I’m still high from events that took place in Washington D.C. last week, of which I was lucky enough to be a part. There were two seismic occurrences, interrelated and yet separate, that bode well for the future of healthcare. First, the venerable Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences held a Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public; and second, some of my colleagues and the nation’s leaders in integrative medicine, Drs. Weil, Oz, Ornish and Hyman, took a break from the Summit and went to Capital Hill to explain why integrative medicine is the best viable model for improving the health of Americans. By all counts Congress loved the idea. And the Summit finished with Senator Tom Harkin stopping by to give the closing address along with his blessing for the integrative model. In the span of a few days, America’s medical horizon grew a lot brighter.
    A quick definition for those of you who don’t have a clue of what I’m talking about. Integrative medicine is an approach to medical practice that emphasizes the partnership between doctor and patient, and utilizes an evidence basis to determine the best of indigenous medicine, complementary/alternative practices and conventional therapies individualized to each person’s needs. Integrative doctors (of which there are now hundreds in the U.S. and twice as many being trained by integrative programs at more than 30 top medical schools) look at the whole person, not just the disease, and we consider the emotional, spiritual, dietary, environmental and lifestyle influences that affect health and healing.
    Integrative medicine has blown open the old aphorism “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” With us, for example for someone who feels like they’re getting sick, it’s more like take three Chinese herbs to boost your immune system, a homeopathic remedy to reduce the symptoms, drink Echinacea tea, do breathing exercises to reduce stress on the body, eat immune-boosting foods, get eight hours of sleep and take tomorrow off to strengthen your system. If that doesn’t work, call me in the morning and we’ll try a few other things (perhaps acupuncture, a vitamin shot, bodywork) before we even consider pharmaceuticals that probably won’t help the problem and may even prolong it.
    With a healthcare system modeled on integrative medicine we’d have a lot fewer people on Lipitor and a lot more people eating well for life. We seek to empower our patients to take care of themselves. Integrative medicine can take more time than conventional medicine, it requires educating the public, expanding physicians’ knowledge bases, and it means getting to know your patient. But by shifting the model from disease management to wellness management integrative medicine will save money, which is why Congress (and by all indications the Obama administration) is now keenly interested and committed to moving forward.
    The integrative model seeks to prevent or reverse diseases before they require catastrophically expensive pharmaceutical or surgical interventions. Dean Ornish put it very succinctly before Congress (echoing a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece he co-wrote with Andy Weil, Deepak Chopra and Rustum Roy): "Last year $2.1 trillion was spent on medical care, with 95% of it spent treating disease after it occurred. Many of these diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, prostate and breast cancer, and obesity account for 75% of these health care costs, although studies show they are preventable and reversible through lifestyle changes." (thanks to Alison Rose Levy for this quote.) Being a glass half full kind of guy, I find Dr. Ornish’s statistics to be incredibly inspiring. Over $1 trillion dollars currently spent primarily on pharmaceutical and surgical management of chronic illnesses could be spent to prevent or reverse these same problems---mostly via simple life-style choices.
    Obama proposed over $600 billion dollars to reform our healthcare system. While there will be intense wrangling between entrenched interests who have much to lose, and new era advocates who see a brighter horizon, there is no doubt that change is coming soon. There’s a high probability now that integrative medicine will be the cornerstone of providing an evidence-based preventive and wellness centered healthcare system. Something as simple as making fresh fruits and vegetables available to schoolchildren all day long (started as a pilot project by Senator Harkin in 2002) is now a significant part of President Obama’s new budget. By providing the nutrition to change the way every cell in the body works, this sort of spending will begin to have a big impact on the health of future generations.
    By focusing on prevention and reversal of disease through lifestyle measures (a fundamental principle of integrative medicine) we can free up needed financial resources for providing universal care and finding cures (new and important tools) for our many yet unsolved medical mysteries including cancer, autoimmune and neurological diseases. Integrative medicine provides a very doable and inspiring model for universal care and national wellness. This real change toward a deeply humanized, patient centered, lifestyle based integrative medical model will take us out of what I’m convinced we’ll look back on as the medical dark ages, when we had the highest per capita spending on healthcare while remaining mired at  37th place in global health. What happened in Washington was no less than a giant step toward the sustainability of health and wellness for Americans.