About Dr. Bell

IRIS R. BELL, MD PHD, award-winning author, speaker, and consultant, has been one of the leading internationally-known researchers in complementary and alternative medicine for over 30 years. Her latest book, Getting Whole, Getting Well: Healing Holistically from Chronic Illness, is a practical and inspiring roadmap that reveals the big picture secrets for people with chronic illness to find truly effective holistic health care.

She graduated magna cum laude in biology from Harvard University and then received her PhD in Neuro- and Biobehavioral Sciences (studying diet and sleep) and MD from Stanford University.  Her psychiatry internship and residency were at the University of California – San Francisco, and she is Board certified in Psychiatry with Added Qualification in Geriatric Psychiatry.

She is licensed to practice conventional medicine in Arizona and California. She is also nationally certified in biofeedback, a fellow of the American College of Nutrition, and a licensed physician in homeopathy and integrative medicine in Arizona. She has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, University of California – San Francisco, and the University of Arizona, including being Director of Research for Dr. Andrew Weil’s Program in Integrative Medicine.

She has published over 100 professional papers and a dozen book chapters on her clinical research in these areas. Her previous books range from the serious to the humorously fretful. She is the author of Clinical Ecology: A New Medical Approach to Environmental Illness, as well as two recent award-winning humor/inspiration self-help books for people and pets with anxiety and worry, Chew on Things – It Helps You Think: Words of Wisdom from a Worried Canine and the Chew on Things Workbook for Fellow Worriers.

Her current research focuses on the relationship between complex systems and network science and philosophical bases of leading complementary and alternative medicine systems of care. She was chosen as one of the Best Doctors in the Pacific region of the US in 1996 and in the US in 1998.

She is now a full-time researcher, educator-speaker, consultant, and writer. As a patient with insulin-dependent diabetes and arthritis, Dr. Bell also understands the patient's point of view personally -- what it is to live with chronic illnesses and to figure out the right alternative health care options on an individualized level. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her three wonderful (though slightly eccentric) dogs, Rosie, Harry, and Charlie.