This story appears in the February 2011 issue of Milwaukee Magazine.
By Carolyn Kott Washburne, photos by Adam Ryan Morris.
When Dale Buegel started his practice back in the late ’70s, Milwaukee was a wasteland when it came to complementary medicine.
“There was Outpost Natural Foods, one nutritionist and me,” he says. “This has changed dramatically.”
Formerly a psychiatrist, in 2002 he discontinued his medical license to focus solely on providing wellness consultations and training yoga teachers in Glendale.
“The Western medical system is fantastic about fixing acute problems and taking symptoms away,” says Buegel. “But it’s frankly terrible about promoting constitutional health, that aspect of the human organism that puts selves back into balance.”
Today, he is far from alone in pursuing that goal.
Cheryl Silberman, director of the Kanyakumari Ayurveda & Yoga Wellness Center in Glendale, is another holistic trailblazer.
“When I began practicing Ayurveda in the early 1990s, I was the only practitioner in the entire Midwest.” Today, her center has a staff of 15 that offers programs and services in Ayurveda (herbalism, body work and spirituality) as well as detoxification, yoga and meditation. Silberman says the Wisconsin Ayurvedic Medical Association now boasts 50 members, and there are full Ayurvedic centers in Madison, Eau Claire and Appleton.
The acknowledgement that traditional and alternative methodologies can work together for a patient’s benefit is gradually creating a sea change in the way medicine is practiced in the United States. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine conducted a nationwide survey of 23,393 adults (18 or older) and 9,417 children (17 or under) in 2007. The survey found that 38 percent of adults and 12 percent of children had used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) within the past year. The most commonly used therapies were nutritional supplements, deep breathing, meditation, chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation, massage and yoga.
Compared to the results of a similar study in 2002, the use of CAM among adults has remained relatively steady (the 2002 study did not collect data on children) – 36 percent in 2002 and 38 percent in 2007. However, some CAM therapies showed significant increases, in particular deep breathing, meditation, massage therapy and yoga. The use of massage therapy, for example, increased from 5 percent to 8.3 percent of adults.
What’s more, further research on the 2007 data determined that adult patients spent an estimated $33.9 billion out of pocket on their CAM treatments. (Most treatments aren’t covered by insurance plans.)
“When it comes down to it,” says Tor Furumo, a chiropractor with Columbia St. Mary’s, “since most complementary services are a cash transaction, if they help, people will pay for them.”
Read the entire article by purchasing below.
- buy now//digital
our New digital Edition gives you instant access. - buy now//print
we’ll send you a print version, Classic.
