A new book, "Total Recovery: Solving the Mystery of Chronic Pain and Depression," looks at how trauma affects the body and how alternative therapies can alleviate psychological and physical suffering.
Integrative medicine is a hot topic in health care these days, as even the most traditional providers offer alternative and complementary therapies that promise to treat the whole person. Integrative practitioner Gary Kaplan makes a pitch for the more holistic approach in the treatment of chronic pain and the depression that often accompanies it. He argues that doctors too often focus on symptoms without ever getting to the root cause of a patient's problems and rarely take time to listen to the patient's entire history to look for cumulative patterns and evidence of how disease has evolved over time.
Drawing on emerging theories about the role of inflammation in the body, Dr. Kaplan argues that tiny cells known as microglia in the brain secrete inflammatory chemicals as part of the body's response to trauma or infection. Over time, he suggests, there is a cumulative effect, as every injury, infection, toxin, trauma and emotional blow triggers the same reaction. Eventually, that leads the microglia to go haywire, continuing to spew out inflammatory chemicals even when the trauma that originally caused them is no longer present.
[Photo: Dr. Gary Kaplan, Author of "Total Recovery: Solving the Mystery of Chronic Pain and Depression."Credit: The Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine]
http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-mainstream-medicine-is-stepping-out-of-the-mainstream-1404175254
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