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In an article titled “Convention meets alternative, Doctors increasingly cater to patients’ holistic health-care desires” by Cecilia Oleck of the Detroit Free Press on February 13, 2007, she discusses how “the medical profession is scrambling to catch up to” the baby boomers.

Medicine is “scrambling” because people don’t want horse-buggies, they want cars, so to speak. The baby boomers, unlike their parents, are better educated and less enamored by the white coat syndrome of the Medical Establishment.

In fact many physicians are coming around to the truism stated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965) many years ago: “Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside.” Physicians should assist the bodies own healing powers.

Olek states in her article: “Fueled by aging baby boomers looking to exert more control over their health care, the alternative health industry has grown into an estimated $47 billion annual business, prompting more traditional health care providers to look at some of the therapies and incorporate them into their practices. Many hospitals offer such services.” [Financial considerations wouldn’t be the reason for their interest would it?]

Physicians like Richard Herman, an obstetrician/gynecologist, are “taking therapies from the fringes of health care into mainstream medical circles” Olek continued and quotes Herman as saying, “People are looking for a better way.” [I’ll say!]

Ms. Oleck remarked “Much of what is considered alternative or complementary medicine is aimed at preventing illness, allowing the body to heal itself naturally and caring for a person’s physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs…”

“Even the name “alternative” - used to describe therapies outside the scope of traditional medicine - can be misleading now, says Mayo Clinic physician Brent Bauer. As more health-care providers offer such services, it makes sense to refer to the therapies as complementary or integrative.”

Dr. Bauer has even come out with a book titled - The Mayo Clinic Guide to Alternative Medicine noting: “I suspect in a few more years we’ll just drop all the labels and we’ll just talk about good medicine.” Amen to that!

Maybe the real reason many in Medicine have finally seen the light, is because patients will go elsewhere if they don’t provide these “good medicine” services. Two studies confirmed, ‘Conventional Medicines’ loss of ‘market share’, oops - I mean visits of ‘patients’ to Alternative Medicine practitioners. The first study was in 1993 in the New England Journal of Medicine and in a follow-up study in 1998 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

As the patient discussed in the article articulated, “I would rather see what I could do holistically before pumping myself with medicines.”

But really what’s happening here is as Dr. Bauer concluded “…there’s a way to do it better.” I agree, ‘Integrating’ (which the physicians in the article recognize) non-toxic ‘Complementary and Alternative’ therapies can only enhance the ‘customer’, sorry - the ‘patients’ experience (bold added).