By Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz
Convergence Medicine is the next generation of integrative healthcare: We are developing a new knowledge database of health individuality. The system was designed from the premise that no single medical tradition, and no single practitioner – no matter how brilliant or dedicated – can stand alone and successfully deal with today’s level of stress and environmental, dietary and physical toxicity. Our best strategy is to examine each person through different lenses, combining the best of Western medical science with established Eastern and European medical traditions.
Since the 1990s, Americans have catalyzed the development of integrative medicine. This collaborative and patient-centered approach has realized some success, but optimal results require a more comprehensive and systematic commitment. The goal of Convergence Medicine is to take individualized healthcare to new levels through consistent collaborative layering of different medical traditions, along with rigorous measurement and tracking to validate results.
I believe that medicine at its best is both art and science. Our healthcare palette contains many colors: Modern clinical and molecular medicine provide insight into genetic predispositions and environmental factors that influence them. Together with comprehensive clinical risk assessments, each individual’s health map can begin to emerge.
That initial map can be greatly strengthened. Other medical traditions offer insights into each individual’s energetic depth and nuance – both at birth and in the moment of first evaluation – and a specific legend to read the map. Aging often brings a myriad of symptoms: headaches, arthritis, hypertension, anemia, low vitamin levels, insomnia, low thyroid levels, back pain. These, together with growing chronic conditions, can be viewed as unavoidable aging, or as nuisance symptoms, with no real pattern. However, the patterns are illuminated by non-traditional perspectives that enable highly specific, effective individualized care.
For more than 3 centuries in Europe, and 25 in Eastern medicine, diagnostic methods have been developed that help place diverse clinical input into specific patterns. Skilled practitioners can relate organ systems together in ways that modern science cannot – yet.
Convergence Medicine layers information from seven different medical traditions, identifies patterns, and determines a biomarker footprint for each individual. Thus risks can be followed, results can be tracked, and metrics for success can be established and validated. Everyone agrees that patients need to be more proactive, and be taught to practice optimal health and prevention in order to become responsible for their bodies in new ways. Current research shows that presenting a patient with individualized data increases their motivation, and with it their education and awareness. Convergence Medicine intends to set new standards for the future of personal, proactive medicine.