Nature As Medicine: Mind, Body, and Soil

Debate over the evidence supporting integrative care interventions not infrequently references the challenges funding research on natural agents and practices that are not patentable. The subject of this column goes to the mother of all such interventions, nature herself. Yet in this case, the authors report an awakening of research that affirms nature's power in health and well-being. This is the eighth commentary through JACM's column partnership with the Osher Collaborative for Integrative Medicine through which we seek to stimulate critical conversations via perspectives from the leaders of the Collaborative's seven prominent academically based integrative centers. The author team came together from three of the centers: David Victorson, PhD, at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Christina Luberto, PhD, at the Harvard Medical School, and Karen Koffler, MD, at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. While providing readers an understanding of how to examine nature as medicine, they propose a "goodness of fit" between the precepts of the integrative field and the natural world.-Editor-in-Chief, John Weeks (johnweeks-integrator.com).