Quest Network Blue Zones - Greg Plotnikoff, Quest Medical Officer

Blue Zones - Quest for the true fountain of youth

Greg Plotnikoff, Quest Medical Officer

Greetings from Okinawa. My name is Greg Plotnikoff and I serve as the Medical Advisor for this Quest Project. I am an associate professor of both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. My professional background includes both clinical practice as well as research in nutrition, herbal medicine (both traditional Japanese and Western) and spirituality.

My educational background includes a focus on Science, Technology and Public Policy at Carleton College, social and political philosophy, medical ethics and pastoral care at Harvard Divinity School and Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

At the end of my residency training, I declined a fellowship in adult and pediatric nephrology. Instead, I intentionally chose to work at a busy inner-city clinic where at least 14 languages are spoken. There I encountered significant and sometimes overwhelming challenges that called upon my academic training in cultures, faith and cognition as well as my practical training as a chaplain. Despite working alongside very competent translators, profound communication barriers still existed due to untranslatable concepts and widely divergent cognitive styles. These challenging barriers stimulated and focused my research in cross-cultural medicine.

To better understand, I began my study of the Hmong, Lao, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and later, Somalian languages. At one word or phrase per language per day per interpreter, I was eventually conversant enough to ease people's fears, better understand the meaning of the pre-translated statements, and recognize the cognitive structures of the language spoken - including the predominant metaphors. For example, in Hmong, the liver, as opposed to the heart, is the metaphoric base for all emotional states, and is the seat of one of the souls. Such knowledge, which I term concept competence, is crucial for culturally competent care.

In my role as medical director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing, I prioritized the important clinical questions I had encountered in my work and developed the research teams to respond to them. We secured funding for research on natural product therapies (medicinal mushroom, herbal and dietary supplements) and culturally based therapies (shamanism, herbalism and spirituality). Additionally, I oversaw the successful effort to define complementary, spiritual and cross-cultural competencies, create the necessary courses and curricular materials, and integrate these within the medical school. The results have received national and even international attention, and are included in the curriculum of many medical schools and universities.

Now I am the first American physician ever invited to apprentice in Kampo, the ancient Japanese diagnostic and herbal medicine tradition. In this capacity, I have served as a visiting professor at Keio University Medical School in Tokyo, Japan since July of 2002, first as a Bush Foundation Leadership Program Fellow (2002-4), and later as the first Keio University International Kampo Medicine Fellow (2004-5). The United States-Japan Foundation Leadership Program has also named me a fellow (2002-4). My objective has been to learn Kampo from both a clinical and research perspective. (This has required that I also learn Japanese which has limited the pace of my project.)

Although Kampo is amenable to scientific research, has significant scientific support, and represents widely prescribed low-cost, low-toxicity therapeutics, it is largely unknown in the West. Western conceptual barriers block both recognition and understanding of its fundamental principles.

To help bridge this gap and advance the scientific basis of Kampo, in 2004 I sought and received United States Food and Drug Administration Investigational New Drug approval for an 1800 year old, non-estrogenic, five herb formula for menopausal hot flash management. Although this is a leading prescription agent in Japan, it is unknown in the United States. I will be the principle investigator of a phase II clinical trial with 180 subjects that will begin in late October of 2004 at the University of Minnesota (NIH and Tsumura and Company funding).

Through all these experiences, I have learned much and I believe that I have much to share. To expand my capacity to do so, I have joined the Quest. I look forward to working with you!

Dr. Greg Plotnikoff

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