Blended Medicine: What Is It?

By Gary Cools

Alternative medicine is generally defined as using non-surgical methods and not using pharmaceutical drugs, and being open to other professional means of bringing health to the patient. This is in a setting where the patient’s needs are not urgent nor an emergency, and they can spend some time getting well. Alternative medicine is a vital component of blended medicine, the other component being the familiar allopathic or conventional medicine taught in medical schools and typically supported by health insurance.

The alternative therapies not only take more time (slower often means fewer side effects), but are typically gentler. The therapies are sometimes very old, from around the world. Medicinal herbs have been a form of healing for over a million years. Hand therapies, like using pressure points for health are about as old. In ancient times, fish ribs held in fire for a while were used for acupuncture before humans knew how to make metal.

We add the modern knowledge of diet, vitamins, and minerals; scientific knowledge about how and why herbs work, the whole health field of homeopathy, the systematic use of acupuncture, the benefits of meditation, conscious breath work, yoga, and more; and we have a well-rounded health program. The therapies often spark the patient’s body to do the work, not an outside agent commanding the body to change its way of living. So we use the word ‘integrative’ to describe it. When the therapy is done, the patient’s body works on its own in a better way.

Blended medicine is a combining of the best of conventional medicine’s tools for healing with the tools we have that are regarded as more ‘natural.’ We are happy to use the lab tests for learning about the nature of a tumor, or a patient’s high cholesterol or blood sugar. Surgeries are possibilities when indicated, and if urgent, they are likely the modality of choice. The pharmacy’s antifungals, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, pain medications, and so on are carefully considered. If the overall blend suits the needs of the patient, they are integrated with the diet, vitamin, mineral, herb, acupuncture, etc. solutions from the more natural list of choices. Nothing matters except what is most likely to benefit the patient’s health, both short term and long term.

What is the overall result? The patient has an open door to more possible solutions than usually found in either the medical clinic or holistic health center. A better range of diagnostics, many answers, blended in a carefully managed manner with your best health as the focus. This is serious healthcare with a broader base and a higher level of compassion than was typical in the 50’s and 60’s, and often with reduced costs, shorter recovery time, and fewer side effects.

This blending of modalities is, for example, available at Evergreen Integrated Health in its association with the Suttons Bay Medical Clinic. The process is an ongoing one, with all the providers learning from one another case by case, and often by disease category. It is also available in a growing number of cities throughout Michigan.

How can this process begin? As healthcare providers work in association with one another, share patient files, refer to one another, initiate phone calls to one another, visit and talk at one another’s offices, and establish the trust and courtesies needed for prolonged relationships, this process will evolve. Also as the patients themselves are confident, informed, and bold enough to ask for these integrated relationships to be brought into their healthcare on a consistent basis, the reality of the consumer defining the marketplace will also serve to bring this into being.

Beginning today is soon enough...

Gary Cools has his office in Ludington, Michigan, and participates with Evergreen Integrated Health in Suttons Bay. He also teaches at the Institute for Alternative Medicine in Howard City and gives seminars throughout Michigan and the Midwest. You may contact him at (231) 845-1250 or at healthfx@t-one.net.