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Are you tired of popping pills for all your aches and pains even though they never seem to go away? Are you fed up with doctors writing you prescriptions, then sending you on your way, while not really seeming to care what’s wrong with you? Well, ‘integrative’ medicine might just be the answer to your woes. And a practitioner of this type of healing is Oldrich Capek, MD, who works as a medical consultant for his company, Thai Biologics Medical Care, located on Nakorn Sawan Road, here in Bangkok.

Integrative medicine mixes conventional medical school and clinical practice with traditional Chinese medicine and modern European diagnostics. Some call it ‘alternative’ medicine, but Oldrich thinks that sounds too contrarian to conventional medicine. But, we are getting ahead of ourselves: there are two main stories in this article. The first is how Oldrich became a doctor and how he got here; the second is what he does.

Oldrich was born in 1958 in Hradec Kralove in then Czechoslovakia, a town about 100 kilometers from Prague. The town name itself means ‘fortress donated by the king to the Queen’. In 1348, King Charles IV of Luxembourg founded a university in Prague aptly called Charles University. Attached to this university today is a great teaching hospital, where Oldrich’s mother worked as a head nurse in the Ear, Norse, and Throat department. Oldrich’s fascination with medicine was gleaned from her as she would come home every day and talk about her work, and sometimes she would take Oldrich to the hospital where he would get a chance to talk to doctors and other nurses about their work. It was at this hospital where Oldrich studied medicine while doing his time in the military. After that, he spent two years in the Central Military Hospital in Prague doing postgraduate work, and then he spent three years commanding a military medical unit in a Warsaw Pact country, which was always on a war footing. He was in charge of a small military hospital with 40 beds, 2 dentists, 3 doctors, and auxiliary staff, and he had to supervise the group’s exercises and take care of the medical supplies as well.

Then came the Velvet Revolution and everything changed. For the first time, there was freedom and democracy in his country; people could speak up and officially criticize the government. They could also travel to non-Eastern bloc countries. Oldrich did so, immediately taking a spell-bounding tour of the Austrian Alps. Oldrich had maintained a good relationship with the hospital where he had studied, so he went back there and started working in the pediatric surgery department repairing hernias and removing gall bladders and such.

Then in January of 1991, he became interested in alternative medicine and soon afterward took a course in Chinese acupuncture and Chinese medicine. The hospital wasn’t too keen on his type of medicine, so he opened a private practice at night (not really welcomed by the hospital) and he also started experimenting with topical laser therapy and electronic diagnostics. He frequently traveled to Prague and Austria to take courses in medical subjects that interested him. A doctor friend eventually asked him to join his alternative clinic in Prague, so he left the hospital in 1993 and went to work with him.

This doctor was quite famous as he had written a book about holistic medicine and acupuncture, which ended up selling over a million copies in the Czech Republic alone. The clinic was so popular that they couldn’t keep patients away, sometimes working until midnight. Driven by adrenaline and the elixir of freedom, they were able to make their own decisions, work when they wanted, or not, take breaks when they wanted, or not, and their salaries multiplied tenfold. Oldrich stayed with his friend until the middle of 1995 when he left to start his own practice. He kept that until the end of 1998 when a small family-owned German company approached him about being their medical director in Bangkok. This is when he first came to Asia for and he held that position for two years when he decided to set out on his own and set up his own practice on Phahonyothin Soi 2, fully licensed with a Thai doctor colleague. A couple of years later he moved out on his own again to his current office on Nakorn Sawan Road.

Oldrich, who is a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, calls his practice a complete family clinic. His clientele is mixed: 50% Thai, 30% Farang, and 20% Indian. And most of his clients come by word of mouth. His clients look to him to solve problems they cannot fix in a hospital, or with a doctor at a local clinic. They come in with problems ranging from hay fever to asthma, allergies, headaches, degenerative diseases, heart disease, and even cancer. Oldrich starts gathering information by interviewing his clients. He then takes this information and using his medical knowledge he performs an electronic diagnostic using a VEGA Test machine. This is a computer, which compares specific resistance (impedance) in the body with the information digitally stored in the software. Oldrich tests for things like food allergies, environmental pollution including heavy metals as well as mineral, hormone, and enzyme deficiencies.

Now, don’t worry, Oldrich understands that we are human after all, and if we did away with everything that was bad for us, well, what would be the point of living? So he tries to find a ‘positive compromise’ for his patients, whereby they agree to give up some of their worst habits but are allowed to hold on to those that don’t cause them too much harm. And since most people have acknowledged they have to make lifestyle changes - or they wouldn’t be visiting the good doctor in the first place- they take his advice and start curbing some of their worst habits.

One example would be some people may find themselves waking up in the middle of the night. They could be eating heavy or oily foods just before going to bed, thereby putting undue pressure on their vital organs. Dr. Capek examines your lifestyle to find out what’s causing you duress, he doesn’t just treat the symptoms - he treats the causes and hopefully, by eliminating them, he can help you lead and better and healthier life.

(Sadly, Oldrich Capek passed away on 17 April 2021 after a long battle with cancer)