Hugo's Ten Integrative Health Principles

  1. Integration means that no one modality is placed ahead of another.
  2. Emphasizing prevention, nutrition, holistic principles, environmental/public health issues, massage, acupuncture and the mind/body/spirit connection is more conducive to addressing the causes of diseases.
  3. Pharmaceuticals and surgery are helpful, too, but overused. They treat the symptoms, not the causes of diseases, with many side effects.
  4. An illness is an imbalance of the whole person, not an isolated event.
  5. Patients are to be empowered to heal themselves. The greatest healing force is the patient-healer relationship: the unconditional power of love.
  6. Healers teach best by example.
  7. Illness and suffering are powerful teachers.
  8. The humanities, literature, history, etc are tools of healing and understanding.
  9. "Medicine is a social science and politics nothing but medicine in a larger scale. Physicians are the attorneys for the poor." Virchow.
  10. "Food is the best medicine." Hippocrates and Sir William Osler, M.D.