Director Division of Otologic/Neurotologic Surgery, Henry Ford Health System,Director Center for Complementary/ Integrative Medicine, Dr. Seidman attained both his B.S. in Human Nutrition and M.D. from the University of Michigan. He is an active scientist and has extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health and other major institutions.

I would have to say I realized it when I first started taking care of patients in 1984 or 1985. I realized that there was much more to healing than a doctor putting a stitch in a finger. There’s so much more involved, I think, in many ways, that people just don’t realize.

Yes.

I think that was probably the first time I ever thought about it. When you look at some people having the same operation and having one outcome and you look at others who have the same operation and have a worse outcome and they’re both of similar health or both of similar age, what’s the difference? There must be something. Something that we couldn’t explain and I think that’s more the mind and the spiritual aspect that we take for granted in the typical allopathic world that really shouldn’t be taken for granted.

You were on the leading edge, because this wasn’t spoken of at that time.

Well, it’s still not spoken of in the allopathic world. We don’t think about it. It’s not taught in medical schools, generally speaking. It’s coming more into the limelight, certainly, but it’s not something that’s routinely spoken of, you’re correct.

How many of your contemporaries are at least open to that concept?

I would say it’s very few. Probably 10, 15, 20 percent maybe.

Wow! That’s surprising.

It is. It’s just that it’s not something that we understand. We spend all of our attention; we spend all of our resources, really, investigating the body. Very little money is spent on the mind or spiritual aspects. I think most patients and most people who are not physicians, realize that there’s something more. One of my favorite things to do is – and the residents still probably laugh at me a little bit: (I don’t think I’m necessarily a better surgeon than 90 percent of the country. I think my results are better.) As patients are waking up from surgery, I will whisper in their ear, “You will heal beautifully. Your hearing or your throat will feel fantastic. You will do great.” I utter three or four positive words and my patients seem to heal faster, seem to heal better, than what most everybody else tends to experience. While I’d like to think I’m a better surgeon, I think that I’m using or capitalizing on the body’s own innate ability to heal, the power of suggestion, which is grossly underutilized in medicine today, but really needs to be utilized because the body has a wonderful ability to help heal itself. And we can facilitate that. You can laugh at it and say there’s no link to that, but I think that there is.

Absolutely! Your amazing video of when you had your knee surgery with just acupuncture and hypnosis, shows that you understand that and have had personal experience of it also.

Absolutely.

Your healing from that was phenomenal, wasn’t it?

It was. Most people’s quads don’t fire for six weeks out. Mine were firing in the recovery room.

Wow! That should be written up in every medical journal in the world!

Yes. That’s how skeptical we are.

That’s the weird thing about humanity. It has to happen to “me” first before it’s believed.

Exactly.

You are also the director of the Complementary/Integrative Medicine Program of Henry Ford Health Systems. How did that happen in a traditional setting?

That’s a great question. About 10 years ago, the CEO, the hospital and a group was formed to investigate whether Henry Ford Health System – a very conventional, traditional, conservative place – could consider some of these options in a safe and effective manner. We had a small work group that set out to do this. We sent out surveys to 17,000 employees in the health system. Not only the doctors, but to the allied health professionals. To the janitors. Everybody in the health system got one. Not everybody answered, of course. We said, we’re thinking about adding complementary-integrative medicine to Henry Ford Health System. We would, of course, embrace things that have some scientific basis, which was the hedge.

In any event, we took the most common things that people understood as complementary and integrative medicine. Things like acupuncture, herbal and nutritional therapies, homeopathic therapies, chiropractic, mind-body strategies and we said, on a scale of one to five – one you think it’s bunk and crazy, five you think it’s fantastic. And we had other scales. “I’ve used these personally and they’ve worked” or “I’ve used these personally and they haven’t.” A fairly sophisticated survey. And it was interesting. We had some who said, “If you even think about bringing homeopathy into this health system, we’ll quit. That’s all voodoo and you’re crazy.”

We had the same thing said about chiropractors. We now have a couple of chiropractors on board. So the blinders can come down if you can show the benefit, but in this very conservative center, we had to show that there was some benefit from these things or at least that they wouldn’t cause harm. Not only do you not want to cause harm, you don’t what to be a charlatan. You don’t want to sell snake oil. You don’t want to do things that someone’s just making a profit on because they can. So we have to be very careful about taking advantage of patients in their time of need. We don’t want to do that.

So after we had done all this and sent this out, we had some very interesting comments, ranging from “If you do any of this we’ll leave. We can’t believe you’d consider it” to “I’ve been doing acupuncture and mind-body therapies for 20 years. It’s about time” from some doctors.

That’s great!

So it started with this work group on complementary and integrative medicine, then in 2001 or 2002, we opened our Center for Integrative Medicine, which is based out of our Novi, MI office. We provide acupuncture, mind-body therapies, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal and nutritional strategies, chiropractic and St. John’s neuro-muscular therapy. We have about 700 patient visits per month.

Is this the first of its kind in the country?

I wouldn’t say it’s the first. A lot of places have complementary and integrative medicine. A lot of places say they are considering it. We are truly starting to integrate this into our health system, using it for surgery preparation, using it for patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy, trying to support conventional things. And it’s not an either or. It’s not mutually exclusive. We’re very careful about that. And that’s not the wellness hospital, which we haven’t even gotten to yet.

It’s a $350 million hospital based on the premise of wellness and optimizing health. That will be the first of its kind, absolutely, where we’re actually trying to integrate this into the health system. It will be the central theme when you walk into this Up North feel and the ambiance, the feng shui – we’ve built this all out with feng shui experts, this entire hospital – from every last detail. It’s all about creating an optimal healing environment and an area where people can walk on a nature trail for 100 acres, play basketball in the afternoon, listen to concerts. All the food – the fruits and vegetables are coming from a self-sustaining organic farm in Ohio. We bought a farm which is going to grow all of our fruits and vegetables and it’s going to be purely organic. Getting back to the same roots of what Hypocrites said, “Let thy food be thy medicine. Let thy medicine be thy food.” So the poisons that we’re putting into our bodies today, we need to stop. We’re doing that at Henry Ford Health Systems. I’m very excited about that.

Great!

I’ve segued from the integrative center to the wellness hospital. Our hope is to make them one in the same. The theme is there. It’s not like, oh you can get acupuncture or you can get a brain tumor removed. It’s you can have your brain tumor removed and have acupuncture to help you and get the best of both worlds and to really integrate what is happening in places other than America, where it makes sense.

That is so exciting! We’re thrilled about that!

We are, too.

Where is that going to be?

Right at the West Bloomfield, MI hospital where it exists now, it’s being built behind it, right across from the Jewish center on Drake Road. It’s going to be open, according to the plan, in March 2009, a year from now.

We want to be there! We’re thrilled to see this in our lifetime, and in our backyard. I feel so honored to know you, Doc.

Don’t be... it’s an honor to know you. You’re doing wonderful things.

Oh, my gosh. We’re both working for the good of humanity and it’s thrilling to watch it coming to fruition in a magnificent and wonderful way. I don’t think there’s any place more in need of this than Michigan. Of all places, people would say, where we don’t always have the best press and we don’t always have the best times.

Absolutely.

So if I was diagnosed with something that needed traditional treatments, could I request to go to the wellness hospital and have those treatments?

Absolutely. We hope the doctors will know about the things that people are doing now, that they will understand that this is something we can also help with. That’s what the integrative center is working toward. We’re trying to integrate it all with the other.

If there is one last thing you’d like to leave with us, what would that be?

Healthcare in America is not doing very well. We have a long way to improve. Part of it, I believe, will be addressing our lifestyle issues. Part of it will be fully capitalizing on the body’s innate ability to heal itself using spiritual and mindfulness techniques. That would be the main gist of what I think is important.

Thank you, Dr. Seidman. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the Body•Mind•Spirit FESTIVAL on April 26th!

Me, too!