Iris Bell

Iris Bell, MD PhD has been a researcher in areas related to complementary and alternative medicine for most of the past 30 years. She graduated magna cum laude in biology from Harvard University and then received her PhD in Neuro- and Biobehavioral Sciences (studying diet and sleep) and MD from Stanford University. Her psychiatry internship and residency were at the University of California – San Francisco, and she is Board certified in Psychiatry with Added Qualification in Geriatric Psychiatry. She is licensed to practice conventional medicine in Arizona and California. She is also nationally certified in biofeedback, a fellow of the American College of Nutrition, and a licensed physician in homeopathy/alternative medicine in Arizona. She has served on the faculties at Harvard Medical School, University of California – San Francisco, and the University of Arizona.

She has published over 100 papers and a dozen book chapters on her clinical research in these areas. Her current research focuses on the relationship between complex systems and network science and philosophical bases of leading complementary and alternative medicine systems of care. She was chosen as one of the Best Doctors in the Pacific region of the US in 1996 and in the US in 1998. She is now a full-time researcher, writer, educator, and consultant.

She has also been a patient since her late teens, experiencing chronic health challenges that have ranged from migraine headaches to Type I diabetes mellitus and arthritis over the years. She has seen and experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly from both conventional and CAM treatments. For her tools as a patient, she has used an insulin pump, occasional other conventional medications, vitamin and mineral supplements, guided imagery, journaling, classical homeopathy, five-element acupuncture, osteopathy, naturopathy, Trager massage, subtle energy healing, and chiropractic.

At various times, treatments from both worlds have been helpful, and both have been harmful to her. Some practitioners from both conventional and CAM worlds have been supportive healers at critical points along the way, and some have been insensitive and out of touch. Some tools have given her a major boost, others some benefit, and still others no help or even temporary setbacks.

Her work is to do research and to teach people who find themselves with a chronic disease and are at the start of their own difficult journey home to themselves and to better health. This is a learning experience for us all.

Her current ebook on the big picture of healing as a system using whole systems of care is "Getting Whole, Getting Well," available at http://www.gettingwhole.com. Her multimedia program is "Mapping Your Own Treatment Plan for Arthritis with Levels of Care," available at http://www.arthritiscaremap.com.