Mind-Body Medicine Gets a New Home
Every night after the kids are in bed, John Dirking sits back in his living room recliner, transfixed for half an hour by the soothing sounds of running water, New Age tones and a quiet voice that speaks to him of relaxation.
A recent heart attack victim, the 41-year-old psychiatric nurse once looked skeptically at the idea of mind-body medicine--holistics, to some--as “fringy.” But for now, enjoying reduction in his weight and blood pressure through diet, exercise and the nightly meditation sessions, he’s a convert.
No, Dirking hasn’t signed on with an Eastern cult that scoffs at traditional medicine. He is one of the first graduates of the recently created Center for Interactive Medicine in Tustin, a multimillion-dollar venture that will try to sell Orange County on an updated version of holistics as a mainstream idea for the ‘90s.
The center is described by organizers and onlookers alike as one of the most unusual in the region in its scale, its medical approach and its financial, operational and medical ties to an established hospital--the Healthcare Medical Center of Tustin, where it is based.
But it has also raised concerns among some in the medical Establishment.
“I don’t think any physician will tell you that exercise or a good diet is incorrect,” said Dr. Robert Miner, president of the Orange County Medical Assn. “But if you try and treat cancer by having (patients) run around the block and feel good about themselves and eat kelp, that’s not fine. That’s ridiculous. That’s something that went out at the turn of the century.”
Dr. Edward Taub, who practiced pediatrics for 14 years in Orange County and taught at UC Irvine’s School of Medicine before turning his attention to less traditional medical pursuits in 1982, is sensitive to such criticism.
Indeed, as director and part-owner of the new Tustin center, he is careful to avoid using the term “holistics” in any of his literature or discussions, saying the word is likely to prompt “a negative and pejorative response” because of the wave of holistic stories that emerged around the country in the 1970s.
Instead, the 51-year-old graduate of Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, N.Y., refers to what he does as “interactive medicine” or “wellness.”
The terms, he says, refer to ways of “letting people know how to manage stress and change their lifestyles to keep themselves well and stay out of the medical system in the first place.”
With start-up costs of half a million dollars and a monthly budget of $50,000, Taub and financial backers, including the new ownership at the Tustin hospital, are banking on the idea that rising health care costs and a perceived dissatisfaction with the quality of medical service today will add up to success for the approach.
“We as a society have become overweight, hyperactive, arthritic, stressed-out, cancer-prone, over-surgerized and over-medicated,” Taub said, “and this clinic is a response to that.”
Taub is careful to pitch his Tustin clinic as a complement to traditional medical care--not a substitute--and to avoid making grandiose claims about its powers for healing such maladies as hypertension, depression, back pain, obesity, menopausal problems and even terminal illnesses.
For instance, while Taub has treated one cancer patient so far among about 50 patients in the center’s first four months of operation, he carefully couches his claims about the potential success in this area for his brand of medicine.
Asked in an interview if his mind-body approach can cure cancer, Taub said: “Cancer patients with positive mental attitudes can in some instances slow down the progress of the disease and, in many instances, improve the quality of the remainder of their lives.”
That is an idea even the most orthodox of medical practitioners do not dispute. They point, for instance, to studies indicating that some dying people can stay alive just long enough to mark special occasions.
Taub’s program is part health club, part diet center and part spiritual reawakening.
For $950, up to 25 patients a session meet weekly at the Tustin center over eight weeks to begin what Taub terms the “conscious reprogramming” of their lives.
Taub and a team of medical assistants, using a display of common grocery products, show patients how to decipher packaging labels and find things like hidden cholesterol and fat. They make them sign a contract pledging to adhere to an exercise program and treat other people with more kindness and compassion.
And, in the most untraditional end of the program, they give them books and tapes aimed at getting them to relax. Images of walks through the forest and rests in the sauna, sounds of running water, tones meant to balance the two sides of the brain, detailed instructions on “the healthful balance of body, mind, and spirit”--are among the curriculum.
The idea is this: “Whatever the disease,” Taub says, “if we can allow people to cope better with stress, to change their fears into hopes, their depression into optimism, their immune systems have the strength to help their bodies overcome their disease.”
Tustin may be just the beginning, Taub and his backers hope.
“The test market right now is Orange County, but we’re looking to expand it to the rest of California and, assuming success, moving it eastward,” said Joseph L. Marcarelli of San Diego, who heads a health consulting firm called Management Solutions and has worked with Taub on the project.
What sets the Tustin clinic apart from the many cottage-industry holistic practices that have sprouted up through the years, its organizers insist, is its affiliation with the private hospital in Tustin, the Healthcare Medical Center.
Hospital administrators there are involved in the operations of the clinic, own 24% of it, and let the clinic use space in the hospital, Taub said. Moreover, some of the physicians there refer patients to Taub for treatment, accounting for much of his business.
Taub’s efforts come at a time of renewed academic attention at universities around the country to the link between the mind and body, but specialists say there have been relatively few attempts to put the ideas into practice on any large, organized scale--with firm results fewer still.
“The idea about the mind-body connection is as old as man and it’s gone through peaks and valleys in credibility,” notes Dr. Jack Pinsky, an associate clinical professor who specializes in pain medicine at UCI Medical Center. “But the true and actual interplay of all these factors remains as much a mystery as it’s always been.”
Mystery or not, Ralph Goeke of Garden Grove summed up the feelings of several Interactive Center patients interviewed when he said: “All I know is I feel better.”
The 67-year-old Goeke, who has suffered from high blood pressure and heart disease, says he decided--with some initial reluctance--to try Taub’s approach to a changed diet, exercise and meditation after he got tired of taking heart medication.
“I’m not for medicine and medication--I think we’re way overmedicated. I never was one for taking pills, and never cared for doctors--I avoided them like the plague,” he remarked. “And this interactive medicine stuff is working so far; we’ll have to see.”
