Internist Nancy Harris, MD, has learned a lot over her 15 years of providing holistic primary care services in remote regions of Tibet. Among the lessons, the power of nutrition to transform lives, and the power of human dignity to transcend adversity.
For the past decade, the Vitamin Angel Alliance has been bringing vitamins and other nutritional supplements to hungry, displaced families facing the ravages of war, natural disaster and merciless poverty.
From battlefield hospitals in Iraq, to flood survivor relief centers in Sri Lanka and New Orleans, holistic physicians are showing that natural medicine can play a key role in front-line emergency medicine. Inspiring portraits of holism in action.
New food allergen labeling regulations, effective in January 2006, will make it easier for food-sensitive people to avoid allergy triggers.
There’s a lot physicians can do to help people fend off the flu besides doling out flu shots. Roby Mitchell, MD, aka Dr. Fitt, offers some outside-the-box thinking and practical suggestions.
With the elderly population growing rapidly and birth rates flat, health care and social services for older Americans could very well bankrupt the country by 2030. Economist Laurence Kotlikoff predicts a major economic crisis unless we radically change health care financing and shift from disease care to disease prevention.
Abuse and discrimination based on differences in rank is widespread in our society, and medicine is no exception. Robert Fuller, noted author of Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank, discusses rank abuse in healthcare and offers a vision of a more humane system that preserves the practical strengths of hierarchical organizations while ensuring human dignity.
Successful collaborations between conventional MDs and practitioners of natural medicine are still rare. Leaders of major associations representing both conventional and holistic health professionals met at California’s Esalen Institute to confront the political, economic and personal roadblocks to greater collaboration and a more humanistic healthcare system.
For the past 28 years, Dr. Dean Ornish and colleagues at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute have been quietly proving that one can reverse atherosclerosis and prevent heart attacks through diet, exercise and stress management alone. The bigger challenge is proving to Medicare and insurers that paying for these sorts of lifestyle programs is money well-spent.
Merck’s recall of its billion-selling COX-2 inhibitor has left millions of former Vioxx users looking for new ways to relieve pain associated with arthritis and other chronic conditions. A number of natural products companies are promoting botanical, nutritional and homeopathic preparations as natural alternatives to Vioxx. How well do they work and will they carry the same risk of cardiovascular side effects? Holistic Primary Care finds out.
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