Dr. Adylle Varon, IMA Senior Fellow in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, has a simple case to make: going back to medicine’s roots is not going backward. Long before hospitals and electronic records, healers paid attention to what nature and generations of patients taught them, that sleep, stress, digestion, and emotion help decide whether a person gets sick at all. Licensing and standardization protected patients from real harm. But somewhere in there, herbalists, midwives, and centuries of clinical observation got dismissed rather than studied.

The patients she sees have usually already done the rounds. Several specialists, clean lab work, told everything looks fine, still not well. Whole-person care asks a different question, she says. Not only how to suppress the symptom, but what the body is trying to say with it. She is not asking anyone to trade away surgery or imaging or emergency care. She is asking that we bring the same curiosity we give new technology to old knowledge, and that rigor arrive with humility.

Check out these related resources from IMA below, followed by the full video transcript.

Transcript

Dr. Adylle Varon: Hello, I’m Dr. Adylle Varon. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a licensed acupuncturist in the state of Texas, a Senior Fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance, and also the Assistant Editor in Chief of the Journal of Independent Medicine.

When we talk about returning to the roots of medicine, we’re not talking about going backward. We’re talking about remembering something we’ve forgotten. Long before hospitals, insurance companies, and electronic medical records, healing existed. Every culture developed ways of understanding the human body by observing nature, through generations of experience, and through the relationship between the mind, body, and environment.

They recognized that digestion affected energy, that stress influenced physical health, that sleep mattered, that emotions could manifest illness, and that lifestyle often determined whether someone became sick in the first place. In many ways, the ideas aren’t revolutionary. They’re timeless.

As American medicine evolved, especially through the early 20th century, there was an important push toward standardization. Medical education became more rigorous. Licensing helped protect patients from dangerous practices, and scientific advances transformed medicine in remarkable ways. We should celebrate those achievements.

But somewhere along the way, our definition of healing became narrower. Community healers, herbal traditions, midwives, and centuries of practical medical knowledge were often dismissed rather than studied. Some practices certainly deserved scrutiny, but others offered valuable insights into prevention, resilience, and caring for the whole person. Insights that we’re now beginning to rediscover.

As a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, that’s the lens I bring into healthcare every day. Traditional Chinese medicine doesn’t only ask, what’s the disease? It also asks, what is happening in this person’s body, and how has it lost its ability to adapt?

We look for patterns rather than isolated symptoms. We consider sleep, digestion, stress, pain, emotional health, circulation, nutrition, movement, and recovery as parts of the same conversation. The goal isn’t simply to remove symptoms. It’s to restore balance so the whole body can function the way it was designed to.

Acupuncture is one tool within that system. And today, we have a growing body of research supporting its role in pain management, stress regulation, sleep, nausea, recovery, and many other chronic conditions. But beyond any single treatment, traditional Chinese medicine reminds us that health is dynamic. It’s something we cultivate, not something we simply react to after a disease appears.

And importantly, it isn’t about choosing between conventional medicine and integrative medicine. It’s about recognizing that they’re each a different answer to a different question. Modern medicine excels at emergency care, surgery, advanced imaging, infectious disease, and life-saving interventions. I would never suggest replacing those incredible tools.

At the same time, whole-person approaches can often fill the gaps, helping patients manage chronic pain, improve quality of life, improve sleep, support recovery, and sometimes even prevent illness before it becomes more serious. The truth is, it isn’t either-or. It’s both.

One of the most common things I hear from patients isn’t just that they’re in pain. It’s that they often don’t feel heard. They’ve seen multiple specialists, they’ve had normal lab work, they’ve been told everything looks fine, yet they still don’t feel well.

When medicine becomes highly specialized, each organ system can be evaluated separately, while the person sitting in front of us becomes more fragmented. Whole-person care asks a different question. Instead of asking only, how do we suppress the symptom? We also ask, what is the body trying to tell us? Sometimes the symptom isn’t the problem. It’s the message. That shift in perspective often changes the entire conversation between practitioners and patients.

As we look toward the future of healthcare, I believe we need both scientific rigor and intellectual humility. We should be willing to study ancient healing traditions with the same curiosity we bring to new technologies. Not every traditional practice will withstand scientific evaluation, and that’s okay. But neither should we dismiss generations of clinical observation simply because they originated outside modern institutions.

Medicine has never been about choosing sides. It’s about using every safe, evidence-informed medical tool available to help patients heal. If we can combine the extraordinary diagnostic capabilities of modern medicine with the wisdom of whole-body healing traditions, we’ll build a healthcare system that doesn’t just manage disease. It helps people create health.

Because ultimately, to restore the roots of American medicine, we must remember that healing is not the suppression of symptoms. It’s the restoration of balance, resilience, and the whole person.

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