Last Friday, natural health experts Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy and Andrew Weil penned an opinion letter in The Wall Street Journal titled “‘Alternative’ Medicine is Mainstream.” WellSpring’s Don Farquharson recently brought the article to my attention and, as the executive director of a school that provides education to natural health and wellness practitioners, he couldn’t be more thrilled that integrative medicine approaches such as plant-based diets, yoga, meditation, etc., are getting the attention that they deserve.
The article stresses the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle, citing that heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer and obesity account for three-quarters of health-care costs but are largely preventable and even reversible by eating right, exercising regularly and managing stress levels. The article also cites a number of recent studies that prove how important lifestyle choices are and urges President-Elect Obama to make integrative medicine an integral of his health plan as soon as possible. To read the full article, click here.
What do you think? Should traditional medicine and alternative medicine be more integrated?