Integrative medicine focuses on caring for the whole human being—body, mind, spirit and community.

—DENVER WELLNESS CENTER—

What is integrative medicine?

As the American health care system grows progressively stressed, it is becoming difficult to find truly patient-centered health care. Because of this, more people than ever are looking for alternatives to the conventional health care model.

Integrative medicine, which focuses on caring for the whole human being—body, mind, spirit, and community, not just flesh, bones, and organs—is steadily becoming a desirable and a logical option for many people.

What is integrative medicine?

Integrative medicine focuses on the whole person and makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, health care professionals, and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing.

It combines state-of-the-art traditional (medical model) medical treatments with other therapies that are carefully selected and shown to be effective and safe. The goal is to unite the best that conventional medicine has to offer with other healing systems and therapies derived from cultures and ideas both old and new.

Integrative medicine is based upon a model of health and wellness, as opposed to a model of disease. Whenever possible, integrative medicine favors the use of low-tech, low-cost interventions.

The integrative medicine model recognizes the critical role the practitioner-patient relationship plays in a patient’s overall health care experience, and it seeks to care for the whole person by taking into account the many interrelated physical and nonphysical factors that affect health, wellness and disease including the psychosocial and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives.

Many people mistakenly use the term “integrative medicine” interchangeably with the terms “complementary medicine” and “alternative medicine,” also known collectively as complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM. While integrative medicine is not synonymous with CAM, CAM therapies do make up an important part of the integrative medicine model.

CAM therapies such as chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, psychotherapy, yoga, meditation and guided imagery are increasingly integrated into today’s conventional treatment of diseases and serious illnesses—and scientific evidence supports this approach to health and healing.

More and more primary care physicians are working in tandem with such practitioners as your integrative medicine physician, integrative health coach, nutritionist, massage therapist, chiropractor and acupuncturist.

The time has come when patients have to be more involved in their own care. We need to begin to shift from the paradigm of having the doctor “fix it” and move into the concept of directing our own care. We need to look at ourselves from the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual makeup of our being. If we can begin to not fight for a “traditional” or “alternative” method and realize we can use them all, we will create a forum for wellness where each modality is equally as important and integrated.

Denver Wellness is committed to seeing you as a person, listening to your concerns, evaluating you and devising a treatment plan you agree to.

Dr. Kelvin Washington, D.C., DACBPS, Dipl., Med., Ac, APC, is the owner of Denver Wellness Center in the Aspen Park Village Shopping Center offering chiropractic care, acupuncture, massage, counseling and nutritional guidance, treating back and neck pain, allergies, sports injuries, fatigue, depression, chronic pain, fibromyalgia,  work comp, neurological problems, colds and flu and infections so that bodies can function at their very best.  Call 303-838-2443.