UHealth Hosts Fourth Integrative Medicine Symposium
Opening the Miller School and UHealth’s Integrative Medicine Symposium 2011, Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., asked people who speak two languages to raise their hands. After quite a few went up, Dean Goldschmidt said jokingly, “That’s about 10 times more than any other place in the United Sates.”
Then he made his point: “If you know two languages you will find that, if you ever develop Alzheimer’s, you develop the disease five years later than other people. And that’s because you exercise your brain,” Goldschmidt said, referring to a recent Canadian study that suggests bilingual people have more active brains and are better able to delay the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Dean’s welcome message to participants in the fourth annual integrative and complementary meeting stressed the growing force of integrative medicine in Western society and the steady progress of the Miller School’s Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine.
As the center has grown, so has the symposium, which drew dozens of medical students, faculty, staff, exhibitors and nationally and internationally renowned presenters who work or conduct research in the field. Held at the Medical Wellness Center on April 8 and 9, the symposium demonstrations featured massage therapy, cooking and product demonstrations, healthy foods, acupuncture, and quantum reflex analysis. There was also a variety of CME-approved lectures including “Weaving Holistic and Integrative Nursing into Today’s Health” and “Nutritional and Lifestyle Effects on Stem Cells.”
“We really started the symposium as a way to present integrative and complementary medicine to medical students,” recalled Janet Konefal, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant dean for complementary and integrative medicine. “It has grown every year since and now more and more people, including faculty members, donors and foundations, are involved.”
Konefal, whose leadership Dean Goldschmidt lauded, noted the center has completed five studies and has another nine underway, mostly in clinical nutrition, exercise and acupuncture.
Mark Hyman, M.D., a family physician and four-time New York Times bestselling author, was the keynote speaker on Saturday. He was followed by Margaret Christensen, M.D., of The Christensen Center for Whole Life Health in Dallas; Leonard Smith, M.D., medical director for the symposium; Wally Schmitt, D.C., DACBN, DIBAK, a specialist in kinesiology and chiropractic neurology; and John E. Lewis, Ph.D., research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of research for the Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine.
Among the guests on Friday were philanthropist Sue Miller, UM Trustee Maria Lamas Shojaee, and Jeri Wolfson, who, through the Mitchell Wolfson Senior Foundation, has issued the Wolfson Challenge, agreeing to match all donations to the Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine dollar for dollar—up to $500,000—to expand educational programs, research, and clinical services.
“I want to express my gratitude for this symposium because what it begins to show me is that integrative and complementary medicine are moving into the Western medical paradigm, and that is really what I am interested in,” said Wolfson. “I am very interested in seeing how we take care of ourselves through natural means, and exercise, nutrition, meditation, yoga, acupuncture … which are helping us to put the health back in health care.”
