When Allen C. Bowling, MD ’88, PhD ’88, returned to his native Colorado 20 years ago to treat people with multiple sclerosis, he thought he was well prepared. After earning a medical degree and a doctorate in pharmacology at Yale, he completed his residency in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco and spent three years as a research fellow at Harvard.
“I thought, ‘Wow! I have a fantastic toolbox to perform clinical practice at a high level. » However, Bowling was quick to recognize gaps in his knowledge. “There is so much I don’t know, so much I haven’t learned, in over a decade of training.”
This awareness was born from the nature of multiple sclerosis (MS): this disease of the central nervous system is incurable and unpredictable and causes a multitude of symptoms. Although his patients generally took conventional MS medications, Bowling found that most of them were interested in how lifestyle issues, such as diet and exercise, affected the disease. . More than half pursued strategies one wouldn’t have dreamed of in the medical school curriculum: reflexology, removing dental fillings, marijuana, magnets, pressurized oxygen, and prayer. However, at that time there was no reliable source of Member State-specific information in these areas.
“I realized that the quality of MS care could be improved by providing objective information about the safety and effectiveness of these lifestyle and unconventional approaches to people with MS as well as healthcare professionals. health.
“My patients were immersed in these therapies that were clearly important to them, whether there was evidence that they worked or not.” Even doctors and scientists who were patients were using unconventional therapies and were interested in lifestyle approaches, said Bowling, who runs an MS practice affiliated with the Colorado Neurological Institute and is a clinical professor of neurology at the University of Colorado.
Bowling set out to evaluate these unconventional and lifestyle strategies. His approach is to critically review articles on a lifestyle or alternative medicine topic and distill them into a form that is friendly to clinicians and people with MS, he said.
The result is Optimal health with multiple sclerosis: a guide to integrating lifestyles, alternative and conventional medicines. For each of the main manifestations of MS, the book briefly describes potential therapies and lifestyle modifications. Under “walking problems,” Bowling mentions standard medications, then lists 10 other “potentially effective lifestyle and unconventional therapies,” including cooling, tai chi and therapeutic horseback riding. Much of the book is devoted to Bowling’s elaboration on 49 approaches ranging from acupuncture to yoga. For each, Bowling discusses effectiveness, possible interactions with standard care, dangers, and side effects. He cites studies and recommends further reading. Lifestyle, alternative and conventional medicine strategies are integrated into a seven-step approach that can be easily followed by patients and professionals.
“I encourage my patients to explore things and extract what is helpful to them,” Bowling said. He has tried much of what his patients are looking for, both to understand their patients’ experiences and for his own well-being.
For example, he now eats a weekday vegetarian diet and has worked to understand his psychological makeup, aided by “a few decades of free home psychotherapy” courtesy of his psychologist wife, Diana S. Bowling, Ph.D.
Bowling provides information on lifestyle and unconventional therapies on its website, neurologycare.net/CAM
