Why an integrated approach?
For years in my practice, I used knowledge and skills from my training in traditional veterinary medicine to care for my patients. In the traditional approach, the focus is to identify a disease process and to treat it with surgery, medications and prescribed diets. In many cases, this approach is beneficial and sufficient. As with any approach, however, there are limitations.
A few years ago, I observed several cases where veterinary acupuncture was instrumental in the recovery of patients who had not responded to traditional medicine. I became interested in looking at alternative therapies and ultimately enrolled in the The International Veterinary Acupuncture Society course. This program inspired me to learn about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
TCM’s approach – that health depends on balance within our bodies, and on our connection with our environment – made sense to me, and fit with my own philosophy about health. Since then I have had rewarding results in patients by using a combination of traditional medicine, acupuncture, herbs and food therapy to treat a variety of conditions. Having access to both traditional and alternative approaches to medicine offers the best of both worlds to patients.
For me, the integration of Western Medicine’s technological tools with Eastern Medicine’s time-tested tools (practiced for thousands of years) offers an ideal approach to health care for pets. Although I am no longer offering the scope of these services I advocate for their use.