Integrative Medicine: Underlying Principles
Posted on | April 20, 2010 | 2 Comments
Gregg Hake, CEO | Energetix
The medical system in the United States is largely based on the Cartesian principle of reductionism. René Descartes (1596-1650), a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, is credited as being one of the fathers of the Scientific Revolution. Descartes argued that complex things can be understood by reducing them to their component parts and that a complex system is nothing more than the sum of its parts. His line of reasoning created the substructure for the “find-it-and-fix-it” approach to medicine that we use today, an approach that has proven to be incapable of handling the complex chronic diseases that represent the majority of medical visits in our era.
Two hundred years later, Abraham Flexner produced a report that transformed medical education in our country. Many argue that this report codified the disease-driven approach to medicine and in turn, set the stage for the reactive, fragmented and specialized system birthed in the soil of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While the changes set in motion in the early 1900s catalyzed incredible advances in the practice of health care, the unintended side-effects of this approach are now of such magnitude that doctors, policy-makers and health care consumers are aggressively seeking more efficient approaches and better outcomes.
Integrative medicine, a new system of health care that unifies the best of the old with the most promising of the new, aims to reduce the inefficiencies, redundancies and waste of the fragmented system currently in place. In contrast to the present system, the care models under development and in use are patient-centered, personalized, preventive in focus and emphasize shared decision-making. It is likely that science will fuel the transformation, particularly as predictive sciences such as genomics and proteomics get their legs under them. Early detection, it is argued, requires less aggressive and costly interventions, much as a gentle correction of course on a bicycle is preferred to a large swerve.
Once identified, a personalized treatment plan is created, not on the basis of the “find-it-and-fix-it” approach, but according to a holistic, integrated and coordinated plan. Many of the interventions required will likely be low-tech, involving patient education, minor lifestyle changes and simple adjustments to diet and exercise.
Integrated medicine is full of promise, though reinventing health care is no small task. Some of the nation’s brightest medical, political and business minds are working to develop, test and refine this new system. Many of the nation’s medical schools have created centers for integrative medicine and the research necessary to prove scientifically the efficacy of this new system is now underway. The combination of public interest, research, training, funding and economic necessity are fueling this transformation, but change in a system that represents nearly 20 percent our nation’s gross domestic product will likely not come easy or quickly, even though it could if the right minds were to get with the appropriate decision-makers quickly and with a strong plan.
Tags: education > Flexner > Gregg Hake > gregory hake > healthcare > natural healing > Rene Descartes
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2 Responses to “Integrative Medicine: Underlying Principles”
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April 27th, 2010 @ 6:47 pm
Dear Gregg:
You are right on.
I love your commentary.
Loren
April 30th, 2010 @ 8:45 am
Thank you, Loren!