By
Jeremy Duda
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Three new doctors have been accepted into the UA's Integrative Medicine Fellowship.
The three new fellows, Monica Myklebust, James Nicolai and Melissa Young, will join eight other doctors already in two-year fellowships for the Program in Integrative Medicine. They have already begun seeing a limited number of patients and will complete their two-month orientation at the end of February.
Two of the doctors have completed their residencies, Myklebust at Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota; Young at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City; and Nicolai served an internship at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.
"I'm really just not happy practicing medicine the way it is today," said Young. "I knew I would do more good in the world doing integrative medicine rather than allopathic (mainstream/western) medicine."
Integrative medicine combines conventional methods of treatment with alternative medicine, including far-eastern practices like acupuncture and other techniques such as guided imagery, or self-hypnosis. The internationally renowned Dr. Andrew Weil is the founder and director of the UA Program in Integrative Medicine.
"It's fantastic working with Dr. Weil. A lot different from regular practice," said Young.
The fellowship, which began in 1997 and is the first of its kind in the United States, trains participants in integrative medicine, with the hope that they will be able to establish similar programs at other schools across the nation.
"It's wonderful to have a relationship with practitioners of all these different methods. You're drawing on the expertise of a lot of people," said Joy Weydert, whose fellowship began here in July.
Myklebust, Nicolai and Young will be three of seven doctors studying adult integrative medicine, while the four others study pediatrics. The two groups work closely together, although the pediatrics group is expected to do more research since it is funded by the National Institute for Health.
The pediatrics group, which includes Weydert, is currently researching alternative treatments for children with recurrent abdominal pain. Some of the treatments being studied are the use of chamomile tea, which is an old folk remedy, and guided imagery.
"One of the main reasons I think Western-trained doctors don't use these methods is the lack of clinical evidence," said Weydert.
That same devotion to alternative medical techniques is what drew Young into the program. As a child, her parents taught her meditation and Reiki, a Japanese energy healing practice, to help her deal with asthma and migraine headaches.
"I've been really lucky in that I was exposed to a lot of different modalities as a child," said Young.
One of the main objectives of the fellowship is to give people the training they will need to establish similar programs in other places.
