Osteopathic Integrative Enthusiast

You may have heard someone say they saw this "old-timey" D.O. one time who popped their back and they felt much better afterward. You may have seen a D.O. once before and didn't know it. Or you may not be able to find a D.O. near you because we only make up 7% of all physicians in the U.S. Less oftentimes people have heard of Integrative Medicine in the U.S., especially in the Southeast.

Integrative Medicine is a school of thought that health and healing can come from other nontraditional modalities. Some call it holistic medicine. Others call it Functional and Metabolic Medicine, and while there are similarities and differences in the mix, we can conclude from these that there are other thoughts to healing than what is mainstream. Who is right? Who is wrong? What if we both are each, in a sense? What if healing and wholeness takes many forms and what if it ALL was brought to the table? Those are questions I ask myself.

In osteopathic medical school, we were trained to ask the questions of what CAUSED the disease process we were studying. We were then taken back to understand root cause and not just treatments and medicines, although each of it is IMPORTANT. We learned that the body has an innate ability to heal itself. We learned the mind-body-spirit connection and its implications. These are just some of the philosophies ingrained within my ideology of healing.

Dr. Morgan examining a patient at her clinic, Dove Family Health.

Dr. Andrew Taylor Still was an M.D. in the late 1800's who began osteopathic medicine. After losing his wife and several children to illnesses with no cure at that time, he set out to discover more. There had to be more than the crude and often dangerous treatments of that time. His sufferings led him to pursue more--there had to be more, I am sure he thought. How else could all of his sufferings amount to something meaningful, if not? His philosophies led him to begin the first osteopathic medical school in the late 1890's and his teachings/discoveries are still taught in the colleges of osteopathic medicine today.

So how can Osteopathic Medicine and Integrative Medicine merge? It's simple. Osteopathic principles urge one to investigate further than a diagnosis. Integrative Medicine is often times the means by doing this. While the description of what integrative medicine truly is happens to be broad, I find that it at its root is taking EVERY tool in a physician's belt, examining them critically, and determining (creatively), with wisdom and human intuition, what may help an individual in need.

People all over the world are waking up to the fact that pills don't fix EVERYTHING. Neither do herbs or supplements. And neither does diet alone. So what then, if anything, can bring someone into a state of health? If we can believe that health is there, and the body can illicit it innately, then what can the physician and patient do to help usher in this blissful state of vitality?

Those are the questions I ask in Osteopathic Integrative Medicine. My desire is to always be a learner and also a critical thinker so to become the best physician possible to my patients and future patients. I sometimes wonder if Dr. Still would have been an Osteopathic Integrative Enthusiast, such as I, had this ideology been present then.

Blessings in Health,

Morgan Goss, D.O.

(Osteopathic Integrative Enthusiast)