FORWARD
Natural
Healing Mindfulness, music, and other integrative medicine techniques support recuperation and general wellness BY ERIKA KLEIN
Dr. Tanuja Sharma, medical director of the Integrative Medicine and Arts Program at Tampa General Hospital, demonstrates how to perform acupuncture.
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young woman with Crohn’s disease and abdominal pain was healing after a recent surgery at Tampa General Hospital, but constant pain prevented her from going home. “The patient’s medical issues and surgery had already been completed and managed. There was nothing else keeping her in the hospital except her uncontrolled pain,” recalled Dr. Tanuja Sharma, a family medicine physician and medical director of the Integrative Medicine and Arts Program at Tampa General Hospital. “The medical team was just trying to get her pain under control.” After the patient went weeks without im-
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provement, Sharma was consulted to attempt an integrative medicine approach to improve the patient’s pain, which was not being well controlled through medication. When she arrived, the woman’s pain was a 10 out of 10. Sharma walked her through a mindfulness exercise combined with guided imagery and aromatherapy to help calm her. By the end of the half-hour session, the woman had fallen asleep. That evening, her pain had improved so much she declined her scheduled pain medications and was able to be discharged from the hospital the very next day. “In order to get the best outcomes, it is important to get to the root of the problem and
address the whole person—mind, body, and spirit,” she said. “If not, things may be missed, or patients may be placed on medications or treatments that are not effective or which may even cause unwanted side effects.” This is the core of integrative medicine. It cares for the whole person as informed by scientific evidence. It focuses on prevention, optimizing health and wellness, and lifestyle medicine and uses the most natural and safest remedies first. It takes a team-based approach that includes the traditional medical team. “We can’t put every single person in a cookiecutter box because we all have our own unique makeup and don’t always respond to treatments
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11/17/21 3:42 PM
