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I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic. After studying the sciences for all these years, it’s been ingrained in me that if you don’t have proof, then it doesn’t work.

The latest buzzword is “evidence-based”:��only doing the needed testing or treatment that has been proven to work, based on solid clinical trials or proof that the treatment is going to diagnose or fix the problem.

Whatever you call it, it’s worked for me for the last 15 years.

So with a doubtful mind, I went to the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine Annual Conference in San Diego, funded anonymously at first, by what turned out to be a former patient who had fired me based on my lack of knowledge about alternative medicine. I think we both laughed at the irony of my willingness to go, mainly for a little vacation from my usual work routine.

I was blown away.

For one thing, I’ve been practicing “integrative” medicine all along, and I didn’t even know it.

Not only that, but there is plenty of science behind some of these “alternative therapies.”

Lifestyle interventions with diet and exercise, sending folks to see a nutritionist, suggesting they seek counseling, prayer, all of these things are considered “integrative,” and yet they seemed so … rational.

I have sent patients to see chiropractors for back pain. I’ve sent thousands of people to physical therapy. If patients tell me acupuncture cures their pain, I am on board with anything that they can do that makes them feel better. Many of my colleagues feel the same way, but that definitely wasn’t the case just a decade ago.

Could “alternative”��medicine be going mainstream?��

The first lecture was by Dr. Dean Ornish, well known physician and president and founder of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, as well as clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

He trained in a medical school just like mine. But what he has proven, without a doubt, is that heart disease can be reversed by diet, exercise and group therapy. In fact, Straub Clinic & Hospital recently started its own Ornish Diet program based on his research. There are hundreds of studies to prove its effectiveness.

If patients tell me acupuncture cures their pain, I am on board with anything that they can do that makes them feel better.

But no one teaches us in medical school that heart disease can be reversed. It’s all about taking more medication, lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, sugars and more.

I get the concept of the Ornish program, but I still was skeptical. One speaker alone doesn’t make all of the “woo woo” factor go away.

Then Dr. Mimi Guarneri came on stage. She is a board-certified interventional cardiologist, and told her story of how she realized that she was seeing the same people over and over again putting in stents and doing procedures, because they just didn’t seem to be able to fix their heart disease.

I’ve seen this with many of my own patients over the years. Stents lead to surgery, which leads to high doses of statins, aspirin, blood thinners and more. That was the normal process, as far as I was concerned.

But Guarneri didn’t think so. She even wrote a book about it, and how this propelled her into the field of integrative medicine, finding ways to reach patients not only through medication and procedures, but using state-of-the-art cardiac imaging technology and lifestyle change programs to aggressively diagnose, prevent and treat cardiovascular disease.

Sounded good on paper, but did it work?

A quick Internet search gave me my answer. A resounding yes. In fact, cardiac rehabilitation services have been around for decades, and have been in patients who have stents or open heart surgery.

Locally the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific has a cardiac rehabilitation program. One of my favorite patients, Clifford Stine, was its first graduate. He’s doing great these days.

So what makes integrative medicine so different from what most doctors do already?

Well, that’s the key. It’s not an either/or approach. Instead, it combines Eastern and Western techniques. Acupuncture along with anti-inflammatories for back pain. Chiropractic treatment for low back pain and physical therapy.

My go-to standards for back pain — muscle relaxants, pain pills and anti-inflammatory medications — well, they were debunked in an article that came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association while I was at the conference. Apparently, only the was shown to work.

The level of scientific evidence to prove that these alternative practices work is continuing to evolve.

Evidence to prove chiropractic works?

As far as safety,��no one has ever overdosed on back manipulation, but they have on narcotic pain pills that apparently don’t work.

Could I adopt a more “integrative” attitude? Did I even need to?

I decided to do a quick survey of my patients when I came back. I asked five patients a day for five days, “Are you doing anything ‘alternative’ with your care?”

Yes, there was a selection bias. I only asked those people who were right before lunch. I figured if they wanted to chat, I would have a little extra time to hear what they were doing.

Out of 25 people, 14 were doing yoga, massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, essential oils or meditation, and in one case healing touch.

I had no idea that more than 50 percent of my surveyed patients were into this. I couldn’t get many of the same folks to take their blood pressure or cholesterol medicine regularly, but they were meditating? What?

Now my survey was clearly not scientific, and not representative of my entire patient population, but national studies have shown that on average are using some type of “complementary or integrative” approach to their care.

The level of scientific evidence to prove that these alternative practices work is continuing to evolve. After the five-day conference I was convinced that for the practice of medicine to survive, our entire concept of health needs to change as well. Combining conventional therapy with what used to be considered “fringe” might be the only way to really achieve “wellness.”

I might still take issue with certain areas, like homeopathy, or energy healing, but that clearly doesn’t mean my patients won’t derive some benefit from different modalities that they believe in for themselves.

Did one conference change everything? No, but it did open up my eyes to what people out there are doing.

Now, if only we can get insurance to cover for some of these treatments.