Dr. Cometa

About Dr. Ariane Cometa

Professional Background

Dr. Cometa is a board certified family medicine physician who likes to treat not only the whole family, but also the whole patient. Her training as a conventional medical doctor alongside her extensive holistic education enable Dr. Cometa to treat her patients however they need to be treated. She likes to consider a visit to her office more than a visit with the doctor—it’s a visit with your partner in health, who cares about you and understands your needs.

Dr. Cometa holds an extensive medical background, with more than 20 years of practicing patient care. She graduated from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia in 1992, and went on to do her medical residency training in family medicine at the Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine from 1992-1995. She immediately began to blend her training in complementary and conventional medicine into her integrative medical practice in 1992, while in private practice in York, Maine. When she and her husband, also a physician, moved to the Baltimore area in 1998, she became an attending physician with The Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Today, Dr. Cometa is the founder and owner of The Cometa Wellness Center, which she originally opened in 2000. Dr. Cometa is also proud to have brought her integrative medical practice as well as her Thermography practice to the Charleston, South Carolina area in 2013.

Of course, what makes Dr. Cometa unique is not her background as a medical doctor, but rather her integrative and holistic approach to medicine and patient care. Dr. Cometa has spent years studying nutritional medicine, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and bio-identical hormone prescribing. Some of her earliest mentors were and remain today, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Dr. David Pearlmutter, Dr. Jonathan Wright and Dr. Patch Adams. Dr. Cometa has worked with these and other exceptional holistically-minded physicians during her residency and medical training, and they provided the inspiration for the holistic and integrative approach Dr. Cometa takes today.

Dr. Cometa’s Integrative Approach to Wellness

Medical ailments are often symptoms of more complex problems—our bodies’ ways of crying out for help—and for patients today these cries for help oftentimes go ignored. In our healthcare system today too many patients are caught in an unfortunate dichotomy between the “conventional” and the “natural” doctor. This unlucky individual finds that the conventional doctor prescribes pills which treat her symptoms rather than her problems—pills made to silence her body’s cries for help without treating the very issues her body was asking her to address. Naturopaths and alternative doctors, on the other hand, while generally well-intentioned, often lack the medical training and access to resources (prescription medications, access to lab and blood work) that they need to fully understand and address a problem. To make matters worse, a tremendous gap exists in America today between these two professions: medical doctors prescribe medication because that’s what they’ve been taught to do, and naturopaths—too often shunned by the “professional” medical community today—are sometimes unwilling to relinquish control of a patient to medical professionals when help is needed beyond what they can provide. It’s an imbalanced environment for healthcare right now, and one in which the patient suffers.

Dr. Cometa aims to bridge this gap between the natural and the conventional doctor. As a patient of Dr. Cometa’s, you can rest assured that you’re getting the highest possible standard of professional medical care and treatment from a doctor who cares about your well being. This typically starts with an individualized wellness plan: a long-term and holistic dietary, supplemental, and lifestyle plan that outlines healthy habits which will work for you. Through this preventative approach Dr. Cometa hopes to help you eliminate unhealthy choices which could lead to health problems before those problems have the chance to manifest. In addition to your wellness plan, Dr. Cometa has at her disposal her natural medicine pharmacy: supplements Dr. Cometa has personally researched and chosen due to their high quality and proven scientific results. Finally, as a licensed and long-practicing medical doctor, Dr. Cometa has the resources available to conventional medical doctors that Naturopaths do not have: she can write prescriptions, order blood work and other lab tests, has a network of other specialized doctors she likes to work with, and is happy to assist you with any of your medical needs.

We hope you’ll consider Dr. Cometa as your partner for your journey towards wellness, and we look forwards to helping you on your path in any way we can.

Sincerely,

Dr. Cometa and everyone at Charleston Integrative Medicine