The Integrative Approach
Many people already combine conventional and complementary medicine on a self-help basis, in an effort to take the best from both worlds. For example, if you have a cold, you might ease the symptoms with a drug like paracetamol and take the herb echinacea to boost the immune system. Integrative medicine, however, involves more than just adding together conventional medicine and complementary therapies. It entails about thinking why you might be ill and seeking the kind of treatment - whether conventional, complementary, or both - that is appropriate for your condition, given your situation, beliefs, and temperament. It is also a question of taking charge of your health and, in particular, of making lifestyle changes to promote well-being.

Integrative Medicine in Action
A small but growing number of conventional health practitioners and complementary therapists are beginning to explore ways of working together. Such teams offer treatment based on a variety of conventional and complementary options, including psychological care, with an overall emphasis on health education and active self-help. Their aim is to encourage well-being, even in the face of established disease. In this kind of partnership, a doctor might treat migraine, for example, by prescribing medication, but would also look for underlying factors, such as you response to stress, or foods that might be causing or perpetuating the condition. An integrative therapeutic package could include acupuncture to reduce the frequency of attacks and induce relaxation; dietary advice and the keeping of a food diary; the use of the herbal remedy feverfew as a preventive measure (if you were reluctant to rely on the usual drugs); biofeedback to help diffuse an attack; and yoga, relaxation, and stress management techniques.

Holistic Health Care
Since the integrative approach is based on an understanding of the whole person, not just physical diseases or symptoms, it has been come to known as holistic medicine. This approach is not the exclusive preserve of complementary practitioners. Indeed, some medical doctors have been practicing holistically for years, and it is the accepted aim of both family and internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and psychiatry. Conversely, some complementary therapists stick rigidly to treating physical symptoms, ignoring the psychological dimension of the disease. Others attribute even the symptoms of serious conditions such as coronary heart disease exclusively to "blocked energy" rather than to something that is in urgent need of conventional medical attention. Nor do complementary therapists usually have experience of acute disease or necessarily understand the psychological dimension of chronic disease and the often excellent resources afforded by conventional health care. All the more reason, therefore, to bring together the best in every discipline.

At the heart of traditional health systems such as naturopathy and Chinese and Ayurvedic (Indian) medicine is the belief that the body has a natural tendency toward equilibrium. Modern medical science calls this "homeostasis", and is increasingly aware that maintaining this internal balance and boosting the body's self-healing powers are crucial to long-term good health and well-being.

Major physical injury, deficiency diseases, severe infection, and even extreme mental illness can overwhelm homeostatic processes, and in these instances modern medicine does its most critical work. In the past, medical science's triumphs have tended to overshadow traditional ideas of homeostasis, but today many doctors agree that it takes more than drugs or surgery to cope with persistent disease or stress-related ailments, and the notion of holistic health is becoming popular once more.

The Mind-Body Connection
There is increasing scientific understanding of how mind and body are inextricably intertwined, and evidence to show that the health of one influences the other. Research, for example, reveals that emotional states, such as loneliness and grief can depress the immune system, leaving people susceptible disease. When psychologists, immunologists, and endocrinologists (those who study glands and hormones) began to pool information in the 1980s, they found they could track chemical pathways linking brain activity to physiological processes in the body. It had been understood that the stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol suppress the production of antibodies, the body's defense against disease. But studies in 1977 and 1983 showed precisely how white blood cells (which kill viruses) were temporarily paralised in bereaved men - accounting for deaths from the so-called broken-heart syndrome.

In the US, Dr. Candace Pert found that emotions trigger waves of messenger chemicals called neuropeptides, which reach all parts of the body, prompting physical changes that disturb or support homeostasis. Dr. Pert even suggests that these neuropeptides enable different body systems to communicate with each other. Key evidence came in the 1980s when endorphins, which are brain chemicals that enhance mood, were found not only in the brain, but throughout the body, even in the gut and immune system. Even more remarkably, it has now been discovered that messenger chemicals produced in the body, such as hormones, directly affect the workings of the brain.

So in the new scientific view, not only are mind and body one system, but it seems the body may influence the brain as much as the brain affects the body. The body is not just a collection of tissues and cells in a chemical soup, carrying round a detached mind. Rather, it is a moving, pulsing structure that emerges from an ever-changing flow of matter and information. The challenge of integrative medicine is to apply this idea in an intelligent and practical way to healthcare.