By Victor S. Sierpina, MD With pressure from every side, doctors like you and me are pressed to taper, stop, or refuse to start habit forming pain medications. Our EPIC electronic medical record system now pushes us to inquire the Texas Prescription Monitoring Program prior to our electronic dual authentication signature for any controlled substance. On face value, this is highly sensible in the context of tens of thousands of deaths annually from opioid overdoses...

By Sagar Kamprath, MD, UTMB Fellow, Integrative and Behavioral Medicine Fellowship Program   “A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.” -Mark Twain   As a health care provider, I’ve come to appreciate the limited impact I can have on my patients through pills and procedures alone. In fact, I’ve come to agree with what was etched onto an ancient Egyptian pyramid...

By Tracy Hu, 4th-year medical student, UTMB, Family Medicine   The fourth year of medical school is a crucial time for exploring different dimensions of one’s chosen field and gaining skills in preparation for residency.  A case in point is my experience taking the Complementary and Integrative Medicine elective (CIM) at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).  A four-week course, CIM exposes the learner to complementary and alternative medicine such as acupuncture and herbal...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD   As the search for the Holy Grail of treating Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias sputters along at a painstakingly slow pace, it turns out we may have overlooked a remarkably effective and low-cost approach: using nature and gardens therapeutically. In a well-done scholarly review article (1), the benefits of a variety of gardening approaches have been demonstrated to improve the lives of dementia patients and their families. The article...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, Director, Medical Student Education Program, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine, Professor, Family Medicine University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor   “We do not need magic to transform our world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.” –J.K. Rowling   Recently, I saw a Netflix historical documentary about the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. The story...

BY Victor S. Sierpina, MD   This week, I am speaking at a conference at Moody Gardens on the topic of Integrative Approaches to Pain Management. As I prepared, I recalled that just one morning this week working with our medical students, no fewer than five patients asked about the potential of CBD for their pain, or shared that they were already using it.   Before going into the CBD story for pain, why are...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD   It may be that when Julius Ceasar said, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” he was onto something. Modern acupuncture has evolved a fascinating branch, auricular acupuncture. Through the studies of French neurologist Dr. Paul Nogier and his colleagues, the topography of the outer ear has been found to contain acupoints that represent all parts of the body. Indeed, the Nogier school, only uses ear points for treatment...

BY Pradeep K. Pramanik, M.D., UTMB Family Medicine   Sweat glistens across his brow as he searches for his words. He is drenched in a downpour of errant thoughts. He came to our clinic in a panic, understandably. In the past year, he lost a loved one, fought moral battles in the workplace, and was diagnosed with new medical problems. Then, he uttered words commonly spoken in the clinic: “I started worrying about one thing...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, Director, Medical Student Education Program, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine, Professor, Family Medicine University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor   Not long ago, a friend and our lovely spouses were having lunch at a tony neighborhood Italian restaurant in Austin. While ordering, my amigo Dr. Donald Counts, a well-respected Austin integrative medicine doc, inquired closely with the server as to the source and...

BY Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, Director, Medical Student Education Program, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine, Professor, Family Medicine University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor When your heart stops or you are in a crash, be grateful for the skilled attention of paramedics, firemen, emergency room staff, trauma surgeons, and intensive care doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists. However, oftentimes, death and dying come more slowly. The Good Death: The New...