Interview with Dr Jordi Postius Robert 

November 14, 2018
Los Cristianos, Tenerife, Spain

Clinica Integra Salud
Radazul, Tenerife

The complete project for the Gönpa/Conference Center at Dzamling Gar includes not only the large meeting and practice area on the top of the complex but also space for a Tibetan Medical Clinic on the floor below. This was the vision and wish of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. In order to have experience in running the clinic at the Gar, Rinpoche agreed to work in partnership with Dr. Jordi Postius in a Clinic of Integrative Medicine in Radazul, North Tenerife. Dr. Jordi was Rinpoche’s physician and someone known to people in the Dzogchen Community. He is a practicing doctor on Tenerife Island and also very interested in complementary medicine.

Below is a small interview with Dr Postius to introduce him to the Dzogchen Community. The management company of the Clinic is called 108 Palgey, a name chosen by Rinpoche, which means economic prosperity. Look for more information regarding the mission and development of the Clinic in The Mirror in the future.

The Mirror: We would like to introduce you to the Dzogchen Community, since we are now partners in a new clinic of Integrative Medicine in the North of Tenerife.

 Dr Postius: My name is Dr Jordi Postius Robert and I am 48 years old. I am a specialist in urology and andrologia and I have been interested in natural medicine for a long time; normally what people call complementary medicine. This is the reason we are starting this project of integrative medicine that will be one of the first hospitals in Europe in a group. I think this will be the future of medicine: the marriage of conventional and complementary medicine. There are some doctors working with complementary medicine in Europe, but in private offices.

This clinic that will be one of the first in Europe to work in a group, there will be different kinds of doctors – doctors, nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, breathing, yoga…everything that is also related to the medicine. In conventional medicine normally we treat the symptom, for example, if I have a heart attack they put in a stent or give me aspirin, but they don’t treat the stress or worry about any other factors. This is the problem with conventional medicine. In the future there will be this kind of new medicine.

M: When did you become interested in integrative medicine?

DP: My interest began when I was working in a hospital in Miami and the medicine in the US is very strict and the doctors are very cold and only offered limited treatment possibilities without considering the whole patient. They would say, for example if you were diagnosed with prostrate cancer, “Ok the treatment options are surgery or chemotherapy. Those are your options, so you go outside from the office for a few minutes and come back with a decision of what treatment you would like.” This is when I began to see that I thought medicine would be something different.

Then I met Rinpoche and understood a different way to see life and my thinking changed.

M: So it was after you met Rinpoche that your interest in alternative medicine became stronger?

DP: I had always been interested in integrative medicine but after I met Rinpoche I began to study a little more and to make contact with other doctors interested in the same thing. I am discovering that many doctors who are interested in integrative medicine had cancer or a chronic disease so that when they themselves suffered the illness, it changed their mentality.

M: Which methods of non-allopathic medicine have you studied?

DP: I have not done extensive study but I have taken different courses in acupuncture, naturopathy, herbal treatment, diet, vitamins, minerals, etc. and I’ve done little courses about mindfulness, yoga, to see all the different possible methods of complementary treatment.

M: So can we talk a little more about the clinic and when and how you decided to open it?

DP: After I met Rinpoche in July, 2017 in Barcelona, I had this building Radazul, Tenerife, which I have owned since 2015 and people wanted to buy it for different things, like restaurants, and I thought to rent the building or just use it for my office and my own practice. After meeting Rinpoche I started to think about having a clinic for all these different kinds of medicines in one place. Something like this is impossible to do in a normal office, just one doctor could not do it, you need a big building to apply all these modalities, to have the staff, space and equipment, and there will be new modalities that will appear in the future. We are discovering more things every day.

M: Do you already have doctors to collaborate with?

DP: Yes, we are starting with around five doctors and we hope to increase the number of physicians as the Clinic grows. Eventually there will be more doctors interested in this kind of medicine. The first step is to open your mind so these doctors who practice normal medicine are afraid to practice this complimentary medicine in their normal practices because now there is a lot of controversy in Europe about these forms of medicine. Now in Spain, Italy, Portugal and France, they are saying that homeopathy is not legal.

The other doctors are from Spain but we also have an international group that may work with us in the future from all over the world.

The people in Tenerife are open. They want to have an option for treatment. Also they realize that there recovery will possibly be better if they can complement the chemo or other traditional forms of treatment with complementary therapy.

Our clinic will also provide support for people who are receiving conventional allopathic treatment or they can also choose to receive all their treatment at our clinic. Always the patient must choose, the doctor can say you have this and that option, but it is always the choice of the patient.

M: How many kinds of specialists will there be at the clinic?

DP: Eventually there will be different kinds of doctors from general practitioners, pediatricians, urologists, radiologists, oncologists, to cardiologists and rheumatologists.

M: Is the clinic only for elderly people?

DP: No. We are starting with outpatient, daycare for elderly people – it was easier to organize these kinds of treatments. We need more time to set up the facility and also to receive the license. It was easier and faster to receive a license for the elder care. The license for a hospital is more difficult. So we are starting with the clinic and eventually we will have a residential hospital. We would also like to add a floor for the hospital. We want to have all these licenses lined up now since I think it will be more difficult in the future to receive a license.

Then the next step is that we will prepare elder residential care. Now we have two rooms for patients, and eventually we will house twelve patients. So for example if we have a patient who needs to be in the hospital for one or two days for treatment, or for diet, recovery from surgery, they can stay, also we will have nursing care for elderly who can no longer live at home, at the beginning. But when we have the authorization we will have more rooms that will comprise the hospital. We can also care for those with Alzheimers and dementia.  We also want to care for children with neurological problems, attention deficit disorders since 15% or 20% of children have this disorder, sensory problems, hyperactive and autism. The clinic will be for general patient care, not only for the elderly or children, for all people.

It will take some months to really develop, people have to come and see; it is not the conventional geriatric place.

We hope to have some collaboration with Dr Phuntsog Wangmo. Tibetan Medicine is an important part of this integrative medicine. I intend to study and learn with Dr Phuntsog.

As far as insurance, we had a meeting today with one of the biggest insurance companies in the world and biggest in Europe and they are very interested to work with us, it is DKV German based, we would like to work with them and they want to do meetings and studies and German thinking is a little more open and they are interested to work with this medicine. They will support us in the hospital and support us with conferences and meetings. DKV will cover non-traditional care.

We are planning to do conferences with Dr Phuntsog when she comes to Tenerife. Also a large group of doctors from Italy contacted me and want to come for a meeting to see what we are doing.

I was talking also with Rinpoche and Giovanni and we were speaking about how Dzamling Gar can be a place for a healing center and we can all work together to establish a healing center there.

M: Did you and Rinpoche come to this idea together?

DP: Yes we did. To treat Rinpoche was an incredible experience. When you touch a person like him you feel he is something completely different.

M: Thank you Dr Postius for your time. We wish you much success in your collaborative venture with the Community.

 About Dr.Jordi Postius Robert: Dr.Jordi Postius has a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Lleida -enrolled in the University of Barcelona- and obtained the title of specialist in Urology from the University Hospital of the Canary Islands. President and founding member of the Spanish Federation of Integrative Medicine, Dr Postius is also a member of the Canarian, Spanish and European Urological Medical Societies and an active member of the European Association of Urology. Apart from his healthcare activity -including more than 200,000 patients attended and more than 20,000 surgical interventions – he also highlights his role as a researcher in the field of Urology with more than twenty scientific studies carried out. Dr Postius is a pioneer in the introduction of novel surgical techniques, such as the use of the urethral catheter in kidney transplantation for the prevention of urinary leaks, the UROLASTIC and PROLASTIC techniques for the treatment of urinary incontinence. Nowadays he is the Medical Director of the Clinica Integra Salud and he works as a specialist in Urology in the DKV Space Health Center and in the Clinica Vida.