Photo by hiddedevries.

Welcome to our new column! In Meet & Greet, we’ll be interviewing a different star student from a naturopathic medical school each month so you can meet the future of health care.

Naturopathic medical school is a four-year program that requires a bachelor’s degree and science pre-requisites. Not all states are licensed for a Naturopathic Physician, however, the movement is underway and alternative medicine is rapidly growing in popularity. In fact, a recent study showed that 84% of conventional medical students want more education in this subject. Our first student is the vibrant, go-getter Lauren Noel. We met Lauren two years ago. She is poised to really propel naturopathic medicine into the forefront of health!

Student: Lauren Noel
City: Longmont, CO and Chatsworth, CA
School: National College of Natural Medicine, Portland, Oregon
Year in School: Fourth, graduates in June 2010

WW: Hi Lauren! Thanks for meeting with me to talk about my favorite subject, naturopathic medicine. First, give our readers an idea of what your daily life is like.

Lauren Noel: My day is a mix of classes and clinical rotations. I get up between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. and hit the gym. Then I’m at my first class by 7:30 a.m. until about noon or 1:30 p.m. where I have clinicals until 7 p.m. Then I head home, eat dinner, study, and get in bed by 9 or 10. On weekends I attend conferences such as ACAM (American College for Advancement in Medicine), bio-identical hormone lectures, IV therapy, or I do public speaking on nutrition or botanical medicine. In fact, I just gave a lecture to the medical students and doctors up at Oregon Health Sciences University.

WW: How did you first get into naturopathic medicine?

LN: Initially I wanted a field that used food as medicine. I did my undergrad in California in Health Psychology. I took a nutrition class that blew my mind and I knew I wanted to learn more. I did an Internet search for advanced programs and found a double masters at the Seattle naturopathic school, Bastyr, then I read about naturopathic medicine and knew it was for me. I hadn’t done any of my pre-requisites so I spent two and a half years completing those while working at an integrative center in Colorado with an N.D and M.D. A friend of mine saw an N.D. for Crohn’s disease and their life totally changed around. It was amazing. I chose NCNM because I knew it was an instant fit. I fell in love with the community, the school, and the city.

WW: What areas are you focusing on in school?

LN: Nutrition is my passion as is exercise health, environmental medicine, gastrointestinal health, and hormonal balance.

WW: What excites you most about the day-to-day in all this schooling?

LN: Definitely being in clinic and working with patients. Seeing patient’s lives changing left and right is not a rare thing at all. Patients get better with our medicine–even patients with very serious conditions. It’s all very inspiring.

WW: If you had the power to change one thing about the industry, what would you change?

LN: I feel there is absolutely no reason naturopathic medicine isn’t mainstream and it’s essential we are for health care reform. The fact that the top causes of disease are completely preventable blows my mind because that’s what we, as naturopathic physicians, absolutely shine at. We are critical to prevention medicine–it’s what we do, it’s how we are trained. We can remain true to the roots of our medicine while being integrative. We can focus on true health.

WW: Lauren, where do you see yourself in five years?

LN: It’s a difficult answer because of location. I’m not sure what state I’m going to practice in but I know I will be in an integrative medical facility. I am very comfortable working with other practitioners like M.D.s or D.O.s (Osteopathic doctors). I really shine in that environment and want to share knowledge. I also have a huge passion to get our medicine out into the public and I would love to get into the media aspect of it.

Dr. Carrie Jones has practices in Tigard and Sherwood, Oregon where she focuses in all aspects of women's health. She is an adjunct professor at the National College of Natural Medicine, and writes and speaks regularly on the subject of women's medicine.

Photo by turtlemom4bacon.

Last month while visiting Rochester I popped into the local market my parents have shopped at my entire life. Only having purchased 3 items, but realizing I’d forgotten my re-usable shopping bag, I opted to go bag-less. Before I could get the words, “no bag thank you,” out of my mouth, the young man behind the counter had begun dropping my stuff in a plastic bag. I quickly said, “oh no thanks, only 3 things, no need for a bag, save it for the next person.” To my astonishment he pulled my items out, handed them over like a robot, and threw the un-used bag into his garbage!

Can’t wait until the chap behind the counter cheerfully asks, “hey, how are ya?” instead of, “paper or plastic?” When I first moved to California almost a decade ago I was amazed at how much organic produce was readily available. I was continually baffled at the plastic mess it was packaged in though!

I’ve heard a lot of folks remark, “oh, it’s paper it’ll degrade” or “what’s a little piece of plastic actually gonna do if it just stays in a dump?” I regularly pipe up with answers to those ludicrous questions.

Reaching Beyond Paper or Plastic

While reading an issue of Dwell I lit up when I saw an article titled The Future of Groceries. It reviewed three brilliantly simple ways to enhance our entire method of procuring and storing the foods we love. Summing it up, creative concept idea machine, Marti Guixe says, “food design, if properly done, should eliminate superfluous packaging.” Complimenting this sentiment is Food Probe’s Home Farming Unit, a biosphere containing live seafood with the ability to grow vegetables. Imagine how wonderful it will be to maintain just what you need, excess free!

Shopping Conscientiously

Until these farming units hit our homes, consider every action you put forward with what I call whole conscious thinking:

• Buying organic? Great job! Now consider, am I purchasing my food from a sustainable source? Go online or ask neighbors where the local farmer’s markets are located. Many farms now offer a twice monthly service farmer’s box chock full of the season’s best.
• The next time you’re shopping compliment your grocer on what you see them doing best. Politely suggest they offer re-usable shopping supplies or they leave produce un-wrapped free of plastic packaging.
• Don’t forget to get an update from your waste management company of the items you may recycle each week with your other trash. At the end of the week our recycling bins are absolutely over-flowing. Almost all materials you consider garbage can and should be recycled. If your company doesn’t take certain items, find an alternative resource for your garbage. We save any plastic bags that might come into the house via guests to be later taken down the street, where our local market will recycle them for the public.

Reusable Shopping Totes

Just about every grocer now offers (at a small cost) reusable totes for your continued convenience. If you’re like me, you’ll want to support organizations that give back to the environment by donating proceeds. Try a couple of my sturdy faves:

• Envirosax Can fit the equivalent of 3 full plastic bags or about 2 full paper sacks
• ACME A ine of re- and up-cycled shopping totes. Great for bicycle baskets
• Etsy often features bags made by independent designers in their own homes, many of whom donate a certain amount of profits to various charities

Remember to wash that reusable shopper every couple of times you bring it home. Unwashed, bacteria may have a chance to thrive in your tote. Kind of defeats the purpose if your shopper turns into a bacterial breeding ground. Give your totes a preshopping spruce by spraying a few shots of Clean Well’s thyme and citrus oil sanitizer and shake to dry.

Christine M. Dionese L.Ac. specializes in integrative medicine, medical journalism and was the VP of marketing at WellWire LLC. Visit her wellness and lifestyle blog, Reaching Beyond Now.

Photo by Glen Bowman.

Welcome to 2010! We asked our team to share their thoughts today, and here’s what they said:

• Christine Dionese L.Ac.: Somehow over the years, I’d convinced myself I was scared of sharks. After a decade of living in San Diego imagining what it would be like to surf, I finally took the plunge last month and bravely paddled into the waves. Determined to stand on that board, I paddled, kicked, and tumbled through the waves for three hours without a single “ahh shark!” type thought popping into my mind. 2010 is going to be all about jumping out of my head and put my imagination into action!

• Amy Chitwood, L.Ac.: This coming year is the year of the Tiger, and this year is traditionally associated with changes and important decisions. Make the best of this year by carefully thinking out major decisions, especially business-related. My personal goal is to help my patients recognize their own healing potential and the importance of self-care.

• Dr. Nishant Rao: I’m going to time out of my busy schedule to use my right brain. It seems like the days rush by and I often run out of time to develop my creative side. This year, I’m going to devote a couple of hours every week to wandering out in the world with my camera and playing with what I see.

• Karla Mercado: Next year, I will not procrastinate! It’ll be a real challenge because I’m so used to being a crammer. By being faithful to my to-do lists, not using the snooze button, and prioritizing tasks properly, I think I’ll decrease my stress level and become more productive.

• Dr. Carrie Jones: My resolution for 2010 is to practice more grace–not the ballerina kind, but the loving, compassionate, patient kind. In this stressed-out, on-the-go, plugged-in society, I am asking that grace be my guide.

Photo by Nishant Rao.

I have heard  many a physician joke that their patients come in knowing more about their condition than the doctors thanks to Google and Wikipedia these days. Though not entirely true, there is a valuable point here. The Internet is saturated with health content but unfortunately most of it falls somewhere between garbage and trash. This is especially true in alternate medicine and I cringe when I stumble across dangerously inaccurate CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) websites with ludicrous claims and dishonest marketing.

Back when I was figuring out my career path as a pre-med student I had a conversation with Dr. Deepak Chopra. He tried to convince me to go to a conventional medical school and then take seminars as the route to become a CAM practitioner. His reason being, “you can’t trust all the alternative health information out there.” He was right in that regard, but I quickly realized that my values were truly different from conventional medical practices. I chose naturopathic medicine and went to NCNM.

When Dr. Igor and myself came together to found WellWire I was working between The Maldives, Qatar and Thailand and he was in the United States. We were separated by about 3,000 miles and a 14 hour time difference. Using Skype, IM, email and video conferencing at odd hours of the night (I was plagued with a very unstable satellite internet connection) we moved forward on the principle that the way doctors interact with their patients had changed in a very big way.

Health 2.0 is here.

Check out this article which describes health 2.0 as “a new movement that challenges the notion that health care happens only between a single patient and doctor in an exam room.” Practitioners are now able to interact with their patients in more personal and engaging ways via blogs, personal websites, Twitter, Facebook and may other social media outlets. The vast majority of you reading this article found us via Twitter, with the next largest group finding us via Facebook.

But wait, don’t stop there. Dr. Igor and I believe the real change has yet to come. We anticipate tremendous strides in the evolution of virtual health care. The wave of health 2.0 will gradually lead us all toward health 3.0 and dare I say it, 4.0. This is the platform which engages both the individual and their community. Social media allows networking for a rapidly growing need for health and wellness. Our vision is to bring you that next wave. We wish to support your health and choices by engaging with your community through social media platforms.

Here’s a video clip from this year’s ReShape conference in the Netherlands about how you are demanding better health care and using the Internet to make it happen.

Health care and Internet in the Netherlands from lucien engelen on Vimeo.

So what’s the future of medicine? Stick with us and find out.

Dr. Nishant Rao is a co-founder of WellWire.com. He is a well-traveled naturopathic doctor and new father, practicing an integrative approach to create wellness in and around Los Angeles. Become a patient or discover his practice.

Dr. Igor Schwartzman practices naturopathic medicine with a strong emphasis in women's health, hormone imbalances, and thyroid disorders at Whole Family Wellness Center in Portland, Oregon. He is a co-founder of WellWire.com.