Manakai o Malama Integrative Healthcare Group and Rehabilitation Center, now nearly 15 years old, is dedicated to bringing together the best of modern medicine and traditional healing arts in a partnership for health. The recent award of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was given to a researcher for her scientific evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine and the discovery of a new cure for malaria. The acknowledgement of Youyou Tu’s accomplishments at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences beginning in 1965 is also a watershed moment for my own life’s work, the field of clinical integrative medicine.

Using the plant Artemisinin, she developed a novel cure for malaria, which is an especially groundbreaking development given both the increasing prevalence of drug-resistant cases and the real and present danger of the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses due to the changing weather patterns that result from climate change.

Artemisinin annua, or sweet wormwood, has an illustrious past. For millennia its close relative, Artemisinin vulgaris, has been used in the Chinese therapy of moxibustion — when burned like incense, it heats acupuncture needles and stimulates certain points during treatment. Artemisinin absinthium, another close relative, was imbibed as an intoxicant by many famous Parisian artists and writers and was integral to the bohemian culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The psychoactive plant has been associated with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Charles Baudelaire, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley.

Fully 40 percent of modern pharmaceuticals have origins in the plant world. Oddly enough, another mainstay for the treatment of malaria for centuries has been quinine, derived from the cinchona tree. Originally used by the Quechua people of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador for this purpose, in the mid-17th century, Jesuit monks learned of its value and made it known to Europeans. Other key examples of plants used for prescription drugs include foxtail (digitalis for cardiac arrhythmia), willow bark (aspirin properties) and Catharanthus roseus (vinblastine and vincristine for cancer treatment).

This is perhaps the biggest moment for traditional Chinese medicine since 1972, when President Richard Nixon traveled to China to negotiate detente and successfully changed the course of the Cold War. Just prior to that visit, American journalist James Reston also visited China and, while there, came down with appendicitis. His postoperative pain was treated successfully with acupuncture. The article he wrote for The New York Times describing his experience triggered a sea change in American health care by opening the door to traditional Chinese medicine.

It is essential to respect traditional systems of medicine found in China, Tibet, India, Iran, in the Americas and, of course, in Hawaii as cogent approaches to health care steeped within their respective cultures. To subject the health effect of an acupuncture point or a specific molecule found in an herb is, in some ways, like trying to understand the meaning of a single word taken out of context from a book. There is great benefit in the heritage of reductionist specificity handed to us from the scientific revolution, but because of its very nature, so much is also missed.

A typical Chinese medicine preparation will have roughly a dozen herbs. In contrast, a typical Tibetan medicine preparation will have as many as 40 agents. The plants in the preparation are thought to work together like a family, or actually an army. Traditional systems of medicine also aim to achieve health through balance while taking into consideration a patient’s character, constitution, diet and lifestyle.

The recent Nobel Prize is a well-deserved acknowledgement of traditional Chinese medicine and its ability to contribute to the modern pharmacopeia. More important, it is a seminal event that will open the door to the vast and rich benefits of traditional cultural systems of health care throughout the globe. Through this open door will come not only basic scientific discoveries, but also the great wisdom and profound benefit of collaborative, whole-person, integrative medicine built upon the spirit of partnership in health.

Ira “Kawika” Zunin, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., is a practicing physician. He is medical director of Manakai o Malama Integrative Healthcare Group and Rehabilitation Center and CEO of Global Advisory Services Inc. Please submit questions to info@manakaiomalama.com.