Integrative medical tourism involves travelling to far-off countries in search of therapies and treatments that accentuates on the doctor-patient relationship and uses the least invasive, least toxic, and least expensive methods. While conventional medicine refers to treatment of various diseases and ailments with prescription drugs and surgeries, the alternative medicine refers to treating ailments by using different practices, products and therapies that are not included in the conventional medicine.
Points of interest
Integrative Medicine aims to offer the best of both worlds and refers to the combination of complementary and alternative medicine with conventional medicine. The fast growing field of integrative medical tourism combines conventional medicine and CAM to help patients achieve a healthy balance of body, mind, and soul. The idea of integrative medical tourism has significantly increased the appeal of traveling for healthcare to different exotic locations across the globe.
Incorporating integrative medicine into medical treatment can greatly help patients regain control of their health and wellbeing. Integrative medicine focuses on the power of healing and advocates the natural ability of our bodies to heal, thereby eliminating stress and promoting good health. Integrative medicine makes use of a wide range of modalities to improve the health of a person.
The approach is customized for the patient
Integrative medicine takes a patient-centric approach and emphasizes on all the physical, mental, social, emotional, spiritual, and environmental issues that could have an effect on the health of a person. Integrative medicine focuses on treating the whole person, not just some body organs or specific body parts. The entire focus is on personalizing the care with respect to the health conditions and specific needs of an individual.
In this field, the practitioners use the evidenced-based alternative approaches to maintain and improve the overall health of a person. The concept of integrative medicine is gaining a lot of attention in the developed countries, especially in the USA. Many medical schools in the US have integrative medicine as a major course. Moreover, leading healthcare facilities like Mayo Clinics and Scripps Health are providing their patients with integrative medicine services.
In conventional medical practice, good health refers to the absence of diseases. On the other hand, integrative approach sees health as a crucial state of physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing.
Moreover, a patient is an important part of the entire treatment process and is seen as a partner, not just a patient seeking medical services. In integrative medicine, there is proper emphasis on the patient’s stress level, social determinants of health, environmental influences and dietary habits in order to improve the overall wellbeing of a person. Integrative medicine is about using all the appropriate therapies, both conventional and alternative, in order to improve the innate healing response of human body.
Integrative medicine combines advanced medical treatments with safe, evidence-based alternative therapies. Although alternative therapies play a major role in integrative medicine services, one should not consider integrative medicine as a synonym to CAM.
