Dr. Kathi Kemper from Harvard University created the Integrative Medicine Model, which takes the form of a wheel of therapies, with the patient at the center and different therapies at the rim (Fig. 1).

Specific therapies are grouped into one of four categories, based on the proposed mechanism of action: biochemical, lifestyle/mind-body, biomechanical, and bioenergetics.

Biochemical Therapies
Biochemical therapies act at the level of biochemistry and are perhaps the most familiar and readily understood by physicians. Among the most common biochemical therapies are medications, herbal remedies, vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements.

Lifestyle/Mind-Body Therapies
These interventions are often common-sense therapies all of us incorporate into our daily lives, including exercise, nutrition, rest, stress management,  environmental changes (heat, ice, music, vibration, and light therapies, magnets, clean environment, air filters), social support,and mind-body techniques such as (hypnosis, meditation, journaling, guided imagery, psychotherapy, nlp and biofeedback among others). Mind-body therapies are geared toward invoking the mind’s ability to influence body function and symptoms. The key principle is that thoughts or emotions (”stresses”) have an important impact on health. By improving awareness of one’s own bodily systems, one develops a sense of self-efficacy and control and is more able to move from a state of internal disorder to one of homeostasis.

Biomechanical Therapies
These therapies stimulate, align, move, or remove larger tissues and organs. Therapies such as, massage, bodywork, spinal manipulation (including chiropractic and osteopathic adjustments) and surgery are in this category.

Bioenergetic Therapies
The underlying principle of bioenergetic interventions is that they restore the harmonious balance of an invisible energy or spirit that surrounds and flows through the body. Bioenergetic therapies include acupuncture, radiation therapy, conscious breathing, homeopathy, magnets, Reiki, Brennan Healing Science, healing touch, prayer, qi gong, and homeopathy.

(Kemper, Vohra, Walls, & Task Force on Complementary and Alternative Medicine the Provisional Section on Complementary, Holistic, and Integrative Medicine, 2008).

Retrieved from http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/155/4/449

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine  http://nccam.nih.gov/

Dr. Kathi Kemper is recognized internationally as the leading authority on integrative medicine for children. Media including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, ABC News, and USA Today, frequently consults her. She serves as a faculty for Yale, Harvard University, among others.

She founded the Council on Bioenergetic Healing, the Council on Mind-Body Medicine, the Committee for Holistic and Integrative Medical Education, at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She also serves as Senior Research Associate at the Mind-Body Medical Institute at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts,

kemper_k@al.tch.harvard.edu

Integrative Medicine Model

Integrative medicine is, in part, now taught, practiced and researched in nearly half the medical schools in the country. These include such leading universities as Duke, Harvard, Yale, University of California San Francisco, Johns Hopkins, and Columbia.

Prestigious health care organizations such as the Mayo Clinics in Minnesota, Arizona and Florida, and Scripps Health in Southern California among others operate integrative medicine centers that work in collaboration with the larger system.

Additionally, research projects studying the clinical and cost effectiveness of an integrative approach for employee health programs are being conducted by the Corporate Health Improvement Program, (CHIP), a collaborative research program between theUniversity of Arizona College of Medicine, the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Fortune 500 corporations including Ford, Prudential, IBM, Pfizer, Corning, Pepsi, Nestle, and NASA.

These facts clearly reflect its potential to provide transformative change to the health care system.

IntegratIve Medicine: Improving Health Care for Patients and Health Care Delivery for Providers and Payors.  A Bravewell Collaborative Report

Integrative Medicine shifts the orientation of the medical practice from a disease-based approach to the healing-based approach. The healing approach tries to understand the disease state from a broader holistic perspective. This approach involves the whole human being, (body, mind and spirit) as well as his environment and community in the health restoring process. Prevention and disease minimization represent the foundation of integrative health care.

The integrative approach is based in a sacred partnership between the client and the practitioner. In this approach the best treatments and therapies are used to stimulate the body’s intrinsic healing abilities, to achieve optimal health.

Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine.

.Prevention: One of the main Philosophies of Integrative Medicine, is to take preventive steps to promote good health.
.Natural Healing: Your body has the ability to heal itself. The purpose of treatment is to encourage the natural healing processes.
.Active Learning: Integrative practitioners see themselves as a facilitators – teachers who offer guidance. You’re the one who actually produces the healing.
.”Holistic” care: The focus is on treating the whole person – addressing physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs.

Holistic medicine focuses on patient-centered care and includes biological, spiritual, social, and environmental components while integrative medicine is relationship-based care that includes contemporary medical practices and complementary therapies (The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine NCCAM, 2009).

Integrative Medicine can be defined as, “a broad domain of healing resources that encompasses all health systems, modalities, and practices and their accompanying theories and beliefs, other than those intrinsic to the politically dominant health systems of a particularsociety or culture in a given historical period.”

These and other integrative approaches to maintaining a healthy lifestyle may prevent serious illness and challenging medical treatments.

This is an important point. Integrative medicine is built on the recognition that health is a state of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing that enables engagement with life in accordance with how an individual wants to live.

Ralph Snyderman, MD

It is a philosophy of healthcare that views physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of life as closely interconnected and equally important approaches to treatment. While frequently associated with integrative medicine, it may also be used in medical practice as part of a broad view of patient care.

As the cliché goes: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. My approach is to positively affect an infinite rather than finite number of issues in the living organism.

The terms “holistic medicine” and “integrative medicine” describe approaches to patients and therapies, respectively. 27 Holistic medicine refers to caring for the whole patient-body, mind, emotions, and spirit-in the context of the patient’s and family’s values, culture, and community; this is simply another way of stating the highest ideals of conventional medicine.28 Integrative medicine refers to considering a broad range of therapies. Integrative medicine takes evidence-based medicine 1 step further by including consideration of all possible therapies, not simply those that have been part of mainstream medical practice.

The term Alternative Medicine: If something is alternative you have to choose between one or another.  Most of the time, optimal care requires more than one approach (a combination of approaches) that often produces better results.

The term Complementary Medicine: If something is complementary it is only a meresupportive (accessory) role to Conventional Medicine.

The term Integrative Medicine fulfills the need of a more accurate term. It involves the understanding of the interaction of the mind, body and spirit and how to interpret this relationship in the dynamics of health and disease.  It distinguishes healing from curing, understanding that healing is always possible even when curing is not.