Abstract

Health professionals and public are increasingly using the term integrative medicine to refer to the merging of complementary and alternative medicine(CAM) with conventional medicine. Integrative medicine represents a hihger order system of care that emphasizes wellness and healing of the entire person (bio-psycho-socio-spiritual) as primary goal. How we live our lives clearly affects our health and disease. Lifestyle medicine which represents lifestyle practices and prevention is central to this approach. Lifestyle practices include spiritualty and medicine, mind-body medicine, nutritional medicine and physical activity. Stress is the core issue in mind-body medicine.

• Keywords: integative medicine, CAM, lifestyle, stress, spirituality, mind-body.