Introduction to Integrative Rheumatology

Integrative Rheumatology looks at the whole patient and includes therapies that are appropriate to the individual. These can include diet, nutrition, and botanicals that have been proven to be effective against inflammation in rheumatic disease and autoimmune conditions. Speaker: Neha Shah, MD

[susanlouie]

Thank you so much, Dr Neha Shah!! 👍🏽My doctor told me that nutrition doesn't cause inflammation, when I told him that I'm switching to a Whole Foods and Plant-based diet. But I am still following this diet, for more than a year, and I am feeling so much better, since switching to this diet. My C-reactive protein became extremely LOW, and I definitely have a lot LESS INFLAMMATION/pain in my body!🤩 I highly recommend a WHOLE FOODS and PLANT-BASED DIET, with a healthy lifestyle, like regular exercise, low stress, optimal sleep, as a PREVENTION of getting covid19, numerous diseases, and extending LONGEVITY!👍🏽🤩

[constanceguidotti]

Thank you. This presentation gave me a more positive way of looking at my rheumatoid arthritis and things that can be done besides medications. I feel like I don't get enough information and answers to my questions with my doctor visits. I feel that the integrative way of treatment would be so much better for me since it is a systemic decease.

[paramedivmso]

This is spot on informative wisdom that needs to be applied in todays society. Healing the gut is essential for over all health. Instead of putting your faith in vaccines and flu shots. This is the answer.

[Nongdamba]

Please keep up the great work.
Serving tó spread the medical knowledge.

[carolinag]

Is there a network of doctors that concentrate in this kind of practice located in different cities/states that you can recommend? I am currently in Dallas, Tx that would love to have a doctor as yourself. Thank you!

[kennethmoore]

I agree with caring for the “whole person” and favor generous funding for nutrient research, stress mitigation, microbiome manipulation but it would be a mistake to abandon the scientific method. If a treatment or intervention is proven safe and effective, I’ll prescribe or recommend the treatment. Until we have the evidence, moderate the claims.

[kennethmoore]

One way to avoid confusion is to sort methods into three groups: (1) those that work, (2) those that don’t work, and (3) those we are not sure about. Most methods described as “alternative” fall into the second group. A 1998 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association made the same point in another way:

There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking. Whether a therapeutic practice is “Eastern” or “Western, ” is unconventional or mainstream, or involves mind-body techniques or molecular genetics is largely irrelevant except for historical purposes and cultural interest. We recognize that there are vastly different types of practitioners and proponents of the various forms of alternative medicine and conventional medicine, and that there are vast differences in the skills, capabilities, and beliefs of individuals within them and the nature of their actual practices. Moreover, the economic and political forces in these fields are large and increasingly complex and have the capability for being highly contentious. Nonetheless, as believers in science and evidence, we must focus on fundamental issues —namely, the patient, the target disease or condition, the proposed or practiced treatment, and the need for convincing data on safety and therapeutic efficacy [1].

Arnold Relman, M.D. former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, expressed similar thoughts about the term “integrative medicine”:

There are not two kinds of medicine, one conventional and the other unconventional, that can be practiced jointly in a new kind of “integrative medicine.” Nor, as Andrew Weil and his friends also would have us believe, are there two kinds of thinking, or two ways to find out which treatments work and which do not. In the best kind of medical practice, all proposed treatments must be tested objectively. In the end, there will only be treatments that pass that test and those that do not, those that are proven worthwhile and those that are not [2].