Integrative thinking: The essence of good medical education and practice

Integrative medicine implies the ability to extract bits of information from seemingly disparate disciplines, and synthesize them into something that is meaningful. Contemporary medical research is more apt to be driven by purely commercial incentives that not only do not favor integrative efforts, but deliberately suppress them when vested interests are threatened. Good health depends entirely on good communication whenever homeostasis is threatened. This requires a continual and instantaneous exchange of information between the constituency of the internal environment that can only be comprehended by an integrative approach. Various examples are given to illustrate these and other relevant issues.