Doctor uses natural, old-fashioned medicine

Good health comes naturally to Dr. John Kule and his patients at the East Aiken Health Center.

In a small cinderblock building nestled on the edge of a sprawling horse farm between Aiken and Wagener, Kule and his staff practice medicine the old-fashioned way — with natural remedies and an emphasis on wellness.

Herbs and other vitamin supplements line the walls of the waiting room, but the exam rooms are equipped with high-tech laptop computers that gauge fitness and heart durability. According to Kule, his is "alternative medicine," to be sure, but it is first and foremost good family medicine.

"There isn't one in 100 that actually knows what alternative medicine means. So, yes, I have to do a lot more education of my patients," Kule said, sitting on the edge of one of his examination tables.

In a middle room, patients receiving intravenous treatments relax in leather recliners. In the lobby, "green-friendly" cleaning supplies and homeopathic remedies are displayed on tables surrounded by horse art prints on the walls and patient information printed simply on laserprinter paper.

"More and more, primary care is coming along my way because you see all the things about nutrition and concerns about prescription medications," Kule said. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the Vioxxes worked with no side effects? But they don't. That's not life. To have good health is work. It's a commitment."

Kule's education has taken him from his native Pennsylvania (where he studied biology at Pennsylvania State University) to Canada (where he explored the physical education and sports culture of Soviet Russia) to Bogota, Colombia (where he earned his medical doctorate from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana). He taught middle school science in Georgia and worked as a medical interpreter in Los Angeles before completing his residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. He was a partner in family medical clinics in Swansea for six years until he opened East Aiken Health Center in 2000.

His patients say Kule and his staff are willing to spend hours delving into their health histories and trying to find the root causes of their maladies. "He is known to spend two hours with a patient," wrote one client, named Linda, in a letter praising her physician. "His practice is an incredible alternative to conventional health, concentrating on the body, the mind and the soul working together to create a healthy, happy individual."

Kule says that he is bucking an unfortunate trend in modern medicine — health care driven largely by insurance and Medicare reimbursements.

"I think that most doctors in primary care would like to do something like what I'm doing except that the reimbursements from the insurance companies are terrible," Kule said. "I don't think it's satisfying to see 50 patients a day and have three offices on this side and three offices on this side and the nurses come in and do most of the history-taking and you just zip in and focus on one column, write a script and go on to the next patient and drink coffee and push, push, push until you get your 50 patients in."

In fact, Kule accepts only one insurance provider, plus Medicare and Medicaid, which cover only the cost of the office visit. For the most part, his patients must pay out-of-pocket for other, less conventional procedures and natural treatments not reimbursed by the insurance industry.

First-time patients go through the traditional battery of tests — blood pressure, heart rate and the usual vital signs — but Kule and his staff also conduct high-tech tests for heart rate durability and urine and saliva chemistry. They take blood samples and read the splotches under dark-field microscopes, looking for tell-tale signs of fatigue, dysfunctional body systems and other deficiencies in the "live blood."

"All I'm doing is going one step further and saying, I would like to catch things before they get real bad and make some changes," Kule said. "When I do this kind of testing, I'm trying to figure out where they are functionally before all these things arrive at pathology. Any good doctor should be looking for that, too. I'm looking for things before they get bad. I'm also looking for things to go toward an optimal. I'm looking more at, like the Greek ideal, that there is some optimal function out there, looking at health more like what an athlete would look like."

If traditional pharmaceuticals are needed, Kule will write a prescription, of course. But he is just as likely to prescribe changes in nutrition and overall lifestyle to encourage the body to heal itself.

"When I do this kind of medicine, I'm giving people choices," Kule said. "These things make more work for me and for the patient, but it gives them a chance to allow their own natural healing mechanisms to start working again."

Kule knows that some people may scoff at the idea of holistic or "alternative" medicine, but he points to his training and experience and, more importantly, he says, to his patient successes.

"I went through a lot of training to get where I am, and I have to continue my training. I should be respected for the tools that I use," he said. "When a colleague in town is using different tools, I still respect him. As long as my patients are doing well, I don't care whether it's really alternative or conventional or whatever you want to call it.