Dueling Mainstream Media Views on Integrative Medicine

Contentious spring blasts by Forbes, The Economist
Offset by careful analysis in Atlantic Monthly.

I don’t know what happened earlier this year to draw the attention of the mainstream media to integrative medicine, but the subject has been batted around this spring among Forbes, The Economist — both of which expressed caustic disbelief that integrative medicine provides any benefit, and the Atlantic Monthly, which probes deeply into the sources for that disbelief to find that conventional medicine is broadly embracing integrative approaches.

 

At the Intersection of Wellness and Hospitality

Integrators at Work: Jeremy McCarthy, Starwood Hotels

Jeremy McCarthy manages the worldwide spas of Starwood Hotels, where he works, as his Twitter bio says “…at the intersection of wellness, positive psychology and hospitality.”

He also writes a very insightful personal blog, The Psychology of Wellbeing
in which he draws on wide range of current developments in personal health, wellness and healing approaches and the science behind them.

 

Prince of Wales on Earth’s Stressed Food Systems

Prince Charles

Prince Charles’ keynote at the May 4, 2011 Future of Food conference at Georgetown University is well worth the viewing.

Like Al Gore, who spent 25 years educating himself about the earth’s climate, the Price of Wales has spent years immersed in food and sustainability, including 26 years “farming” himself.

 

Tom Harkin on Integrative Medicine & Health

US Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa has been the primary Congressional paladin for the integrative medicine and prevention and wellness community since the early 1990′s, when he personally cajoled the Congress to create the Office of Alternative Medicine. In the subsequent 20 years, integrative therapies, modalities, and approaches to care have become far more accepted across the conventional care landscape, including in hospitals and care facilities and in medical schools.

Here Harkin addresses attendees of the April 2011 iMosaic Conference in Minneapolis, and brings viewers up to date on this journey, describing where the Affordable Care Act defines integrative health practices and the major initiative to advance a National Prevention Strategy in which integrative practices can play an important role.

 

TRENDING: Integrative Oncology, Nutrition and Public Education

French Hospital MC
San Luis Obispo, CA

As the following example illustrates, the public is increasingly being presented with examples of the use of integrative medicine practices with conventional treatments for conditions like cancer in sessions like this hosted by a local hospital like French Hospital Medical Center.

Of interest in this presentation is the participation of a medical oncologist from a conventional cancer treatment center, a naturopathic physician (ND), a chef/nutritionist, as well as a survivor.

 

PhysEd 2.0: Overhead Lifts are Social

Saratoga (CA) High School invents a strength-training program.

 

They are starting with their athletes but have designed with the whole neighborhood in mind.

Our vision is that on any given day, a student in a 9th grade PE class, a math teacher, a mom, the school librarian, a varsity football player and a fire fighter from the station down the street will all do the same Workout of the Day.

See Saratoga’s Crossfit Sawmill page.  And more on Fitness-Based Learning in the next post.

 

PhysEd 2.0: Fitness-based learning

Students work out before class. Click to view PBS report on fitness and learning.

“It’s all about the heart rate.” Paul Zientarski, who has recreated PE at Naperville (IL) Central High School, tells us this: and when student heart rates go up in the hour before they sit down in class, their grades will follow.

In addition to the brushfire of school nutrition initiatives emerging in schools all over the country, we are seeing the connection between physical fitness and cognitive fitness put in place at the other end of the building.

 

Integrative Practice in Worksite Wellness Programs

Efforts by US businesses to contain their health costs have become noteworthy in large part due to incentive programs that intend to reward employees for altering their lifestyles.  A lesser-known aspect of these trends is the evolution of health services provided in business settings that have adopted the thinking and approaches characterized by integrative medicine practices.

These transitions are well described in a recent report funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Workplace Clinics: A Sign of Growing Employer Interest in Wellness.”

It observes:

The focus has shifted largely to health promotion, wellness, and an array of primary care services, rather than occupational health or convenience care.