Integrative Medicine

Are you ready to explore your health in a new way? You’re in the right place. Integrative medicine reaches beyond your physical health and treatment with medications. Our team dives into how mental, emotional, social and community and spiritual factors can also affect you. Integrative medicine works alongside traditional treatments for many conditions, including:

• Asthma
• Autoimmune conditions
• Cancer symptoms
• Chronic pain or fatigue
• Coronary artery disease
• Skin conditions
• Digestive problems
• Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes
• High blood pressure and cholesterol
• Long COVID
• Weight management
• Memory problems and dementia
• Mood disorders, including anxiety, depression and PTSD
• Women’s health conditions like infertility and menopause

Integrative medicine helps you take more control of your health and well-being. Our team recommends healthy lifestyle habits and complementary therapies that work alongside traditional medical care. This adds a layer of care that brings your mental and emotional wellness into the fold.

These therapies can help relieve pain or muscle tension. They can encourage relaxation and improve your mood. Some can boost your circulation and flexibility. Others can help you feel less tired or stressed.

It’s important to understand that our team won’t replace your trusted primary care provider (PCP). Or any specialists you see. We work alongside your traditional care team as we map out your integrative care plan.

Integrative Medicine Consultations at Cleveland Clinic

Whether you’re new to integrative medicine or want to explore trying our services, we encourage you to start your journey with a consultation. This appointment allows us to zero in on what your treatment needs and goals are — and build an integrative medicine plan that works for you.

What to expect

You’ll meet with one of our integrative and lifestyle medicine providers. They’ll spend time getting to know you. You can expect them to talk about how integrative medicine can complement your traditional medical care. And they’ll ask questions about your life, health history and goals for integrative care. This helps our team build a plan that combines lifestyle adjustments and complementary therapies with traditional ones.

Meet Our Integrative Medicine Team

We believe you get the best care when you have the best minds and experience backing you every step of the way. Our team-based approach gives you that with the best providers for your needs on one care team. No matter what providers are on your team, you can count on one thing — getting expert, compassionate care that focuses on all of you. You may see:

• Integrative medicine providers
• Osteopathic providers
• Acupuncture providers
• Massage therapists
• Yoga therapy providers
• Registered dietitians
• Chiropractors
• Holistic mental health providers
• Culinary medicine providers

Depending on what we learn during your consultation, your care plan may include complementary therapies like:

Acupuncture

Acupuncture involves inserting special needles into specific body points to balance energy flow, called Qi. This can help reduce pain, like headaches or backaches, and ease symptoms from medical treatments. It encourages the brain and nervous system to release pain-relieving chemicals called endorphins. Regular treatments can help reduce inflammation and improve your well-being.

Body work

Integrative medicine relies heavily on body work like:

• Massage therapy
• Craniosacral therapy
• Lymphatic drainage massage
• Reiki

These techniques make you feel more relaxed. They can release tension in your muscles and joints, reduce stress and anxiety and improve your mood. Some of these therapies can also tackle chronic pain and discomfort. Your integrative medicine provider will talk with you about the treatments they feel would be a good fit.

Chiropractic adjustment

When you have problems with your spine and soft tissues, chiropractic care may be right for you. Our licensed chiropractors use a “hands-on” approach called chiropractic adjustment or spinal manipulation to help relieve pain from new or old injuries. It can ease muscle pain and realign your spine. This can help you with overall mobility and range of motion — along with relieving chronic pain in your neck, jaw, back and other joints.

Holistic psychotherapy

Traditional psychotherapy addresses behavior and thought processes through conventional talk therapy sessions. Holistic psychotherapy takes this a step further. It blends traditional talk therapy with a classic integrative medicine hallmark — viewing the body, mind and spirit as one unit. Holistic psychotherapy also uses other approaches, like:

• Eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy (EMDR): To help you process past traumas that still affect you in the present day.
• Mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy: To help you better understand how your thoughts, feelings and behaviors work together. 
• Guided imagery: To help you reduce stress and feel more relaxed by picturing positive images in your head, as directed by your therapist.

Osteopathic manipulation

Your provider may recommend osteopathic manipulation treatment. They’ll manipulate your muscles, soft tissues and joints with gentle pressure to balance your musculoskeletal system and reduce pain and strain. This can help your body get back into sync and heal itself, an important focus of osteopathic medicine.

Nutritional support

Maybe you’re trying to lose weight. Perhaps you need to cut salt out of your diet to manage high blood pressure or reduce refined carbohydrates to improve your diabetes. Or maybe you want to go vegan. No matter what your nutritional needs are, our team of chefs, dietitians and other providers work with your PCP and other specialists to find menus and programs that meet your needs and eating goals. We offer:  

• Private nutrition consultations: We’ll meet with you to evaluate your current eating habits and health needs and build a custom plan around your goals.
• Culinary medicine: Our team uses evidence-based food and nutrition science, medicine and cooking tips to help you learn skills to prepare healthy meals.

Yoga therapy

New to the mat? No problem. Think it’s too late in life to try a downward dog? We’ll change your mind. Our integrative medicine team makes sure gentle yoga is accessible to you, no matter your age, physical ability or experience. We’ve designed our yoga therapy for everyone. And it can help you in many ways, including improving your mood, reducing chronic pain, lowering your blood pressure and improving your strength, posture and body alignment.

When you do yoga therapy, we help you turn inward, quiet your mind and focus on what’s happening at that moment — your movement and breath. If you need support like a chair, we’ve got that and other helpful props.

Chinese herbal therapy

If your integrative medicine provider suggests Chinese herbal therapy, you’ll meet with our trained herbalists. They’ll learn about you, your health and your goals. Using this information, they’ll create therapeutic herbal formulas. Made mostly from plants, these formulas come as teas, powders, pills, syrups or tinctures. Our goal? To help you balance your health and relieve symptoms from chronic conditions. Your herbalist will work with your PCP to make sure your therapy complements your regular medical care.

Shared medical appointments

We offer many opportunities for you to take part in . These sessions connect you and a group of others who have similar health conditions or goals to valuable (and extended) face time with expert providers. We offer SMAs for:

• Acupuncture
• Brain Health and Wellness
• Culinary Medicine
• Eating Well for Optimal Health
• Living Well with Chronic Pain
• Long COVID
• Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Most of these SMAs meet over a series of appointments at the same time each week with the same group of people (except for acupuncture). They allow you to spend more time with our experts and exchange information and support with other participants. It’s a great way to learn from our healthcare providers and others with similar needs and goals.

Taking the Next Step

There may be many reasons why integrative medicine catches your attention. Maybe you’re looking for another way to manage chronic health problems. Or perhaps you want to try complementary therapies like yoga, acupuncture or herbal remedies. Cleveland Clinic has the care you need. Our team doesn’t replace traditional medical care with your PCP or specialists. We work closely with them to make sure the therapies we recommend support your regular treatment plan. We want you to get the most out of your health and well-being.