WHAT IS INTEGRATIVE TREATMENT?
The short answer is combining different classes of treatments that the research suggests maybe useful to combine.  When applied together, the different healing approaches work "synergistically" which means that they magnify the effects of each other.

Approaching a problem from multiple vantage points increases our chances of success.  This is particularly useful if a person is struggling to get over a condition or when individual treatments have proven themselves ineffective.

Multiple Causes Require Multiple Solutions
After researching this phenomenon and compiling our data we realized that certain conditions don't have single causes, they have multiple causes.  Many things could be contributing to a condition which is then labeled with a single diagnosis.  A single diagnosis is an error in categorizing what is going on in the body.  I'll give you an example:

Irritable Bowel Syndrome can be caused by:

1. Large Amounts of Stress and Anxiety.
   
2. Eating a diet high in processed food.
3. Ingesting large amounts of an Amino Acid called "Glutamine."
4. Having the wrong kind of bacteria in the intestines.
   
5. Not having enough fiber in one's diet.
6. Nerve dysfunction in nerves going to the intestines.
   

Could a single medication compensate for all these problems?  Probably not.  Deficiencies must be met with sustenance, not replacement.  If you're dehydrated you need water, nothing else can do the job.  The same is true of other deficiencies in health.  Covering up the symptoms doesn't alleviate the basic need of the body that is being neglected.  In our office, a person that has IBS would be treated using Chiropractic, Nutritional Therapy, and Mind/Body Medicine, and possibly tested for Food Allergies.

Here are few examples of other conditions that we believe may have more than one factor causing them:

• Obesity
• Metabolic Syndrome
• Chronic Fatigue
• Fibromyalgia/Chronic Pain
  
• Irritable Bowel and all associated diagnoses
  

Does it make sense to do only one thing to remedy the situation if a number of things have caused it?  That's why we integrate treatment.

The Magic Bullet Doesn't Exist
This "Magic Bullet Theory" states that for every condition that is this one Medication that will cure the condition.  Single diagnosis, single cure.  Largely the patient's own lifestyle choices are ignored during this process.  This is a major mistake and one of the reasons that we are losing the battle against Chronic Diseases like Obesity, Heart Disease, Cancer, Hypertension, and Stroke.

If a condition's cause is multifactorial, than how much cure can come from single treatment?  If you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and you take a stimulant it may help for a short period of time, but can it overcome chronic lack of sleep, a diet loaded with carbs and lacking any real nutrition, a lack of exercise, and an inability to cope with stress on a basic level?  Probably not.

Health Science Doesn't Adequately Reflect How the Body Really Works
Medicine's "Magic Bullet Theory" is easy to test in the laboratory.  Single intervention vs. placebo, double-blind clinical study in sufficient numbers to reduce "sample errror."  The problem is that the body really doesn't function that way.  It has multiple needs and they must ALL be met for us to be healthy.  It is an integrated series of systems all interacting and all needed to be fed in different ways.

The current Health Science Model and actual Human Health are like oil and water.  Good healthcare is harder to test because we have multiple forms of positive stimulus affecting the patient, not just one.  We can measure whether protocols work or not, but it is harder to determine what parts did what percentage of the healing.  And why should we?  The body doesn't separate its needs, it just requires them to function properly.

Percentage Cure
When a person heals using an Integrative Treatment approach we've often felt that certain portions of the care were more necessary than others.  But who's to say the other treatments didn't silently contribute to the person's overall health and healing?  If all the body's systems are interconnected, is any positive stimulus ever wasted?  It all feeds into the same system and promotes the healing of the other systems.

So, if a person heals from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, what percentage of the total cure was each treatment.  Assuming we could measure it would it look like this:

• 43% Moderate Exercise 3x/week
• 24% Chiropractic Atlas Adjustment 1x/wk
  
• 21% Nutritional Changes and Improvements
  
• 12% Mind/Body Stress Management 3x/day

We can't measure to this degree of certitude, but let us not forget the person has a much better chance of healing and can easily notice the synergistic effect of these treatments.  So it comes down to which is more important: having 100% proof of an inadequate therapy's marginal effects or not quite knowing 100% of how an effective protocol is working for the patient. 

We may not be able to show with great certainty what's going on in the body, but we can measure patient satisfaction, and overall success as a measurement of success.  If you heal, it worked.  If you don't heal it didn't.  Pretty simple really.

How Science DOES Enter Into Our Integrative Treatment Protocols?
When a treatment plan is formulated alot of factors have to be taken into account.  The committment of the patient, the amount of time we have, cost limitations, and which treatments are going to be the right mix for a successful resolution of the problem.

While there is very little scientific evidence of the protocol's effectiveness other than a bunch of happy healthy patients, we do have data supporting the individual therapies used to make up the protocol.  The thought is:  "If there is Scientific Evidence that "TREATMENT A" works for "CONDITION X," then add it.   If "TREATMENT B" of also works for "CONDITION X" but in a different physiologic way, then add it also.  And so on.

Integrative Treatment:  Compiling What Works
For example if you have High Blood Pressure (hypertension) and want to try to control it naturally.  It would makes sense to limit the effects of Stress.  I'm sure there is much data to be found on that.  Well, what about if you use Potassium to counteract the effects of the Sodium in your diet?  That makes sense.  What if you added the Amino Acid "L-arginine" because it is a vasodialator and vasodialators lower blood pressure?  What about the lowering of blood pressure that occurs after cardiovascular exercise?  Well I'm sure there is science on that also.  There is some great data on Upper Cervical Adjustments and the lowering of blood pressure.  That's right, if the 1st Cervical Vertebrae is out of alignment it increases Blood Pressure on average 14 points!  Might want to have that looked at also.

So if one were looking to construct Treatment Protocol for this condition, one might consider:

• Stress Management in the form of Mind/Body Medicine
• Getting a Chiropractic Adjustment every few weeks.
  
• Increasing Potassium Intake
  
• Supplementing with L-Arginine
• Performing Moderate Cardiovascular Exercise 3x/week.
  

Integrative Medicine is Less Medicine and More Integration
Our treatment approach is different than the NCCAM's (National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine's definition of: Treatment that combines conventional medical treatments and CAM alternative treatments for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of their safety and effectiveness.

We believe that if good Integrative Care is practiced this lessens the need for Medication.  If you can get the job naturally, why expose yourself to the potential side-effects of medication?  What our protocols represent is the organization of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine into viable, natural treatment strategies.

We believe that the NCCAM's approach to Integrative Medicine is erroneus and should focus on natural Integrative Treatment FIRST, then incorporate drugs if success is not achievable.

Does Everyone Need Integrative Care?
No, not everyone needs it.  But we believe that this style of treatment is definitely underutilized by many people. For example, if you have a knee problem you could have your knee adjusted, take glucosamine and anti-inflammatory supplements, have deep-tissue massage done on the muscles of the leg, and use acupuncture to control pain. Sounds alot better than going straight to surgery.  If it works, you didn't have to go under the knife and run the risk of being the 7 in 10,000 that die from anesthesia.

Where Do You See the Most Dramatic Improvements Using this treatment model?
Typically people with chronic and/or severe conditions that have met with little success with other treatments are the most rewarding.  For optimizing health, no other approach is more effective.  Sometimes it's not disease, but more a lack of health that makes a person sick.  Build enough health into a person's life and they can sometimes spontaneously resolve a condition.

Each system of the body is supported by all the other systems, they are interdependent on each other. That means a loss of function or a deficit in one system of the body will affect all other systems and they will suffer a loss of function also.

In the past Medicine has divided the systems of the body up and thus limiting our understanding of how these systems interact during times of both health and disease.  This attempt to gain credibility in Medicine's infancy really performed a disservice to how our body functions globally and limited health theory to more two-dimensional simple-cause, simple-effect models.

Because each of the systems of the body is so interdependent on the health of the all of the others to stay healthy by providing positive stimulus to one part of a person's health has a trickle down affect of helping all the other systems.

Integrative Care is an attempt to bring about healing of a person by healing of different systems simultaneously.  This is done by applying multiple treatment types simultaneously. The hope is that this will facillitate healing to a much greater degree.  We essentially bombard the body with positive stimulus.  We treat deficiencies, remove stressors, and help your body optimize how it functions.  This makes sense because of how the systems are so interconnected.

For conditions that have multiple causes this treatment approach seems much more plausible. The separate possible causes must be addressed in order to be successful.   For instance let's say a woman has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  What if the breakdown of causes looked like this:

Chronic Fatigue Breakdown for Jane Doe:

34% - Stress and Poor Coping

22% - Lack of Sleep

18% - Multiple Nutritional Deficiencies

13% - Accumulated Environmental Toxins

7% - Lack of Exercise

6% - Dehydration

Is this a single-cure type of illness? Or is it going to take multiple interventions of different kinds to return her to health? Jane has accumulated enough different forms of "physiologic stress" that her body, and to some extent her mind, has problems functioning normally. Her body is deprived of what it needs to function properly and it is overburdened with different forms of stress. This results in a functional deficit that leads to her feeling tired all the time.

Is a pill going to solve this?

What about PT?

What about surgery?

What she really needs is to have some help her address these deficiencies and eliminate stressors!

THE NEXT PHASE OF HEALTHCARE
Integrative Care represents the next-generation of healthcare. Your health is managed in different ways using different disciplines targeting different systems in your body.  All of them promoting health of the whole system of your body.

Certain disease, we theorize are the result of multiple causes and as such each must be addressed in order for a patient to make a full recovery. While standard chiropractic treatment centers on the health of the nervous system, other things can and do affect health.  If a person is dehydrated, malnourished, toxic, not sleeping, not exercising, not managing stress, then those needs need to be met also. Yes the nervous system is important, but other things contribute to a person's health as well.

MANAGING A DEFICIENCY
The human body is made up of multiple overlapping systems that all have certain needs in order to function properly. A loss of function of any system results in a decrease in the health of every other system because they are interrelated. Over time a loss of function manifests itself as silent dysfunction, then symptoms, then acute illness, and then possibly death.

One possible cause of a loss of function is a deficiency. Something that body needs to do it's job that it isn't getting.

All to often healthcare takes a backward approach towards health. They start with symptom-management and assume that if the symptoms are managed the condition is better. Our opinion is that symptoms are only warning signs of the real problem and that treating only symptoms is like disabling the warning light on the dash your car.

We believe that improving a person's health begins with addressing any and all deficiencies

For far too long our society has been in a quest for the magic bullet. A single pill or treatment that suddenly makes everything 100% better. We believe this to be an antiquated concept and the product of wishful thinking. If the body has multiple needs, each one must be met or the health of the body will soon suffer. Health deficiencies have to be met, if they don't the underlying cause for illness will continue to exist.

The "Magic Bullet Theory" also limits our effectiveness in treating diseases that have multiple causes. Fatigue is a good example. It can be caused by lack of sleep, a spinal subluxation, low blood sugar, lack of exercise, too much stress, nutritional deficiencies, and so on. A single pill isn't going to cure chronic fatigue, there are too many factors working against it. They all have to be addressed and managed for a person to make a full recovery. How many other conditions like that are out there?

Integrative Care, as it is used in our office serves to address the body and mind's needs on multiple levels simultaneously. We incorporate different health disciplines to promote health and healing from different directions. The result is something called "The Healing Cascade" in which the health and healing of one system enhances the health and healing of all the other systems, and they in turn enhance each other. This synergistic effect is most notable in people with chronic undefinable illnesses. They often feel so good in so many different ways that it is hard for them to tell which is causing it, in essence they all are. This type of healing approach makes it possible for exponential improvements in health to occur.

SO HOW DO WE DO IT?
This is often dependent on the needs and goals of the patient. If a patient wants a full work-up and treatment, we do that. If we see that a patient has a defined need other than what they originally came to us for, then we let them know that we might be able to help in this other way as well.

We have the capability to function as a "Health Concierge," someone that orchestrates multiple different care regiments. We are also willing and capable to collaborate care with your Medical Doctor as needed.

The needs of each individual patient vary. In general we address spinal health, lifestyle issues, nutritional issues, stress management problems, phys

synergy." Synergy is when things that are put together increase the productivity and efficiency of each other. In regards to health we have noticed that certain treatments when put together with other treatments enhance the healing effects of both.

Integrative Healthcare where different health disciplines or modalities combine in a patient's treatment, Synergy Care represents the next logical step in the evolution of healthcare. The question we ask is, "How best can we influence a patient's health naturally using everything at our disposal?"

So what does all this mean? Here's an example. Let's say you have a high-blood pressure and want to control it naturally. It would make sense to address your stress level, your level of physical fitness, your nutritional status, check your C1 vertebrae (in a recent study), and address other lifestyle factors. Sounds complicated but it isn't. We put together what works into Integrative Treatment Packages that address all the possible causes of a condition. That makes much more sense than "here take this" and hope for change.

This is where the "rubber meets the road" in healthcare. This is where the deficit lies in our society's method of addressing health and disease. We need to be addressing a person's health needs insightfully on a personal level and formulating common-sense natural, non-invasive strategies to bring about healthy change.

SYNERGY CARE is the next step in the evolution of healthcare and it was invented here. If you have a health issue you would like remedied, addressing your health top-down, with as many different ways of viewing the problem is a good start. Are you ready to have the entire scope of Natural Health working for you? Please email us if you have any questions.

Essentially, we get as many things working for your recovery as we can.