SCIENCE IN MIND
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Albert Einstein
Health in Mind provides you with creative suggestions and insights based on the science of healthcare. The approach we take is based on the new model of health care called Integrative Medicine. This model combines conventional western medicine with different complementary therapies aimed at maximizing your health as a whole.
This new integrative understanding of health has prompted prominent hospitals and institutions like the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, UC San Francisco, Harvard Medical School and Mayo Clinic to actively work at helping patients to make important lifestyle choices. This includes learning how to reduce the impact of stress on their lives, enhancing emotional well-being and modify their behavioural health habits such as eating, reaction to stress and sedentary lifestyle.
Lifestyle programmes provided by such centres of excellence are aimed not only at the treatment of a condition but also at rehabilitation and prevention in every respect. The scientific basis for these programmes can be found in well established sites such as Dean Ornish; Harvard Medical; Mayo Clinic. You can also browse through the various self-help materials they produce to help guide individuals with particular health challenges.
Integrative Medicine continues to be loyal to the importance of evidence-based practice in medicine (that is, drawing upon therapies that are tested with scientific methods and found to help in specific conditions). The emphasis is on treating the whole individual by including the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of health and not just the physical aspect. That is, while individuals work with their medical practitioner to monitor their medical health where necessary, they are also encouraged to work on those key aspects of their health that are influenced by their lifestyle choices including what they eat, the level and type of physical activity as well as other lifestyle choices.
Most importantly, and contrary to the limits of lifestyle changes proposed in recent years, the well-being of the mind and the emotions are given primary importance. The choices of what we “feed” our mind and how to manage our stress need to be taken into consideration, particularly since medical science has now clearly established that prolonged mental and emotional stress is a key risk factor in many chronic health problems. A multitude of studies have indicated the role of thoughts and emotions on our health and scientists today are putting the pieces of the mind-body puzzle together, showing how our thinking life affects our physical life as well as our mental, emotional and spiritual one.
While science is important to help practitioners validate the healthcare techniques they use, these key aspects of health provide us with the art of living well.