What is The Role of Acupuncture and Complementary Medicine

The Important Role of Complementary Medicine In Our Healthcare System

Allopathic,” or conventional, medicine excels in acute care. The “ill to the pill” mentality may be needed to fight an infection; surgery can be lifesaving. But allopathic medicine is not proactive; it is not focused on disease prevention and it has failed at chronic disease management. Allopathic medicine is focused on diagnosing disease after it has occurred, offering treatments based on surgery and pharmaceutical therapy.

As a board certified internist, cardiologist, and nuclear cardiologist, I recognize the value of the medicine I was taught at SUNY Downstate, Cornell, and New York University. But as a physician who practices the Hippocratic Oath — “first do no harm” — I have been compelled to seek out methods to heal my patients, relieve suffering, and prevent disease that are not part of the allopathic medicine paradigm.

As a cardiologist, I practice holistic integrative cardiology. “Holistic” means I treat the whole person: body, mind, emotions, and spirit. We know that our environment interacts with our genes, resulting in illness or health. Our environment is both physical and emotional. The air we breathe, the water we drink, micro and macro nutrition, toxins, stress, and our relationships will interact with our genes, leading to health or illness. Through holistic integrative medicine, I am able to address these issues, utilizing the best of western allopathic medicine along with the wisdom and teaching of many global healing traditions.

Today the foundation of our medical pyramid is drugs and surgery. I believe the apex of the pyramid should be drugs and surgery and the foundation should be clean air, and water, nutrition, sleep, resiliency, and community.

Mimi Guarneri, M.D., is a clinical cardiologist and the founder of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, California.

I am happy to find someone from the allopathic medicine with the holistic perspective treating people and also 100 % with her that “the physicians first do no harm-the Hippocratic Oath.”

And thinking of the good analogy of the medical pyramid, Acupuncturists and Traditional Asian medicine doctors have been working hard for the prevention of disease and the chronic disorders and mind-body medicine, and as we all know, each physician and therapist play his or her role in the whole medical or healthcare system to help more people to live better with less or no pain in mind or/and body, therefore there is no superior or inferior medicine in this view but the best and most fitting medicine to each different disease or condition.

We always make an effort to find out the right and best way under any circumstances, which is our physician’s duty in this world.

If you want to read the whole article, go to the link-“First Do No Harm”