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Growing Popularity of Integrative Medicine

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Integrative medicine, the combining of conventional means with complimentary therapies, has grown exponentially in the last couple of decades in this country. 

In fact, an entire division within the National Institutes of Health is devoted to studying its use.

While some people turn their backs on conventional therapies in favor of the alternative, the majority of users view it as a complement to western medicine. But doing that effectively isn’t always straightforward.

Charlene Watters is one of a growing number of people who serve as coaches in the use of complementary medicine with university training.

Watters is an Integrative Health Coach at GreenSquare Center for the Healing Arts in Glendale. Before speaking at a Women's Holiday Health event on Wednesday evening, she joins Lake Effect's Bonnie North to talk about integrative health and medicine.

"Currently, we have a more disease oriented approach - it's a find it and fix it sort of thing," Watters says. "[Integrative medicine] represents a huge shift in thinking where we move more from the disease orientation to a health orientation. We move from find it / fix it to let's identify the risk and minimize it. We move from biomedical interventions to a whole person approach."

Bonnie North
Bonnie joined WUWM in March 2006 as the Arts Producer of the locally produced weekday magazine program Lake Effect.