This summer, Dr. Gannage gave 10 presentations to physicians aboard a cruise ship on the Mediterranean Sea. Over the course of 10 days, he presented his comprehensive program on Integrative Medicine for Children’s Mental Health to a group of conventional physicians. The doctors learned about and saw evidence for the many roles played by diet and nutrition, the gut, environmental factors, oxidative stress, methylation, and mitochondrial dysfunction in children’s mental health conditions, autism, ADD and ADHD, as well as in chronic disease and health as a whole.

Below are scenes and observations from the journey. 

What the Cruise experience reminded me of is the extent to which some have a hard time accepting “new truths”. They may do so on their own time.  Or, they may never. 

For physicians, many of whom have been indoctrinated into a certain mindset, acceptance depends not only only on the strength of the argument or evidence, which the 10 Integrative Medicine presentations provided to a high degree. 

It also is based upon whether highly skilled and educated individuals can remove filters and  break free into an open mind (and therefore hear the evidence to begin with), and recognize what their incomplete and perhaps flawed existing viewpoint is costing them, and their patients.   Can they question the paradigm and information that’s been rammed down their throats, or subtly/insidiously repeated, from various sources during the course of a career in medicine?   A few wouldn’t “listen”, simply couldn’t get to the point of listening.  Many were, thankfully.

Much of the informal discussion, let alone lectures – at breakfast, at dinner, on the decks, etc. – afforded an opportunity to provide clarification and non-threatening discussion, and during the discourse maybe pry open a mind further.  🙂  

I am grateful for the many MDs that privately spoke of the value of, and the unanimous written support for,  what they heard.  They were those that  wanted more info about how their patients can access Integrative Medicine services, and more training for themselves. Mission accomplished! … More work to do.