My practice involves holistic health, which means that I am interested in cause of symptoms including emotional/relationship issues. As most health issues revolve around diet/nutrition and cellular toxicity (not germs and bad genes), I take a complete health history and provide information on dietary problems and cellular detoxification.  My specialties involve diet and nutrition, detoxification, cancer therapy, hormonal re-regulation, and aging (the specifics of my procedures will be found in The Holistic Health Practitioner, available mid-2001, although I will share this information on-line for those interested for professional reasons).  I also conduct individual, marriage, and family therapy (the therapeutic processes are outlined in, Stress and Emotional Health, currently available).  I am also a Certified Medical Hypnotherapist using hypnosis for emotional/physical issues.  Finally, I use numerous symbolic techniques to signal cure and reintegrate individual back to group/culture.

The greatest assets were the comparative perspective, which led me to the conclusion that Western biomedicine is wrapped around a philosophy that does not promote health; participant-observation, which allowed a sense of involvement in culture rather than a sterile, hypothetical look at different healing systems; and information collecting techniques for conducting health interviews.

These skills include trust building--if the client does not trust you, he or she will not alter lifestyle, which, in most cases, is the major key to health; credible information on diet, nutrition, detoxification, and herbal remedies; different ethnic groups need different information on diet/detox, and honest attempts to utilize as many specific cultural procedures as possible (i.e. not recommending milk to most Asian-Americans, limiting salt intake with respect to African-Americans).

Again, this would be the comparative process, which shows us that cultures, for the most part, engage the same healing processes.  The content, however, changes from culture to culture.  This comparative process also shows that, in the West, we are not so much interested in health as we are in illness maintenance (there is no money in health), we treat the individual as separate from the culture, and there is no signal to cure nor is there (usually) social reintegration of the individual back to his or her culture or group (this is especially the case in clinical psychology and psychiatry).

Most medical anthropologist teach and therefore this subdiscipline seems to be mainly in an intellectual mode.  It is difficult to see any other direction.  Going into private practice would force many to re-think their theories (most cannot be applied), re-think what really goes on in healing/curing, and place themselves in direct competition with Western biomedicine--it is more comfortable to teach and intellectualize.

If anyone would like to contact me I can tell him or her exactly what is involved.  To apply medical anthropology (clinical anthropology) involves more training than you will receive at any college or university and still be an anthropologist and not an MD or psychologist.