Book excerpt: Mainstream medicine in America focuses on symptoms rather than causes of chronic illness and poor health. Medical education is influenced to a great extent by pharmaceutical companies and focuses our attention dangerously onto drug therapies. Conventional medicine practice has been failing miserably to control or treat the chronic disease entities afflicting our population in the modern era. Integrative medicine concepts and practice offer people much safer and often more effective options for achieving and maintaining health, as well as combating most forms of chronic disease. The keys include understanding what it really takes to promote human health in a broad sense and what the underlying causes of chronic disease truly are. Thinking Outside the Pill Box contains an explanation of how our medical system came to be so defective and ineffectual, a thorough look at the important factors influencing human health, and an in-depth discussion of many common underlying causes of chronic illness in the modern world. It is designed as a self-help book for both the reader and their future generations.