is ultimately the best form of healthcare, and in my opinion should be foremost in our minds, hearts and practices.

In the years ahead, I plan to continue to learn while I teach about integrative healthcare. In other words, some goals include: Doctors as teachers; patients as doctors; and the staff as a support for the health of doctors, patients, and the practice. It can all work. I am so happy to be part of the integrative medicine approach in helping my patients stay healthy.

That’s my personal motto: “Stay Healthy.” My practice motto might be: “Your health starts with you!”

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Dr. Haas, the founder and director of the Preventive Medical Center of Marin in San Rafael, is the author of Staying Healthy with Nutrition, The Detox Diet, and Staying Healthy with the Seasons.

Email: emhaas@sonic.net

Websites: www.pmcmarin.com, www.haashealthonline.com.

Dr. Haas is also an advocate for children’s health and the environment: www.seasonsstudios.com.