About Dr. Coombs
Dr. Coombs obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in biological and medical sciences from the University of Toronto in 1968. From his ongoing work with Dr. Harold Harvey in the Department of Zoology during his undergraduate years, he developed a strong interest in the relationship between human health and the environment, at a time when medical schools hadn’t even begun to think of the connection between the two. In 1969 he helped found Pollution Probe, a Toronto-based organization dedicated to cleaning up our environment, He graduated from the University of Toronto medical school in 1971.
After two years of hospital training, he spent two years working on native Indian reserves in northwestern Ontario for the University of Toronto Sioux Lookout Project(1973-75). He subsequently spent some time working on native reserves in northern British Columbia. On the native reserves he observed at first hand the failure of conventional crisis-oriented medicine to eliminate chronic and recurrent disease or to address its root causes. This experience profoundly affected his subsequent approach to medical practice, and he began a personal search to learn more about health and the origins of disease, and to develop a preventive orientation to his practice.
He worked in Vancouver for a year with lay midwives providing home births, and then two years with a general practice on Saltspring Island. In 1978 he moved to Ottawa to work with what the National Indian Brotherhood, now the Assembly of First Nations. He spent three years with them, helping transfer control of native health from the federal government to the First Nations people and pushing for improvements in their health services and community living conditions.
Dr. Coombs had been taught in medical school to think in a linear manner, focusing on single treatments for a single diagnosis. His experience with the First Nations people showed him how limited that approach was for addressing chronic complex illness. Since 1981 he has had a private practice in Lanark County, with progressively increasing emphasis on addressing the many underling factors that contribute to chronic illness. Dr. Coombs has had particular interest in the biomedical treatment of autism spectrum disorder in children, a complex disorder of neurological development. The approach used to reverse childhood autism can serve as a model for addressing other chronic medical conditions. This requires investigating the underlying factors that have led to the condition: genetic, nutritional, environmental, biochemical, immune, and psychological. This involves a matrix, or systems, approach to medical problems, a practice which is now called functional or integrative medicine.