A burgeoning movement is taking place in hospitals and clinics across this country - integrating the best of high-tech medicine with a new attitude that recognizes that treating the patient as a whole person is essential to the healing process. THE NEW MEDICINE, airing on PBS Wednesday, March 29, 2006, check local listings, suggests that medical practice in America may be on the brink of a transformation. As scientific findings reveal that the mind plays a critical role in the body's capacity to heal, the medical community is beginning to embrace a new range of treatment options, including many once considered fringe. With host Dana Reeve, who was diagnosed with lung cancer following the death of her husband, Christopher, THE NEW MEDICINE goes inside medical schools, healthcare clinics, research institutions and private practices to show physicians on the cutting edge of this new approach. By paying attention to a person's cultural values and lifestyle, stresses and supports, these doctors acknowledge the important role that patients can and should play in their own healing and healthcare. "For years my husband and I lived on, and because of, hope," says Dana Reeve in the introduction to the program. "Hope continues to give me the mental strength to carry on, but also, I'm convinced, hope very directly influences my physical health." Until recently, scientists viewed the connection between the mind and the body's response to disease with skepticism. Today, thanks to sophisticated new research, the complex biology of mind-body interaction is becoming clearer, and physicians are discovering how something as intangible as hope can help people heal and something as pervasive as stress can sabotage the body's ability to fight infection. THE NEW MEDICINE introduces viewers to some patients who are receiving a new kind of medical care as a result of this breakthrough in understanding: Tammy lies in a hospital bed at one of America's leading teaching hospitals, at risk of losing her pre-term baby. Despite all the best that high-tech medicine has to offer her, what may actually save her baby's life is relaxation therapy to address the complex biochemical link between stress, the immune system and illness. Michael is listening to a soothing voice on a visualization tape that will help him feel positive about his upcoming back surgery and speed his recovery. The source of this New Age-sounding tape? His insurance company. Matthew, who has cerebral palsy, has lived his entire 18 years with unremitting and sometimes excruciating pain. The new therapy his doctor introduced to provide relief and enable him to attend college next year on his own is self-hypnosis to dial down the pain. THE NEW MEDICINE explores why even some of the most conservative health institutions are now prescribing meditation and self-hypnosis alongside high-tech modern medicine. "With brain imaging, with molecular biology, cell biology, physiology, we can put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, which we certainly couldn't do even just a few decades ago," explains Dr. Esther Sternberg, research scientist at American University. THE NEW MEDICINE reveals that medical education is also changing in response to this new science. Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia is one of a growing number of medical schools where there is renewed emphasis on teaching some of the skills of pre-modern medicine - the importance of listening, comforting and encouraging the body's own healing abilities. The traditional doctor-patient relationship is undergoing a shift from paternalism to partnership, as practitioners and consumers alike have begun to promote a more holistic form of healthcare called integrative medicine - seeking to heal the whole person, not simply cure a disease. Trust and communication are aspects of medicine that have, in many cases, been left behind by a healthcare system in which time is a precious commodity and the average doctor visit with a patient lasts about six minutes. Time to get to know and care about the whole person is a luxury that many physicians feel they don't have. THE NEW MEDICINE explores the need for medicine to focus more on prevention and engaging people as active players in their own healthcare. At 56, Bill Fink has been wrestling with heart disease for more than 20 years. While high tech medicine has done a good job of keeping him alive, it has done a poor job of keeping him healthy. Now, in a program called "Healing Hearts," at the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, he's learning to develop a lifestyle that will keep him out of the operating room - exercising, learning to buy and cook healthy food, attending support groups and stress management classes, taking classes in music, yoga and spirituality, and more. "Fifty percent of the causes of mortality in this country are related to modifiable behaviors. Smoking, eating, sedentary lifestyles, all of those and more," notes Dr. Dennis H. Novak of Drexel University College of Medicine. Ironically, medical insurance is willing to pay for extremely expensive surgery once a patient with these behaviors becomes acutely ill, but often unwilling to cover the relatively low cost of coaching them through the lifestyle changes that could prevent surgery in the first place. The National Institutes of Health has been funding rigorous scientific research to determine what alternative healing strategies are safe and effective so that there is solid evidence to broaden medical choices for patients. "Integrative medicine means being able to offer patients a full array of choices from conventional medicine, but to be able to add those complementary and alternative strategies where we have scientific evidence that they work and they're safe," says Dr. Margaret Chesney, Deputy Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), a division of the NIH. For those people without health insurance, the option of complementary therapies or a physician who sees a patient as a whole person is rare, but a model program run by Dr. Ellen Beck proves it can be done. THE NEW MEDICINE visits her clinic in La Jolla, California, where medical students, pharmacy students and students of Asian medicine, supervised by volunteer doctors, dentists and nurses, all work together to provide integrative medical care for communities of people who do not qualify for health insurance.
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