East Meeting West in the Doctor’s Office

At 31 years old, Renee Jones experienced what few at her age have: a sudden cardiac arrest that left her fighting for her life.

“I was revived once at home, once in the ambulance and four times at the ER,” she said.

Ten years later, another cardiac event caused the medical device implanted in her chest to fire two shots, shocking her heart back into rhythm. At 340 beats per minute, her heart had gone haywire.

Jones, who works as a software technician, says stress and anxiety had wreaked havoc on her health.

“The only thing I can say is that I lived off of stress,” she said.

Jones, 42, is among millions of Americans living with one of five chronic health conditions , mood disorders, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and hypertension , that account for half of all health expenditures in the U.S.

She is also among the 38 percent of U.S. adults receiving some form of complementary or alternative medicine, known as CAM.

According to the Institute of Medicine, $2.5 trillion is spent each year in a system that fails to improve overall health. The IOM estimates that by 2023, incidents of chronic disease will cost the U.S. $4.3 trillion.

Growing Fan Base

Doctors dissatisfied with approaches to treating the conditions rather than preventing them say they’ve turned to CAM for assistance.

The combination of traditional Western medicine and mind-body therapies used by other cultures for centuries has won over some previously skeptical doctors who now integrate the techniques into their practice.

Besides cardiac rehabilitation, Jones attends stress management classes and regularly receives acupuncture and healing touch.

“With the mindfulness class I’m taking now, I’m able to sit with myself and I’m just more peaceful,” she said.

Dr. Mimi Guarneri, a cardiologist who runs the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, says doctors are taking note.

“More and more physicians, as they learn the potential benefits of what we’re doing, are referring patients,” she said.

Guarneri fell into the practice after years of placing stents and performing angioplasty, a procedure to open up coronary arteries. Her experiences led her to write a book on the topic, “The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing.”

Motivational Tool

“Western medicine is very good at drugs and surgery, but where Western medicine fails is in the arena of keeping weight down, motivating people and keeping tools in the toolbox to motivation,” she said.

Statistics regarding the number of doctors who practice holistic approaches are hard to come by, but recent evidence suggests more medical practitioners are following the lead of their patients.

According to a government survey released in December, 38 percent of U.S. adults age 18 and older and 12 percent of children use some form of CAM.






Treatments generally fall into four categories: natural products, including vitamins and supplements; energy medicine such as acupuncture and healing touch; manipulative practices such as chiropractic work; and mind-body medicine, which includes meditation and deep breathing. Most often, individuals seek treatment for chronic back, neck and joint pain, arthritis, anxiety, high cholesterol and head or chest colds.

At Women’s Integrative Health of Encinitas, Dr. Angelica Zaid says patients benefit from holistic approaches to hormonal imbalance, menopause and pregnancy.

“Just today I had an ovarian tumor referral from a primary care physician,” she said in a telephone interview March 4.







Where’s The Proof?

One of the biggest challenges facing integrative medicine, however, is that it requires more of a doctor’s time. Critics also argue that integrative medicine needs to be proven with clinical evidence.

“If the science is there, then it makes sense,” said Tom Gehring, CEO of the San Diego County Medical Society, a nonprofit organization that represents doctors.

Lately, though, government health organizations and medical societies are joining the movement for a more integrative approach. Conservative medical groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have established CAM task forces.

Meanwhile, government funding for clinical trials has increased. The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Funding has doubled its research funding since 1999. In fiscal 2008, the agency awarded $121.5 million in research grants.

And an increasing number of prestigious medical schools are implementing the practices into their teachings.

Getting insurers to cover acupuncture, nutritional counseling and other alternative practices is a more daunting challenge, say analysts.

But doctors practicing integrative medicine say they’ve already seen a change in mind-set with the new presidential administration.

“I think it’s definitely going to shift in the next year or so, especially if health care reform incentivizes health care,” Scripps’ Guarneri said.