 92.7 WOBM Sean Michaels in with you on this Tuesday morning. It is January 16th. Good to have you board with us at 840 right now 29 degrees in Tom's River and joining me our special guest this morning is Dr. David Leopold the medical director and integrative physician at Hackensack Meridian integrative health and medicine Dr. Leopold. Good morning. Thanks for being with us. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Good to have you with us today. You know people talk about integrative health integrative medicine and it's a term we hear but maybe everybody's not quite familiar with what that necessarily means. Kind of give us a little background on integrative health and medicine. Sure Sean that's a great question and it's one that I ask myself all the time. You know the traditional way of looking at integrative medicine is sort of a combination of what we would normally know as our regular medical system and then what has traditionally been called things like complementary and alternative alternative medicine but what I really look at integrative medicine is is a way of optimizing health and well-being for any individual irrespective of whatever underlying disease condition that they might have and so really it's a way of examining what has the best chance of helping this individual with the lowest possible risk of harm and in some cases that is going to be a medical or surgical intervention it's going to be a pill but sometimes it's going to be things like acupuncture or stress management maybe nutrition or exercise and the way that we do it at Hackensack Meridian integrative health and medicine is we use a five-pillar approach we look at what is an individual sleep pattern what is their activity level what are they doing in terms of cultivating a sense of purpose for themselves and of course things like what is their nutritional status what do they eat and what are they doing to manage stress we call it resilience it's a way of bouncing back from adversity and so for me it's really a combination of all those things in its in its best sense it can be applied to any patient no matter what kind of condition you're dealing with to really maximize their well-being very good sort of opening up the doors to different avenues and so forth what are some of the most common elements though or conditions that fall into integrative health and medicine would you say and when you're you know seeing patients well the beauty of it is that it can be for anything but i think that where it's really got a great application and what's particularly relevant these days is is pain and i spend a lot of time working with patients with chronic pain and there are incredible interventions that can be utilized to significantly bring down the need for medication things like acupuncture things like exercise activity what somebody's eating is tremendously important for their level of pain things like stress management all of these things can significantly impact someone's pain and so that's a that's a really great application and we're seeing a lot of news and a lot of you know talk and discussion about pain management and different things so this does you know bring up some great alternative solutions there for absolutely there's a tremendous input now from the traditional medical community major medical organizations like the american college of physicians and joint commissions which are very big very traditional organizations that are now advocating for things like acupuncture and other non-medication based interventions for pain very nice now speaking of things like that are there any upcoming integrative health and medical events that we should know about that folks can take advantage of sure right now we have we have mindfulness based stress reduction programs that's available widespread throughout our system we offer yoga at several locations throughout new jersey february is heart month so we're gonna have a free event february 20th which is an integrative approach to heart health at jackson health village very good and of course you can also follow you on facebook at hack and sack meridian integrative health and medicine and stress is such a big part of our overall health so a lot of these integrative ways to deal with stress is definitely beneficial for anybody that's out there absolutely i always call stress the x factor because throughout my career it's something that i've seen tremendously impact people's health generally not in a positive way the good news is that there are tremendous things that you can do mindfulness based stress reduction meditation exercise all these things really bring down people stress levels they make an incredible difference in people's lives very nice how could people get more information or scheduling an appointment with your department so anyone can call our office at 732-263-7999 to schedule an appointment they can also visit our website hack and sack meridian health dot org slash integrative medicine and happy to see everyone and see what we can do to all these different alternatives are fantastic news and opening up a lot of different avenues for folks to seek different things and integrative health and medicine welcome part of our medical community and you know so many good exciting things happening with that absolutely very good thanks for being with us dr david leopold he's the medical director and an integrative physician and hack and sack meridian integrative health and medicine check out their website for more details with wobm the ocean county breakfast show 92.7 wobm