Founded in 1994, the Carolina Center for Integrative Medicine assists patients of all ages in regaining their health and maintaining good health throughout their lives through proactive self care, scientifically-based complementary therapies, and preventive medicine. We believe that the best medicine involves the careful integration of conventional, complementary, and alternative therapies and that this approach will lead to safer, more affordable, and more effective healthcare. We believe that the most effective health care is aimed at comprehensively addressing the unique and diverse needs of each individual.  We provide a range of biologically based, innovative treatments for chronic disease as well as self-care strategies for keeping people healthy over the long term.  As the oldest integrative medicine facility in the Triangle area, the Carolina Center combines complementary, alternative, and conventional therapies in a systematic way so as to establish a strong foundation for health and healing.

Vitamin C as Cancer Treatment:  New Research Insights

In the decade, a number of studies have indicated that intravenous (IV) vitamin C can bolster cancer treatment.  Enthusiasm for this approach emerged in the 1970s with studies by Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling showing better survival in terminally ill patients survive. Though two controlled trials found no effect of taking high-dose oral vitamin C, Pauling’s studies had also involved IV vitamin C.  Research by Dr. Mark Levine at the National Institutes of Health has indicated that IV infusions with vitamin C enable much larger amounts of the vitamin to reach tumors than is possible with the oral route.  Though vitamin C is usually regarded as an antioxidant, under these high-dose IV circumstances, it instead causes the formation of hydrogen peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent that kills cancer cells and destroys tumors. (Read more)

Inflammation and Depression: A Critical Link

Depression and other mood disorders are among the leading causes of disability, and much research suggests that low-grade systemic inflammation may contribute to the development of depression.  This insight comes on the heels of many other studies that have shown a connection between inflammation and chronic disease. (Read more)

Fighting Depression with High-Dose Fish Oil and Algae Oil

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential to our health, and it turns out that omega-3 deficiency is extremely common throughout the world.  Many studies have shown that people who are deficient are far more likely to become depressed than those who have high levels in their tissues.  The two most critical omega-3s are EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).  Dietary supplementation with omega-3s has proved to be an effective, natural treatment for clinical depression (both bipolar disorder and unipolar depression), postpartum depression, seasonal affective disorder, ADHD, and other mental health concerns. (Read more)

Stroke Linked with Gut Imbalances

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for more than 140,000 deaths per year.  Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, recently found that imbalances in gut bacteria are associated with stroke and atherosclerosis, as reported in the December 4, 2012 issue of Nature Communications.

Your body contains about ten times more bacterial cells than human cells, most of these bacteria are found in the intestines. These gut bacteria contain an immense number of genes in addition to our host genome.  The Swedish research team compared a group of stroke patients with a group of healthy people and found substantial differences in their gut bacteria. (Read more)

Heart Failure:  New Hope from Coenzyme Q10

Nearly 5 million adults in the United States are living with congestive heart failure, or CHF, and about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. This condition, which occurs when the heart fails to pump in an efficient manner, is assessed by measuring ejection fraction, the fraction of blood pumped out of heart's ventricles each time it contracts.  A new meta-analysis indicates that supplementing with coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is associated with an improvement in ejection fraction in men and women with congestive heart failure, as reported December 5, 2012 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  (Read more)

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Past In the News....

IV Vitamin C May Counter Aggressive Cancer 

Survival after a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is among the shortest of all cancers, and thus innovative treatment approaches are urgently needed.  The majority of patients already have metastases at the time of diagnosis, and most cases progress quickly even with standard treatment of Gemzar alone or Gemzar plus Tarceva (generic names, gemcitabine and erlotinib, respectively).

Intravenous (IV) vitamin C can produce blood levels of the vitamin that are several hundred times higher than those achievable with the highest oral doses.  These peak blood levels have been shown to block tumor growth,.....Read More

Low-Dose IV Vitamin C Improves Energy in Office Workers

One of the common benefits of IV vitamin C that we see here at the Carolina Center is an increase in energy.  A number of studies out of Japan and Europe have demonstrated that high-dose vitamin C helps alleviate fatigue and muscle pain, and overall quality of life improves following the treatment.   However, these studies were all done with people who had serious illness, such as a diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 147 office workers, half were randomly assigned to the IV vitamin C (10 grams) and half received the placebo (normal saline solution.  Those who received the single IV vitamin C treatment showed a significant reduction in fatigue two hours after receiving vitamin C, and the effect persisted one day after the intervention......Read More

High-Dose Vitamin C Effective Against Herpes Infections

Back in the 1970s, two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling touted vitamin C as a possible cure for the common cold.  Since then, many studies have demonstrated that vitamin C has favorable effects on the immune system and various viral infections.  We also know that vitamin C is depleted by viral infections, and that the deficiency seems to play a key role in the aggressiveness of these infections....Read More