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own. At any conventional medicine
institution, there are limits on how far
one can stray from the conventional
dogma, so I could only get so far
with people inside the institutions. I
labored to learn things on my own,
including attending conferences with
doctors who were doing this kind of
thing, reading a lot, sorting things out
myself and receiving incredible things
I’ve learned from my greatest teachers—my patients.
How do you bring this philosophy
into your practice?

A Physician with
an Open Mind
& Open Heart
Malcolm Sickels, M.D., provides holistic
primary care for the whole family at his
practice in Ann Arbor.
What was your childhood like?
I can’t say that I had any idea of
what I would be doing when I grew
up back when I was a kid. My mom
insists that she suspected I would be
a doctor, since I liked to put BandAids on myself, but that hardly seems
like a qualification for being a good
doctor. She also recently told me that
other kids used to come to me to fix
their stuff, and the process she described sounds similar to diagnosing
people today.
When did you choose the medical
profession?
I did finally look into going to some
sort of medical school after I had
been out of college for a couple
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Greater Ann Arbor

years, and initially was considering
naturopathic medicine, since I liked
herbal medicine. After visiting one
of the four accredited naturopathic
schools in the U.S. then and noting that fewer than 20 states license
naturopaths (Michigan does not), plus
the lack of insurance reimbursement,
I started looking at conventional
medicine. After listening to shoppers’
stories while I was assistant manager
of Natural Foods, in Madison, about
their struggles with medicine, I realized that what was really needed was
someone who knew both sides of the
story: orthodox and natural medicine.
What was your experience there?
Once I was in medical school, I had
to pick up the natural medicine on my

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Throughout all this, I’ve retained a
healthy bit of skepticism: claims of
benefits are often overstated in both
orthodox and alternative medicine.
I tend to lay out what the options
are for my patients: what I know that
looks promising, what I see as the
pros and cons of each option. From
there, we’ll work out a plan that
seems promising and doable.

Conventional offices set up each
visit to maximize revenue, something
that spending time with patients
doesn’t accomplish.