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Jorge D. Flechas, md, mph, is the medical director of Flechas Family Practice in Hendersonville, North Carolina. In addition to family practice, Dr Flechas' subspecialities include iodine therapy for thyroid and breast disorders, bio-identical hormone replacement for both men and women, and diagnosis and treatment of cardiac-related issues such as coronary artery disease, artherosclerosis, and hypertension. He is also medical director at FFP Lab in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dr Flechas is fluent in both English and Spanish. He majored in physics at Southern Missionary College in Tennessee and achieved both his doctorate in medicine (1977) and his master's degree in public health (1979) from Loma Linda University in California. He regularly speaks at medical conferences, where his lectures have informed many doctors on new and effective treatment protocols for a wide spectrum of medical disorders.(Altern 1her Health Med. 2013;19(4):50-56.)
Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine (ATHM): Where did you grow up and how did you become interested in pursuing a medical career?
Dr Flechas: I was raised in an Air Force family. My dad was a military accountant, and so home for me was mainly here in the South. I eventually would end up going to high school in Southern California, where I helped to take care of a man who, after he became a physical therapist, was working out in his mother's farm field and was struck by lightning. He ended up remaining partially paralyzed the rest of his life. I used to help take care of this man and, through conversations with him, I became interested in medicine, continued to pursue that career path, and ended up practicing family practice here in North Carolina.
ATHM: You majored in physics. Did this help your interest in medicine at all?
Dr Flechas: It did. In the field of physics, you have to work your way through problems. You give them raw material and then try and make some sense of this raw material. If I had gone with biology or some other field of science, it would have been just rote memory: here is a list-plants or this or that. Physics taught me how to be an independent thinker so that I could learn to figure out what...