Top Hospital Opens up to Chinese Herbs as Medicines
The Cleveland Clinic, one of the
country's top hospitals, is a surprising venue for the dispensing of herbs, a
practice that is well established in China and other Eastern countries but has
yet to make inroads in the U.S. because of a lack of evidence proving their
effectiveness. The herbal clinic, which opened in January, has one herbalist
who sees patients on Thursdays. Patients must be referred by a doctor and will
be monitored to ensure that there are no drug-herbal interactions or other
complications. The herbal clinic is part of the hospital's Center for
Integrative Medicine, whose offerings also include acupunture, holistic
psychotherapy and massage therapy.
"Western medicine does acute
care phenomenally.… But we're still struggling a bit with our chronic-care
patients and this fills in that gap and can be used concurrently," says
Melissa Young, an integrative medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic.
While acupuncture programs have
sprouted across the U.S., there are only a handful of herbal clinics. Osher
Center for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University and NorthShore
University HealthSystem, affiliated with the University of Chicago, both
include herbal medicine among their offerings.
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