By Laura Porterfield, Clinical Assistant Professor, Interim Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs, UTMB, Department of Family Medicine   Before entering, I put on my armor: surgical cap, KN95 mask covered by a secondary surgical mask, face shield, gown, and gloves. Donned in protective gear, I’m barely recognizable even to colleagues who know me well. Grabbing a clean stethoscope, I stride to the examining room, where I pause to read the patient’s name before entering. In...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD “Just because you are happy it does not mean that the day is perfect but that you have looked beyond its imperfections.”. -Bob Marley The other day, picking up groceries at the Walmart, I recognized a struggle inside myself, to be more kind, understanding, and compassionate instead of feeling irritated, judgmental, angry. It was just a little thing really, but it became a metaphysical and spiritual breakthrough. Walmart and other...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD   “The beginning is always today.” –Mary Wollstonecraft   During some unexpected free time, I took an online course from the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Go to https://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/ for a large array of online materials and course in integrative medicine. It is a rich, well validated, and dependable resource for the entire spectrum of integrative medicine.   In my case, I decided to enroll in...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD   Last weekend, instead of donning my usual tennis clothes, I put on a crisp dress shirt and a pressed white coat with a UTMB logo to prepare for a day of telehealth visits with complex Medicare patients. As many docs have over the past months, we have migrated to electronic platforms to care for patients unable or unwilling to leave their homes. It has been a mixed blessing, but...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD As I am engaged in telehealth visits with patients and interactions with students and residents, there is an undercurrent of anxiety. What last month was a stressful job, is now the stress of being out of one. Concerns about children and family have been expanded to concerns about public and personal health and safety in a pandemic. I have also rediscovered the resilience of people. Talking with patients and learners,...

By Doris Amaro, Medical Student, UTMB “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” so brilliantly stated by Hippocrates, may have been a declaration that we can use the nutrients from the earth to heal our bodies. However, it is difficult to imagine how the food we put into our bodies influences our thoughts, emotions, and particularly our development of mental illness. There are a number of different integrative and complementary approaches for...

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...