ABOUT
RICHARD NAHAS

An integrative medical doctor who focuses on treating chronic pain, Dr. Richard Nahas founded The Seekers Centre in Ottawa in 2006.
One of the main tenets of Dr. Nahas’ approach to healing is focusing on the treatment of “blockages” in the body. Traditional Chinese Medicine described these centuries ago, and they are described by many other healing systems, but blockages are unknown to modern medicine. The science of wound healing has confirmed that injury or trauma can lead to persistent changes in tissue structure and function, with scars in connective tissue and the nervous system in injured areas. These blockages can create tension, stress and dysfunction long after the visible injuries have healed.

Bringing the targeted treatment of blockages to healthcare has become a career mission for Dr. Nahas, who sees them as an unrecognized root cause of illness and their treatment as a potential medical breakthrough.

One of the main tenets of Dr. Nahas’ approach to healing is focusing on the treatment of “blockages” in the body. Traditional Chinese Medicine described these centuries ago, and they are described by many other healing systems, but blockages are unknown to modern medicine. The science of wound healing has confirmed that injury or trauma can lead to persistent changes in tissue structure and function, with scars in connective tissue and the nervous system in injured areas. These blockages can create tension, stress and dysfunction long after the visible injuries have healed.

Bringing the targeted treatment of blockages to healthcare has become a career mission for Dr. Nahas, who sees them as an unrecognized root cause of illness and their treatment as a potential medical breakthrough.

The BEAM Project

Dr. Nahas launched The BEAM Project, or Bringing Evidence to Alternative Medicine, to collect data about the effectiveness of many forms of alternative medicine with modern technology. The ultimate goal of the project is to create an evidence-based medicine database in the blockchain, giving individual patients valuable information about what treatments work and what treatments do not, and crowdsourcing this data to benefit everyone.

An Integrative Approach

Dr. Nahas has a background in conventional medicine, and has traveled the world to study traditional healing. His career has been focused on integrative medicine since 2006, and his work has given him a unique perspective on chronic pain, mind-body medicine and how integrative medicine can improve healthcare.

Dr. Nahas earned a medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1998. He then worked for four years in emergency rooms in academic teaching hospitals and remote rural outposts across Canada. During the SARS outbreak of 2003, Dr. Nahas began exploring alternative forms of healing. As a member of the SARS team, the worst outcomes for unhealthy patients led him to a new question: How can medicine help the body heal itself?

He wanted to learn more. So Dr. Nahas spent the next two years traveling to 30 countries, gaining new perspectives on illness from traditional doctors across the globe, including shamans, gurus, and other healers.

The Seekers Centre

Dr. Nahas established The Seekers Centre to address the root causes of chronic pain. There, he helps patients manage their pain with a combination of prescription drugs, injection and IV infusion treatments, as well as mindfulness, breathing, myofascial manual therapy, acupuncture, natural health products and other specialized treatments.

A Writer, Researcher and Teacher

Dr. Nahas has published his work in peer-reviewed journals and has written textbook chapters, contributes to national guidelines and participated in multinational clinical trials. He also helped create an undergraduate curriculum for medical students at the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Nahas has served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa and as Chair of the Medical Interest Group for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the Ontario Medical Association.

“When you go to a doctor and they ask you how many bad days you had last month, you can vaguely estimate it, but if you have a month’s worth of hard data collected in real time — that’s a totally different thing. We can use technology to get more accurate information from patients about the actual effectiveness of health care treatments.”
-Dr. Richard Nahas