What is integrative medicine?
Dr. Walker: Integrative medicine is a whole-person approach to caring for folks. It’s looking at all the aspects that create our health - everything from sleep to nutrition to exercise to who’s in our lives and what makes us excited from day to day. We look at how all of those aspects help to either support our health or may be impeding our health, and how we can help folks move forward. We use lots of modalities to help folks get to their health goals. We’re looking at how we can work with what’s already being done in the traditional allopathic world, and what else is out there that has some good evidence that we can use - whether that’s talking about diet, exercise, herbs, supplements, other forms of medicine such as acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicine. There’s a lot out there that we can put together for folks to help them get to where they’re looking to be.
Dr. Ennis: I agree with everything Dr. Walker said, that’s exactly what we do in an integrative medicine practice. One of the things to keep in mind is that it’s a way to truly integrate all of these different approaches to care. Much of the time, when a person goes to see a doctor, it’s because of a problem or because something feels wrong, and there’s an underlying assumption that everything else has already been done to optimize nutrition, sleep, community, and all these other factors that have a real impact on our health and how we’re doing. We try to get underneath the root causes, and to work alongside all of the allopathic approaches to healthcare. But really, we don’t assume that everything else has been optimized to the extent that I think is typically done. And one of the things that we really need from folks is buy-in and being willing to shift things in these other aspects of life in order to move towards your health and wellness goals.
Who is integrative medicine a good fit for?
Dr. Ennis: Integrative medicine is a great fit for somebody who is motivated to use all of the agency they have to take control of their own health and to work with us. It’s not a very directive approach to care; we talk about works for you, what doesn’t work for you, what you’re willing to shift, but it really needs a person who’s motivated to shift things in their lives - to explore different ways of eating, different ways of moving, with the understanding that doing the best that we can in all these ways will really make a massive impact on how we’re feeling and help to hopefully reduce the need for pharmaceutical and prescribed medications. If we’re able to optimize things in all these other aspects of life, a lot of these health conditions go away.
What can someone expect from their first appointment and subsequent appointments?
Dr. Walker: The first appointment is definitely going to be a lot of gathering of information. We ask folks to fill out an intake form which is really involved; it’s asking about all these different aspects of their lives which are really important. That gives us a lot of information that we’re able to review before we see folks in the office. Then we’re going to go through all those elements with them. At that point, we’ll come up with some specific goals and action items that we can give them, whether it’s doing some additional bloodwork or additional evaluation, and starting to work on different modifications in terms of lifestyle and diet. From there on, we’re going to be following up and seeing how they’re doing in terms of progress, seeing if we need to tweak the plan and come up with other ideas. The goal is to eventually get folks to a place where they’re feeling like they’re making progress and that this is something that’s sustainable for them, and that hopefully these are skills that folks can take with them life-long.