A recent article in LILIPOH magazine, “Technology in Service of Life,” by integrative veterinarian Jyl Rubin, DVM, caught my attention because of two simple observations: “Healing rarely arises from a single modality,” and, later, “Technology did not override nature. It amplified it.” Both ideas get at something I think integrative medicine does especially well when practiced thoughtfully.
Rubin describes a dog with a recurrent mammary mass that had already been treated with surgery and chemotherapy. As the animal’s vitality declined, her team added a number of complementary therapies, including medical ozone, ultraviolet blood irradiation, mistletoe, hyperthermia, dietary modification, and herbal support. Over time, the mass regressed and the dog’s energy and engagement returned. Rubin appropriately stops short of attributing the result to any single therapy because, of course, there is no way to know which intervention mattered most.
That limitation is also the point. Healing rarely arises from a single modality.
We readily accept multimodal treatment in conventional oncology. Surgery may be followed by chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, hormone therapy, or some combination thereof. Cancer is complicated, so treatment is complicated. Yet complementary medicine is sometimes judged by a different standard, as though one therapy must prove itself in isolation before the larger terrain of nutrition, metabolism, immune function, stress physiology, sleep, movement, and emotional well-being can be considered meaningful.
Good integrative medicine does not require us to abandon conventional treatment. It asks whether we can expand the therapeutic landscape around it.
Rubin’s second observation is even more interesting to me: technology did not override nature; it amplified it. Modern medicine often works by forcefully intervening in biology—removing a tumor, blocking a receptor, suppressing inflammation, or killing malignant cells. These interventions can be lifesaving. But biology also responds to signals, including carefully measured forms of stress.
Exercise damages muscle fibers so they rebuild stronger. Heat, cold, fasting, and many plant compounds create mild physiological stress that can stimulate adaptive responses. This phenomenon is broadly called hormesis: a small challenge can provoke repair, resilience, or compensation that would not otherwise occur.
Oxidation offers a good example. We often speak of oxidative stress as though oxidation were inherently harmful, but reactive oxygen species are also essential signaling molecules. Immune cells use them, mitochondria generate them, and cells respond to changes in redox state by activating antioxidant defenses and repair pathways. The relevant question is not simply whether oxidation occurs, but where, how much, for how long, and under what circumstances.
That is one way to understand the rationale behind medical ozone. It is better described as a controlled oxidative stimulus than as a simple means of “oxygenating” tissues. Whether that stimulus provides meaningful clinical benefit depends on the condition being treated, and the evidence for ozone is far from mature in many applications. Still, the underlying concept—that technology can apply a precisely measured biological stressor and then allow the organism to respond—is worth considering.
Intravenous vitamin C provides an even better example, particularly for those of us interested in cancer. I first learned about high-dose IV vitamin C through the work of integrative oncologist Keith Block, MD. For many years, vitamin C carried the baggage of being dismissed as an alternative cancer therapy after clinical trials failed to show benefit.
There was an important wrinkle, however: some of those early trials used oral vitamin C. The intestine tightly controls vitamin C absorption, whereas intravenous administration can produce blood concentrations hundreds of times greater than oral dosing. At those pharmacologic concentrations, vitamin C behaves very differently.
Ironically, a substance famous for being an antioxidant can become pro-oxidative at very high intravenous concentrations, generating hydrogen peroxide and creating an oxidative environment to which some cancer cells appear especially vulnerable. That mechanism has helped move IV vitamin C from the fringes into serious oncologic research.
The evidence is not uniform across cancers, and IV vitamin C should not be portrayed as a proven treatment for cancer broadly. But the trajectory is instructive. A randomized phase II trial in metastatic pancreatic cancer published in 2024 found that adding pharmacologic ascorbate to standard chemotherapy improved both progression-free and overall survival without increasing treatment toxicity. Other trials, including one in metastatic prostate cancer, have been less impressive. The National Cancer Institute therefore considers the evidence promising but not definitive.
That is how science is supposed to work. A therapy need not be either dismissed or canonized. It can remain under investigation while evidence accumulates, mechanisms become clearer, and appropriate uses gradually emerge.
I think this is where Rubin’s article is most valuable. It challenges the old habit of dividing medicine into simplistic camps: natural versus technological, conventional versus alternative, suppressive versus supportive. Technology itself is not the problem. The more useful question is what the technology is asking biology to do.
Image by ChatGPT, OpenAI
Sometimes we need to remove something, destroy something, or block something. Sometimes we need to replace what the body can no longer provide. And sometimes we may be able to provide a signal—a controlled oxidative, thermal, mechanical, electrical, or metabolic stimulus—and allow the organism to do some of the work itself.
None of this means that the body can heal every illness if only we support it correctly. Nor does it justify piling therapies onto a treatment plan simply because they are available. More treatment is not necessarily better treatment.
It does, however, suggest that we should be cautious about searching for the one intervention that will fix everything. Living systems are networks. Nutrition, immune function, metabolism, nervous system regulation, psychological resilience, and medical treatment all interact. It should not surprise us that healing sometimes emerges from several influences working together.
Perhaps the best medical technologies of the future will not be those that exert ever greater control over life, but those that become increasingly sophisticated at cooperating with it. That strikes me as a worthy aim for both conventional and integrative medicine: not technology over nature, but technology in service of life.
For those interested in reading the source, the article is Jyl Rubin, DVM, CVA, FAAO, “Technology in Service of Life,” LILIPOH, Summer 2026, Issue 123. I was not able to locate the complete article freely available online, but the magazine can be found at LILIPOH magazine (opens in new tab). For a deeper look at the oncology research, the National Cancer Institute also maintains a useful overview of intravenous vitamin C and cancer (opens in new tab).
