Integrative medicine or integrative health is the combination of the practices and methods of alternative medicine

Alternative medicine

Alternative medicine is any healing practice, "that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine." It is based on historical or cultural traditions, rather than on scientific evidence....

 with conventional medicine. The term is relatively recent, and is mainly promoted by proponents of alternative therapies in the west. Some universities and hospitals have departments of integrative medicine.

Reasoning

Integrative medicine has arisen out of an historical appreciation of the limitations of the dominant medical paradigm. While pharamceutical and technological approaches to medicine rely on isolated testing scenarios, which often fail to translate successfully to bring about the healing of real people suffering from complex and multi-faceted conditions, integrative medicine pays attention to forms of medicine that have arisen in other cultural contexts, often appealing to the intuitive intelligence of the patient and practitioner, rather than the alleged expertise of a laboratory researcher.

Criticism

Because the nature of integrative medicine is to attempt to merge evidence based medicine with alternative medicine techniques, as well as partially focusing treatment on the "spiritual", it is not without controversy. Accordingly, it falls into the same category of criticisms as much of alternative medicine does.

Dr. Arnold Relman, editor in chief emeritus of The New England Journal of Medicine wrote:

"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

Andrew Weil

Andrew Thomas Weil is an American author and physician, who established the field of integrative medicine which attempts to integrate alternative and conventional medicine. Weil is the author of several best-selling books and operates a website and monthly newsletter promoting general health and...

 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. Can there be any reasonable "alternative"?"

Speaking of government funding studies of integrating alternative medicine techniques into the mainstream, Dr. Steven Novella

Steven Novella

Steven P. Novella is an American clinical neurologist, assistant professor and Director of General Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine...

, a neurologist at Yale School of Medicine wrote that it "is used to lend an appearance of legitimacy to treatments that are not legitimate." Dr. Marcia Angell, executive editor of The New England Journal of Medicine says, "It's a new name for snake oil."

Organisations advocating integrative medicine in the UK have been criticised for promoting unproven complementary treatments.

See also

• Alternative medicine
  Alternative medicine
  Alternative medicine is any healing practice, "that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine." It is based on historical or cultural traditions, rather than on scientific evidence....
  
  
• Disease management (health)
  Disease management (health)
  Disease management is defined as "a system of coordinated health care interventions and communications for populations with conditions in which patient self-care efforts are significant." For people who can access health care practitioners or peer support it is the process whereby persons with...
  
  
• Personalized medicine
  Personalized medicine
  Personalized medicine is a medical model emphasizing in general the customization of healthcare, with all decisions and practices being tailored to individual patients in whatever ways possible...