Integrative medicine is an approach to care that puts the patient at the center of the health care and addresses the full range of physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual and environmental influences that affect your health. We take a personalized approach that considers your unique conditions and circumstances, and we use the most appropriate interventions from a wide array of scientific disciplines – including complementary medicine – to health illness and disease and help you regain and maintain your optimum health.

At Duke Integrative Medicine, we are guided by these central principles:

• The patient and practitioner are partners in the health process.
• All factors that influence health, wellness and disease are taken into consideration including mind, spirit and community as well as the body.
• Providers use all appropriate conventional and alternative sciences to facilitate the body’s innate healing process.
• Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive are used whenever possible.
• Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically. Good medicine is based on good science. Our approach is inquiry driven and open to new paradigms.
• Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount.
• Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.

In addition to addressing and handling the immediate health problem(s) as well as the deeper causes of the disease or illness, integrative medicine fosters the development of healthy behaviors and skills for effective self-care that you can use throughout your life.