More patients look to unconventional therapies to supplement their health care. (Karen Caldicott/Special to ABCNEWS.com) 

By Claudine Chamberlain
ABCNEWS.com
When she needed two operations on her ankle, Marcy Foley visited a regular MD. But for her back spasms after surgery, acupuncture did the trick.
And when her primary care doctor wasn't able to help her with the disabling vertigo that's kept her out of work for a year and a half, she turned to naturopathy—with her MD's blessing. 
     In fact, Foley has shown up for doctor's appointments to find her naturopath there as well. "The three of us sit down and talk about my care," she says. 
     Unlike Foley, many patients who seek out alternative health care are frowned upon by their regular physicians. But at Foley's natural medicine clinic—the Kent Community Health Center in suburban Seattle—cooperation is the name of the game.
     The center is the nation's first publicly funded clinic to offer natural health care such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, homeopathy and nutritional counseling. Two things make the clinic unique: Public subsidies mean that low-income people finally have access to alternative health care, and the naturopaths work side by side with MDs. 
     That marriage of conventional and unconventional therapies marks a nascent trend: the integration of natural medicine into mainstream healthcare. 
     Prodded by their patients, conventional doctors find themselves boning up on uses for herbs and vitamins. More and more insurance companies are picking up the tab for things like massage and acupuncture, especially since a federal government report last year endorsed certain uses of the Chinese needle therapy. And the natural-medicine self-treatment boom continues as herbal supplement sales climb steadily. 
     Integration of the two medical disciplines is the current project of physician and best-selling author Dr. Andrew Weil. At the University of Arizona's College of Medicine, Weil's Program in Integrative Medicine aims to find ways that natural medicine can best fit into conventional care. 

If They Come, You'll Build It 
Experts agree that the fuel in the engine of integration is consumer demand.

More than 40 percent of people surveyed used alternative health care in 1997. Source: Landmark Healthcare Inc. (ABCNEWS.com)

Typical patients don't like being rushed through 15-minute doctor's exams. They don't like the idea of heavy-duty drugs if there's an herb that can help them with fewer side effects. And they want to be more involved in their own health care. 
     "There are situations where herbs and diet can really make an impact," says Dr. Cindy Breed, a naturopath at the Kent clinic. "It would be foolish not to try those things. Why go with the hammer when you can use something that's less hard on the person?" 
     Many of Breed's patients, like Marcy Foley, also receive care from conventional medical doctors. "There are some situations where it's six of one, half a dozen of another," Breed says. "It's really important to be able to ask the patient what their heart tells them they want to do." 
     Western medicine's wake-up call came in January 1993, when Harvard physician David Eisenberg published a landmark study of alternative health care in The New England Journal of Medicine. In 1990, the year Eisenberg did his survey, Americans made 425 million visits to alternative care providers such as chiropractors, acupuncturists and massage therapists. Compare that to 388 million visits to primary care physicians that same year, and you get quite a few startled doctors. 
     And it is startling, especially when you consider that the vast majority of those visits are being paid for directly out of the patients' pockets. Americans fork over roughly $10 billion a year of their own money on alternative care. 

Managed Care Takes Note 
With that kind of demand, the health care industry can't help but respond. At least 50 of the 125 medical schools in the United States now offer classes in unconventional therapies, although enrollment is still low and the curricula vary widely. 
     Notable managed care organizations—Oxford Health Plan, Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente of California and Group Health Co-op of Puget Sound in Washington state—now subsidize some natural health care. Under the Oxford plan, you don't even need to ask your primary care doctor for permission first. 
     If integration of natural and conventional medicine does prove to be the wave of the future, experts say it's patients like Marcy Foley who will benefit. 

Most people use alternative care along with conventional health care. Source: Landmark Healthcare Inc. (ABCNEWS.com)

Herbs and yoga can't treat everything, but neither can drugs and surgery. By working together, naturopaths and MDs can find the best approach for each patient. 
     Since Dr. Breed began treating her vertigo with cranial sacral therapy—a sort of laying on of hands that's similar to massage and aims to regulate the flow of a fluid that circulates within the head and up and down the spine—Foley's gone for four weeks without an attack. Previously, her record had been three weeks. 
     Even if it turns out that this therapy doesn't help her, Foley is happy knowing that at least she wasn't shut out from that option by a conservative medical system. "It's such a vital thing," she says, "that you can have the treatment that you really desire and you really feel is going to help you."