The issues considered thus far point to the clear need for enhanced education in medical schools, postgraduate medical education, and continuing medical education (CME). CME programs are faced with an obstacle—generally, current practitioners have had no exposure to integrative therapies in their medical schools or in their postgraduate training.
Legislative and Regulatory Environment
Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, as amended in 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the power to regulate herbal remedies and dietary supplements by:
To provide integrated care, the health care system requires access to licensed health care providers and the training of existing providers in one or more modalities of complementary care. The health care system may provide credibility, appropriate practice environments, and access to new clients for practitioners. It has opportunities to make capital investments in facilities required to provide care that are not available to individual practitioners.
Many of the physical modalities that have been variously described as “alternative,” “complementary,” and “integra-tive” medicine can be understood to exist on a continuum with regular medicine and are now considered to have a measurable, physiological effect on the body. I have found it useful to arrange these techniques from least invasive to most invasive; this array also initiates an approach to cost-effectiveness analyses in light of the correlation between degree of invasiveness and cost—both in terms of the costs of providing care and the costs of managing the known and accepted complications of that care (Figure 1).
INTRODUCTION
One of the major popular health movements at the turn of the 21st century is a widespread interest in, and the utilization of, what has been called “alternative,” “complementary,” and now “integrative” medicine. Many people are using these therapies because of a variety of problems in numerous health care settings. Following widespread recognition of this popular trend by the medical and scientific communities, there has been a corresponding movement among medical practitioners, administrators, academicians, and scientists to incorporate these modalities into their existing spheres of research, practice, and teaching. These popular and professional movements are now leading the private sector, through health systems and insurers, and the public sectors of state and federal governments to invest more deeply and broadly in integrative medicine from the standpoint of public health and health care practice.
Estrogen and Language Processing
Speakers: Guinevere Eden, DPhil, and Ivy Estabrooke, both of Georgetown University
New research from Georgetown University in Washington DC, and the National Institute of Aging has found that estrogen can influence the speed and accuracy of language processing in healthy young women, perhaps by affecting the brain mechanisms that are used to form language. The results suggest that sex hormones may have a therapeutic role to play in helping people recover their speech after a stroke or brain injury.
A record number of researchers and exhibitors—more than 28,800—attended the 33rd annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SFN), held November 8-12 in New Orleans. The SFN annual meeting is considered to be the premier venue for neuroscientists to meet and exchange information related to the latest discoveries about the brain, spinal cord, and nervous system. Also, in a recent survey of scientists conducted by Bioinformatics, the SFN was voted “most valuable scientific society.” Research presented at this year’s meeting has important ramifications for drug development, in part because of recent breakthroughs in discovering the genes that are involved in many neurological conditions.
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