La Jolla doctor shares holistic medicine views with local women – Monterey Herald

When a pregnant patient comes to Dr. Mimi Guarneri complaining of nausea, the doctor may prescribe acupuncture rather than a pill. Guarneri integrates many global healing traditions into Western medicine, including yoga, meditation, acupressure and traditional Chinese botanicals. She believes these practices and other small lifestyle changes can improve health and help prevent disease.

Guarneri, the founder and medical director of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, was in Pebble Beach today to speak at the annual Women”s Forum for Health Luncheon. Hosted by the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula, the forum highlights women”s and family health to benefit the community, said Jennifer Wood, senior development officer for the hospital.

“She has all kinds of very practical tips on ways to stay healthy,” Wood said on inviting Guarneri to speak. “We just thought that tied in perfectly. We”re trying to focus on people maintaining their health.”

One such example is the Peninsula Wellness Center that the hospital opened in Marina in May to promote health and activity. Wood said the forum and the fitness center have a message for keeping people out of the hospital: “Stay well instead of getting sick and trying to change your lifestyle after that.”

Guarneri, a cardiologist who graduated from SUNY Medical Center in New York, believes American health care focuses too much on fixing people only after their health goes awry. “The paradigm shift we need to have is one that focuses on prevention, on empowering people to stay healthy,” she said in an interview.

To address this, Guarneri draws on her certification in holistic medicine, a practice that examines the whole person, not just the physical body. She said she observes in her patients, “How are they physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? How are they within the community, within the world?”

Once Guarneri understands the many aspects of her patients” lives, she issues simple, straightforward instructions for improving health, such as switching from whole milk to fat free, or from white rice to brown. Some recommendations may seem familiar to patients, such as getting daily physical activity and cutting alcohol consumption in half. Others may seem more foreign, like daily meditation.

Guarneri said meditation can be as simple as focusing on the breath to still the mind. She said a number of studies have shown that meditation can lower blood pressure and insulin levels, relieve pain and anxiety, and help people sleep at night. “There”s lots of research, so much so that I now say meditation is medicine,” she said. “It”s as strong as any medication I can give.”

Each patient will connect with different practices on their own path to healing, Guarneri said. The key is making the time to do them by setting health as a priority. Her mantra for even the most time-strapped among us: “Don”t let the urgent get in the way of the important.”

For more on this story, go to Thursday”s Herald.