By Susan Sabra
Written on July 5th, 2019
As the world is focusing on improving healthcare by moving to a patient-centered approach, there is a need to evaluate a patient’s status first from a holistic perspective. As different paradigms of medicine exist, IPEMS is a collection of Integrative Personalized Energy Medicine Studies that aims to extensively use a comprehensive collaborative approach of combining both paradigms of medicine: Western and Eastern. Research centers and institutes all over the world fund and explore a single side of these paradigms. Eastern medicine such as Reiki and Ayurveda are still undergoing a lot of scientific and academic research to provide evidence-based knowledge. The perception of Eastern medicine is still facing a lot of resistance from patients’ communities that are inclined to believe more in the scientific-based Western medicine. Therefore, a systematic research program is needed to study the combination of the different areas of both paradigms and provide satisfying results to continuously increase the confidence in prevention of diseases and the provision of timely treatments maximizing health benefits.
President Barack Obama put the United States at the forefront of individually tailored medical treatment and insisted on boosting the research in that field. The US “lead a new era of medicine, one that delivers the right treatment at the right time”. Precision medicine seeks to identify and treat the exact form of disease in patients based on their genome – the precise order of molecules in their DNA – as well as other factors such as the interaction of genes and environment, and the microbes in their body. The traditional “one-treatment-fits-all” approach is becoming partially successful as it does not take into consideration the significant variability of patients’ attitude, lifestyle, and genetic factors.
A patient consists of body, mind, and soul. Hence, to address any healing in the patient, it is necessary to have a healing balance between the three components. It is very important to consider any indication of the illness’ source as it might not always be evident in the physical part. This is a very critical and challenging part of the healing process as it determines also its timeliness. Here is where the Eastern Medicine becomes the complement of Western Medicine.
The main idea is to initiate this innovative and inspiring multidisciplinary research program to improve healthcare systems comprehensively by prevention and/or prediction of diseases and personalization of treatments using the integrative approach of both paradigms. Researchers in such a program will work on identifying the roadblocks to accomplish such a holistic approach by trying to solve the challenges and limitations that might prevent the integration of the new balancing approach.
Renowned American and European universities and institutes encourage and fund innovative research projects like IPEMS. This massive research program requires an international collaboration and funding to ensure the continuity and the achievement of anticipated evidence. Potential partners around the world include: National Health Institute (NIH), specifically the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) which funds pain, mind and body researches, Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention (INMP) led by Dr. Robert Schneider in the US, and many European and Asian Research Centers (RIKEN in Japan, Indian Research Institute for Integrative Medicine (IRIIM)) and Universities. In several European countries, such as Italy, the UK, and Germany, doctors now study Ayurvedic medicine within the framework of postgraduate medical education recognized by medical councils and universities. Rosenberg European Academy of Ayurveda (REAA) in Germany is contributing immensely to broaden the acceptance of Ayurveda as complementary medicine by promoting the exchange of scientists from both Ayurvedic and allopathic medicine.
Affiliations and collaborations are taking place in different parts of the world to study one specific disease under a paradigm, sometimes using state-of-the-art technologies. However, I envision this stereotype activities changing in the near future to include Eastern paradigm and new areas of research to study music healing, energy healing, DNA amplification, and neural reprogramming among others in a patient-centered and personalized approach.
Add comment
Comments