"The Doctor Is In" Seattle Sets National Pace in Alternative Medicine

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Feb, 2001 by Lily G. Casura

It's a defining moment for me in what makes Seattle, Seattle. One wintry afternoon recently, I'm rooting around in my kitchen, deep in the throes of carbo-loading for my light-deprived, Seasonal Affective Disorder, moaning that I ever moved here from Boston in the first place. I'm starving, and it's complicated by the fact I've apparently got to find something quick and portable to eat with one hand, because I've got a cordless phone glued to my ear with the other one, listening in rapt amazement to the man on the other end of the line.

My caller is just warming to his subject, natural medicine, a topic of great interest to us both. As he discourses with energy and enthusiasm about this somewhat esoteric subject at a depth few people can muster and a passion I've rarely heard even among doctors, I pause to reflect on who's actually on the other end of the line.

It's not some fringe loonie I met at the Folklife Festival, who sees in anything natural the salvation of the world. It's not a helpful clerk at Puget Consumers' Co-op, calling me back to talk about a supplements order. It's not one of the dozens of practitioners I know in the area, nor even the head of the world-renowned school of naturopathy nearby.

At times I can hardly hear him, as the static on the line sporadically breaks up our call -- but the speaker on the other end of the phone is none other than Kent Pullen, King County Councilman and natural medicine proponent extraordinaire -- and he's on his car phone, on the way to a meeting. Only in Seattle, I sigh, with grudging admiration for the place, despite the crappy weather.

When Natural Health magazine recently called Seattle "hands down America's healthiest city," for its preponderance of alternative health-minded physicians and consumers alike, the award didn't come as much of a surprise to many who have watched the trend develop over the years.

Where does the current revolution in natural health come from, and how did Seattle turn out to be its epicenter?

Is it all due to the power and influence of a single person, like Kent Pullen, to whom the country's first publicly-funded natural medicine clinic, in King County, owes its existence? Or is the influence larger than that?

You might be shocked -- it's safe to say I was -- by some of the answers I got to this question. While one prominent MD on the East Coast (we'll save his reputation by leaving him anonymous), had no problem taking credit, however off-site, for the whole thing. "I don't know who's leading the revolution, except me!" he trumpeted. But even outside the bounds of his self-esteem, it was hard to find who to credit.

Ironically, if you ask the naturopaths, they're likely to believe it was their doing. If you ask the supplement vendors who we have to thank, they'll say they had a hand in it. Is it the doctors? Not all of them are even on board; and some think it's outright hocus-pocus. Is it the media? They're just catching the buzz. How about the patients, whether the ones who fled from conventional medicine from a bad experience, or embraced the alternatives, on their own? They'd be the first to doubt it was their doing -- they're so powerless, they reason, they're still paying for this stuff out of pocket. But how do you explain Seattle's place in the movement for natural medicine; and what does this phenomenon predict for the future of healthcare, nationwide?

Says Carl Jelstrup, a Norwegian who practices chiropractic in Bellevue and travels frequently back and forth to Scandinavia, "One of the reasons I continue to stay in the Northwest is that it seems to be on the cutting edge, not only in America, but also in the rest of world as a whole, when it comes to natural medicine. I love Europe, but there's nothing like Seattle. There's an awareness here about natural medicine among the general public that just keeps amazing me."

The Seattle area seems to be Ground Zero when it comes to natural medicine, an increasingly popular phenomenon among doctors and patients alike. It's home to, among others, Bastyr, a world-renowned naturopathic college, the first publicly-funded natural medicine clinic in the country, national headquarters of both naturopathic and homeopathic medicine organizations, several acupuncture and massage schools, and umpteen practitioners of national and even international renown.

Adds Jelstrup, "I think we have more knowledge within five square miles of the Seattle/Bellevue area than anywhere else I can think of in the world. There are so many people here with such a deep sense of knowledge about healthcare, and such dedication, too, to the principle that, if given the chance, the human body is capable of correcting what's going on with it. All these wonderful people are smack-dab in my backyard! No wonder I've never left!"

Consumer health activist Merrily Manthey, MS, author of the Natural Medicine Handbook for People Over 50, and a driving force behind the Kent Natural Medicine Clinic, has spent years talking with people all over America about their interest in natural medicine. In October of 2000, she met with James Gordon, MD, and others from the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (WHCCAMP) while they were in Seattle. Repeatedly, she said, members of that Commission told her that they "never, ever expected to experience in any other part of the country what they experienced here." "We've broken the four minute mile here in Seattle," she says, and it's set the standard for the rest of the country.