Whatever happened to Holistic or Integrated Medicine

At it's inception in the early 1980's the holistic approach, or integrated medicine, or multidisciplinary medicine promoted the concept of providing the patient with a host of different health therapy alternatives to resolve their maladies. By the 1980's it was becoming more obvious that most of the pathology we were observing was caused by multiple insults to the organism. It was the beginning of the era of looking beyond, "one bug, one disease". The germ theory had served us well in moving us out of the dark ages where bad luck, dark humors, and the devil were the cause of disease. It still today obviously plays a major role in public health and disease prevention. However, by the 1980's into the 90's we began to read more studies linking diet and exercise, and our environment  to the top three diseases that shortened our lives, heart disease, diabetes, stroke. In the 80's renown scientists like Dr. Watson were writing of dietary changes and trace elements could effect brain function and psychiatric health. Dr. Feingold published his books concerning food additives, food coloring and hyperactive children and slow learners, as they were called then. Many studies reported how posture effected and was effected by one's health. Dr. Goodheart presenting his work on Kinesiology and the integration of perception (proprioception), neurological synergy, nutrition and acupuncture. At the same time Dr. Upledger was rediscovering Sacro Occipital Therapy and sharing his findings with all practitioners. This tsunami of information opened  the door to serious research into the benefits of Chiropractic therapy in particular and other body work in general.

Clinics began to spring up with medical doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, nutritionists, Homeopathic and Naturopathic therapists, acupuncturists, psychologists, all working in concert to address the specific needs of each individual patient's malady. I had the good luck in participating in such a clinic while in Puerto Rico at the out-patient facility at a Medical School. It was the brain child of the school's dean. She had added to the above mentioned therapists an anesthesiologist for pain control, Reiki, Hypnosis, and Pranic healing. It was an exhilarating experience.

Unfortunately, as does happen to all good things, it came to an end. The end of the 90's saw changes again in the medical insurance industry and as doctors found themselves treating the insurance policy instead of the patient, the insurances declined to pay for alternative therapies, and these nascent centers of patient need treatment began to disappear.    

Today, sadly the terms multidisciplinary and integrative treatment are still  battered about, especially for the advertisement value to the general public. However, today integrative therapy usually means different specialties of medicine, perhaps a psychologist and or a physical therapist is thrown in and in those really a vanguard clinics they will add an occupational therapist. Integrated? Perhaps. Multidisciplinary? Not quite, only one discipline Medicine.