Skip to Content
Exciting News! Our new location is at 3729 E Nance Circle, Mesa, AZ. Call us with any questions!
Call Today For a Free Consultation 480-418-0220
Top
Flair
What Is Health? Alternative Treatment Options Aimed at Treating Your Specific Needs
Flair

What Is Health?

Answers from Our Scottsdale Integrative Medical Center

A Personal Message from Dr. Martha Grout:

When we are 20, we tend to think that we are either healthy or sick - nothing in between. It's black or white. By age 40 we have come to realize that often sickness is a slow descent away from health. Symptoms develop - heartburn, bloating, diarrhea, joint pain, miscarriage, memory fog, slower reflexes, lack of energy. Tests are run, we are told that everything is fine, and perhaps the suggestion is even made that the symptoms are imagined.

One day, something breaks down, we develop undeniable symptoms, and the dysfunction is now measurable in the physical body. Our symptoms are no longer "functional." They are now called "physical" and can be measured to some degree using the tools of allopathic medicine. We see a doctor who puts a label on it, and we now have a diagnosis which our insurance company can comprehend. We typically go home with a prescription for a drug which suppresses the symptoms, or with a date for surgery to cut out the offending body part.

There are times when symptom suppression or surgery is necessary. There are many more times however, that it is not. Prescription drugs have side effects. Surgeries remove body parts that Mother Nature intended us to have. This is where the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine can help you.*

Call (480) 418-0220 to reach a doctor from our integrative medical center in Scottsdale.

My History Treating Patients

In the 1990s, I was working as a doctor in the emergency department of a fairly large hospital in Sarasota, Florida. The people coming to the emergency room had just about every problem one can imagine. At one point, I had a succession of patients with lower back pain. The family practice doctors on call were not excited about seeing these patients, because they tend to be very needy, so I began to refer them to a neuromuscular massage therapist because that therapy really does help back pain.

One day, I was called by the hospital administrator and the Director of the Emergency Department and informed that I was not to refer outside the list of doctors on call, and specifically not to refer outside the bounds of traditional allopathic medicine. Apparently the family practice doctors had complained that they were losing business. I resigned from that position the next day, because I could not justify a medical career based on those rules.

"We believe that treating the whole patient - body, mind, and spirit - is the most authentic path to health." 
- Dr. Martha M. Grout

Our Revolutionary Perspective

American mainstream medicine is wonderful in acute emergency situations, but for chronic diseases brought on by genetics, diet and lifestyle, allopathic medicine is not much help. I do not see that pharmaceutical medicine helps people heal from chronic illness.

Arizona is one of a small handful of states that allows an MD to take advanced studies and become licensed as a medical doctor of homeopathy. In 1996, I passed the Homeopathic Board examination, and was granted an MD(H) license in addition to my MD license.

Homeopathic medicine embraces standard allopathic medicine, yet goes beyond. It is a form of medical care which is holistic, scientifically based, safe, effective and comparatively inexpensive. Homeopathic physicians are regulated by the Arizona Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners, one of only three such homeopathic medical boards in the country.

Finding a Different Approach to Healing

When the physical body becomes ill, it is clear organs are dysfunctional. Kidney failure for example comes with a high blood urea nitrogen and creatinine, and usually has protein in the urine. Before there is overt kidney failure, allopathic medicine may recognize blood and/or protein in the urine, but does not offer anything in the way of mitigation. The usual course is "watchful waiting." Translation: "Wait a while until your kidneys fail, then we can give you steroids to decrease the damage."

A homeopathic physician gets involved with the organ systems long before they begin to fail, while there is simply dysfunction. A homeopathic physician knows that fatigue, muscle pain, knee or hip pain, headaches, inflamed gums, palpitations, heartburn, brain fog, mental confusion, etc., are the body's way of saying an organ is in trouble.

For "functional" problems such as these, allopathic medicine has no answer. Patients are often dismissed, left to wander from one doctor's office to another, hoping someone can connect the dots.

The prescription pad is much too commonplace in American medicine today. Patients are in and out of a doctor's office in eight minutes. This fuels the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, but it does little to restore health to the human body.

I am not opposed to pharmaceuticals when necessary, but I know that diagnosing and treating the cause of dysfunction is much more effective than simply treating the symptoms. My initial consultation lasts almost 2 hours.

Contact me at the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine, a Scottsdale integrative medical center.

How I Can Help You Recover

Often, the people who come to me are those who have been to many doctors' offices and have not yet given up hope that someone will want to do more than "manage their disease." They are mothers who don't want to simply drug their hyperactive child. They are people tired of living with allergies who don't want to take monthly shots. They have irritable bowel syndrome and are tired of taking pills and not feeling any better. They are approaching age 40 or 50, and beginning to feel that everything is falling apart. They are adults who can't find anyone to fix what's wrong with them.

In short, they are the walking wounded.

In my clinic I treat with orthomolecular substances like IV infusions of vitamins, minerals, and other substances to give the body what it needs to repair itself. Some dysfunctions can be treated with acupuncture, which will restore energetic balance and health to the body and the mind. Some dysfunctions due to retention of viral particles may require significant detoxification, and I guide patients through that. Some dysfunctions due to embedded heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic or cadmium, may require detoxification with chelating agents. Some dysfunctions are ideally treated by classical homeopathy. Others are better treated by means of electrodermal testing and complex homotoxicology. Still other dysfunctions require body work, massage therapy, spinal manipulation, or cranio-sacral manipulation.

Addressing Every Aspect of Health

The brain and the body have a substantial influence with each other. We find that in many cases treating the brain and body helps the systems recover faster than treating either system separately. Children with any sort of developmental delays are especially aided by neurodevelopment techniques, along with head trauma patients with so-called "minimal brain dysfunction," who have no physical sign of injury, yet whose lives have been completely changed by their head injury.

In our quest to continually provide the best holistic approaches to reversing chronic disease, we continually add to our services. I like to look out to the horizon for new and more effective ways to solve health issues.

Because nutrition is so fundamental to health, we developed an easy program called FirstLine Therapy to empower you to take control of your diet. We give you educational materials and work one-on-one so you can make real changes that benefit you - and your family - for a lifetime.

Our Work at the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine

In 2007, we began to custom make preservative-free allergy remedies because there is nowhere else in the Southwest where this can be done. This is particularly important for those with chemical sensitivities.

Different people respond to different forms of healing. Let's take a person with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) for example. There is a direct pathway from the nose into the central part of the "old" animal brain, or limbic system, which is involved in governing sleep, mood, eating, aggression, and other very basic survival behaviors. In MCS, the nerve tissue is over-sensitized. The autonomic system kicks into overdrive, upsets the balance of the brain's limbic system, and the person becomes anxious - goes into a flight or fight state. Some people with MCS are helped with chelation and colonics to detoxify, some are helped by hypnosis, some with homeopathic remedies, and others respond best to energetic medicine.

Health is the body's normal balanced state; yet it can be very hard to maintain in a stressful world increasingly drenched in pollutions, pesticides, plastics, not to mention what we eat, such as:

  • Genetically modified food
  • Aspartame
  • Fluoride
  • Hydrogenated oils

A Patient & Practitioner Partnership

How to prevent disease, how to recognize the signs, and turn around an illness - that is the kind of medicine I have come to practice. Health is not the absence of disease. Health is not attained through chemicals. Health can be restored through a variety of modalities of green medicine, meaning cost effective, natural, environmentally friendly, and easy on the body. The goal is to recover the body's own functional reserves, so that healing mechanisms can function as they are intended to function, naturally.

When we take our first steps into medicine, we look just at the symptom and often take a drug to suppress that symptom. That is allopathic medicine. Then we take the next step and trade our prescriptions for more natural supplements. At the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine, we have gone beyond merely applying the allopathic approach to alternative, homeopathic medicine. It is exciting to seek out others to bring new areas of understanding and expression to the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine.

According to Dr. Grout:

"Everything we do has a solid, scientific basis, although it may not be science that every allopathic physician recognizes as yet. It may be metabolic biochemistry, may be physics, quantum entanglements, the configuration of water, or it may be looking at the way our minds and thoughts affect our body's water structure, and hence everything we do."

Welcome to the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine where your health is our commitment.

*Disclaimer: There is no guarantee of successes for any given medical treatment. Each individual is unique and may respond differently to our medical services, meaning results may vary for each person.

Call (480) 418-0220 today to get in touch with our Scottsdale integrative medical center.

Flair

Our Patients Say It Best

  • “I had a second chance in life after meeting Dr. Grout.” J.B.
  • “Dr. Grout is compassionate, empathetic, responsive, and the best doctor I have had the privilege to care for me.” Anita, PhD, RN, NP
  • “If you are ever wondering about the state of your health and wanting answers to why you are having the problems you are having, then seeing an Integrative Health specialist is essential.” Anita