The Future of Healthcare in the United States: How an Integrative Medical Approach using Yoga as a Complementary Medicine in Addition to Conventional Medical Practices Can Revolutionize Hypertension Treatments

Conventional, complementary and alternative, and integrative medicines all capitalize on different aspects in treating their patients. While each has their own benefits, integrative medicine is the only one to place the patient in charge of deciding their treatment plan and the only one to combine different elements of the others into patient care. Because of this, integrative medicine blends well with yoga, which is a practice that is innately open to anything that may benefit the practitioner’s body, mind, and spirit, which often is not only doing traditional yogic exercises, but also sometimes seeking out conventional medical care. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a multifaceted condition that is characterized by having a blood pressure at or above 130/80 mmHg (CDC, 2020). Due to its complexity, hypertension is difficult to treat with the unidirectional treatment plans provided by conventional medicine. However, an integrative medical approach that uses both complementary medicine in the form of yoga as well as conventional medicine practices treats hypertension from multiple directions, making it the most effective form of hypertension treatment.