Foundations for Integrative Musculoskeletal Medicine: An East-West Approach

"A lot of people give lip service to the idea of "integrative medicine" but few actually understand the term or practice it. Alon Marcus's book is truly exemplary. I have taken several classes with Dr. Marcus and his knowledge and clinical experience are vast. This is not a `cookbook' treatment manual. This is an incredible text which allows one to look at muscularskeletal dysfunction from many different angles and allows one to explore different treatment strategies from modalities.

If you really want to broaden your knowledge, challenge and sharpen your diagnostic skills, and increase your clinical toolbox tenfold explore this book.

Warning, this is not a layman's text. It is really dense and packed with material. It is not a book you will read straight through but continually refer back to as a reference and advisor and as a reminder of how much more there always is to learn. If you have been working in namely one discipline, (like Traditional Chinese Medicine) you will develop a whole new vocabulary, learning about what we do in Western terms and to Western practitioners a lot of the `poetry' of chinese medicine will be demystified. This book definitely encourages the practitioner to step outside of his/her box.

everything from Tung-style acupuncture to orthotics, prolotherapy to Japanese acupuncture, pharmacology to herbalism, trigger point needling to osteopathic assessment.

there is not another book like this."
~ Written on 2007-07-23

"This is a comprehensive yet clinically accessible text. It welcomes readers with differing backgrounds to come aboard and comfortably absorb new vistas presented without ever taking them too far from their own medical perspectives. It covers Oriental Medicine in its entirety (acupuncture and related techniques, herbal medicine, and body work), Cyriax style Orthopaedic medicine, Osteopathic manual medicine, electrotheraputics, rehabilitation and orthosis therapy. It builds upon fundamental concepts as well as summarizes and encapsulates extensive information. In short this is both a comprehensive text and a clinical manual that every reader regardless of training would find informative
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~ Written on 2005-02-25

"From book Foreward

This book provides healthcare practitioners a balanced text that comprehensively covers the topic of musculoskeletal medicine. In this text East meets west, orthodox meets alternative and somatic meets visceral in a clinically useful text. The book is much more than a how-to-manual by offering insights built upon foundational concepts. It provides a vehicle to transport medical understanding beyond common boundaries and to introduce key concepts about the impact of the musculoskeletal system in diagnosis and treatment in a user-friendly fashion. Clinicians will appreciate the even-handed overview of several healthcare systems and immense clinical utility of the text. While the text draws upon an eclectic range of ideas, it does so while remaining true to Chinese, osteopathic, and orthopaedic Medicine principles.
In Short, with this text Alon Marcus has made a major contribution to the healthcare field. He has deftly blended many of the best concepts and approaches offered by oriental, orthopaedic, and osteopathic medical practitioners into a vision of understanding the whole patient through the clues provided. The author doesn't promise nor force a single "integrative musculoskeletal medicine" approach upon us; instead, he delivers an excellent foundation to improve how we choose to practice. I this manner I have become a better clinician and a better member of the healthcare community, What more can one ask from a text?

Michael L. Kuchera, D.O., F.A.A.O.



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~ Written on 2005-02-20