A Neurologist Makes the Case for Integrative Medicine

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kathrin LaFaver, MD: Hi. This is Dr Kathrin LaFaver, coming to you from Chicago. Today I have the great pleasure of talking to neurologist Dr Indu Subramanian. A native Canadian who studied at the University of Toronto, she has been living in Los Angeles for a long time now, where she serves as the clinical director of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Southwest Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center (PADRECC), as well as a clinical professor at UCLA. We're here today to talk about integrative medicine. Welcome, Dr Subramanian.

Indu Subramanian, MD: Thank you so much, Kathrin. Great to see you.

LaFaver: It's especially fun to interview you, because you have been talking to many Parkinson's experts over the past year for a really nice series on holistic topics in treating this disease. That's a good segue to our topic of integrative medicine. Many of the neurologists watching this might wonder, why should we care about this? To start off, can you define integrative medicine?

Integrative Medicine: Moving Beyond Western Concepts

Subramanian: "Integrative medicine" is young term for what we used to call "complementary and alternative medicine." I think we've shied away from that latter term because the sense of "alternative" makes it seem like it's outside of the regular Western practice of medicine, and that patients would have to choose either Western medicine or this alternative type of medicine. So, the concept of integrative medicine is sort of bringing the two areas together.