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David Edelberg, M.D.
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 David Edelberg is founder and vice-chairman of American WholeHealth, an assistant professor of medicine at Rush Medical College (Chicago) and section chief of holistic and alternative medicine at Illinois Masonic Medical Center (Chicago). He continues to practice medicine at the American WholeHealth Center in Lincoln Park (Chicago). He has written numerous articles on alternative medicine and was medical editor of the AMA Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine (publication suspended) and The Healing Power of Vitamins, Minerals and Herbs (Pleasantville, NY, Readers Digest Association, Inc.) and the chief medical consultant for www.wholehealth.com, the Web’s largest integrative medicine site.
Several years ago I was your standard HMO primary care gatekeeper: one patient every 10 minutes, interrupting them (if you believe the statistics) fourteen seconds into the encounter and tossing off a prescription or two before moving to the next room. As with my colleagues, most patients began with a cheerless “I’m no better, doc.” This lack of success I knew was nothing personal: conventional medicine fares very badly with chronic disease, the bread-and-butter of an internal medicine practice.
Except that I was to discover a few hardy souls who were actually getting better. Not necessarily cured but ‘better.’ And when I asked to what they attributed their success, they’d evasively mumbled something about ‘acupuncture’ or ‘herbs from my nutritionist’ or ‘chiropractic.’ None of this was covered by the ‘HMO Benefit Package’ (there’s an oxymoron for you) which meant they were paying out of their own pockets.
Common sense dictates never to argue with a patient who is getting better. It has always puzzled me why some physicians feel a moral responsibility to disparage another person’s healing processes simply because these weren’t in the medical school curriculum. Instead of discouraging them about the vague dangers of ‘unscientific’ medicine, I began collecting names of alternative practitioners and began making some telephone calls.
To be honest, these practitioners started off as a suspicious lot, and not without good reason. For many I was the first physician who actually called to talk about a patient. Illinois, the headquarters state of the American Medical Association was, at that time, overtly hostile to alternative medicine. You could get arrested on felony charges (practicing medicine without a license) for being a naturopath or an acupuncturist. More than once I was asked if I was from the Department of Professional Regulation. But when I thanked them for doing such a good job with my patient (it should have been ‘our’ patient—now I know better) they warmed immediately and we planned future lunches.
By the time I’d left the HMO, I was considered quite ‘modern’ for these regular referrals to alternative practitioners. The HMO itself couldn’t care less, just so long as they didn’t have to pay for these
visits. But it was a second event that finally jolted me out of the conventional system.
I was making hospital rounds one Saturday morning and idly considered just how each of these people had ended up unhappily in hospital beds. Of the 10 patients, eight were lying there because the basics of disease prevention had not been seriously hammered into their brains when they were younger. Conventional medicine is disease based. Doctors await disasters so they can administer heroic therapies. Preventive medicine is so glamourless: diet, exercise, wearing seat belts, not smoking, stress reduction. Yet each of these unfortunates had illnesses directly attributable to lifestyle issues and my profession, instead of teaching nutrition, or meditation, or T’ai Chi, had busied itself studying the latest drug therapies. The latest issue of American Family Physician is over a thousand pages long, half of which are pharmaceutical ads. By the way, the final two patients there were being treated for the side effects of conventional therapies: drug reactions, surgical wound infections and the like.
In here somewhere, Time magazine ran a cover story on the rising public interest in alternative medicine. They predicted the healthcare center of the 21st century would be staffed by conventional and alternative practitioners working alongside each other instead of being on opposite sides of a fence like a pair of barking dogs. Me, I was ready for a career change. Gathering together the practitioners who had been receiving my referrals, we planned something new in healthcare.
The Chicago Holistic Center, now called American Whole Health Center (a market research study revealed that most people don’t know what ‘holistic’ means) brought together some 20 practitioners of various fields of alternative medicine and two primary care physicians. We chose to take a team approach to patients, with the patient herself as a vital member of the healthcare team. The initial intake is always with a physician; diagnosis is in terms of the western scientific model. But then, instead of the standard prescription, or specialist referral, we consider a variety of options. “Here’s what’s available from conventional medicine,” I begin. “And here are some alternative options that might be effective.” We may talk about homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, Reiki, herbal medicine. We’ll plan what we term a “Healing Path.” This may include several visits with a practitioner, an audiotape on stress reduction, a meeting with the Center’s nutritionist, a class in T’ai Chi, a reading assignment. Very participatory. Very empowering.
The big question: Are we doing any better than our strictly conventional colleagues across town? Remember, Chicago has the largest concentration of major health care facilities on the planet (yes, more than New York) so competition is stiff. The answer is “probably, but unproven” simply because no major outcome studies have been performed. But there is a common sense factor here. We do offer everything conventional: board certified physicians with hospital privileges, referrals to specialists when needed, the full armamentarium of prescription drugs from the PDR. These are the contents of “Toolbox A.” Then there is “Toolbox B,” the “other healers,” whose collective philosophies stress lifestyle change, balance, prevention and empowerment. I genuinely believe our patients do better simply because we have more tools at our disposal, more options, and among the practitioners, a mutual respect for our various healing abilities.
Doctors, believe it or not, want their patients to get well. After years of speaking before medical groups and having physicians tour the Center, the doctors I meet are intellectually curious, mildly skeptical, somewhat cautious, but always willing to learn. As one medical school after another
adds elective courses in alternative medicine, as residents and interns rotate through holistically-
oriented practices, the picture is heartening indeed.
Today every third American is using alternative medicine and increasing numbers of healthcare plans are reimbursing patients for therapies perceived as both effective and reasonably priced; alternative medicine represents a new spiritual awareness. In our hearts we’ve always been a tad uncomfortable with Descartes’ concept of our bodies as nothing more than machines. Intuitively we know that when we’re ill we’re more complex than broken carburetors. Alternative medicine (in all 200 or so fields) reminds us we’re human beings with Qi coursing through our meridians, bursting with pranic energy and alive with vital force.
Several thousand patients ago I witnessed my first experience of how an acute asthma attack ended minutes after the insertion of a few well placed acupuncture needles. When I asked the therapist what had happened he muttered something incomprehensible about “Qi” and “blockages.” I remember thinking how we had covered asthma in medical school. I had some idea about how allergies worked and how they could be reversed. But watching acupuncture needles open this woman’s breathing passages, and hear her grateful “I’m okay now . . . I’m better,” I realized that my concepts of how one human being could heal another would have to change and that a real understanding of healing was only marginally scientific and would probably elude me in this lifetime.
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