As a medical doctor with a decades-long passion for integrative medicine and an educational background to match, I’m well-qualified to provide you with a unique and well-researched blend of natural, lifestyle-based treatment methods and conventional medical treatments designed to not only address the medical condition for which you’ve sought treatment, but to improve your overall health, reduce your risk of chronic disease generally, and get you feeling your best.
As a medical doctor with a decades-long passion for integrative medicine and an educational background to match, I’m well-qualified to provide you with a unique and well-researched blend of natural, lifestyle-based treatment methods and conventional medical treatments designed to not only address the medical condition for which you’ve sought treatment, but to improve your overall health, reduce your risk of chronic disease generally, and get you feeling your best.
As a medical doctor with a decades-long passion for integrative medicine and an educational background to match, I’m well-qualified to provide you with a unique and well-researched blend of natural, lifestyle-based treatment methods and conventional medical treatments designed to not only address the medical condition for which you’ve sought treatment, but to improve your overall health, reduce your risk of chronic disease generally, and get you feeling your best.
Integrity
Compassion
Respect
Inclusivity
Family Doctor
Driven by my passion for integrative medicine and the imperative for knowledgeable and ethical providers in this field, I founded a practice dedicated to evidence-based integrative medicine.
The focus of my practice is on putting highly personalized treatment regimens alongside conventional treatments. Intended not only to help address the medical condition, but to improve your overall health.
My interest in the use of more ‘natural’ treatment methods to address disease and maintain health long predates my becoming a medical doctor. In my youth, I struggled with a medical condition which didn’t respond well to conventional medical treatments. It did, however, respond very well to what would be considered an integrative treatment approach. Ever since, I’ve maintained a strong interest in evidence-based integrative medicine and have read hundreds of books and thousands of journal articles on topics relating to integrative medicine. Although I have all the right degrees and designations certifying my competence, in truth it is these tens of thousands of hours of self-study that, as much as anything else, have prepared me for the practice of integrative medicine.
After completing a bachelor’s degree at the University of Waterloo and a master’s degree at Western University, I briefly considered becoming a naturopathic doctor. However, I was concerned about the incorporation of pseudo-scientific treatment methods in naturopathic medicine and opted to attend medical school instead. I obtained my medical degree at the DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and completed my residency in family medicine at McMaster’s Kitchener-Waterloo site. I then worked as a family doctor providing comprehensive family medicine in rural southwest Ontario.
While I’m very glad that I chose to pursue a career in conventional medicine, it became increasingly clear to me that a medical approach emphasizing the use of prescription medications and procedural interventions is sometimes inadequate to the task of addressing chronic disease. Patients struggling with depression, who had tried every possible antidepressant and combination of antidepressants, continued to be depressed. Patients with type 2 diabetes who were taking every type of blood sugar-lowering medication available continued to have sky-high blood sugar. Patients with angina continued to be symptomatic despite optimization of their medication regimen.
When I could interest patients in addressing the lifestyle factors contributing to their ill-health in a comprehensive, safe, and sustainable fashion, and they did so consistently, their outcomes were often much improved. Patients struggling with depression experienced a substantial improvement in their mood. Patients with type 2 diabetes were able to reduce the dosages of and/or discontinue many of their blood sugar-lowering medications. And patients with angina noted a reduction in the frequency of angina and an improvement in functional capacity.
While these results were encouraging, and served to maintain my interest in integrative medicine, it was disheartening to witness patients being misled by healthcare providers practicing alternative, complementary, integrative, functional, or naturopathic medicine. Patients would inform me that they had been diagnosed with medical conditions that either do not exist or that they could not possibly have acquired. Others were diagnosed with legitimate medical conditions but on the basis of the most absurd diagnostic methods. Patients would hand me long lists of nutritional supplements which they were pressured to purchase directly from the healthcare providers who recommended them, who no doubt profited handsomely from this. There was often no discernible rationale underlying the selection of these nutritional supplements, with patients being advised to take supplements with effects that were in no way connected to the underlying causes of their condition. Patients were usually told little or nothing about these nutritional supplements – their proposed mechanism of action, the evidence in support of their use, their potential adverse reactions and side effects, or their potential interactions with medications. I frequently had to advise patients to stop using nutritional supplements due to potentially problematic or even lethal interactions with their medications. Even when patients were given reasonable, evidence-based advice, they were frequently overcharged for this, and there were times when it appeared that the healthcare provider was taking advantage of patients’ vulnerability. On this note, it was most distressing to see patients suffering from terminal illnesses being offered treatments that they could not possibly have benefited from. It became very obvious to me that while business was booming in the ‘natural health’ sector, it was also plagued by a serious ethics problem.
For these reasons – my passion for integrative medicine and the need for knowledgeable and ethical treatment providers in this space – I decided to start a practice dedicated to evidence-based integrative medicine.
I continue to live in rural southwest Ontario, outside of Woodstock, with my lovely wife Jill, and my slightly overweight apricot fawn puggle Henry. Apart from integrative medicine, my passions include reading, working out, spending time outdoors, and travel.
