Ithaca residents interested in alternative medicine will find a new place to stay healthy when Pat O’Brien opens her Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine practice in April — the first of its kind in the city of Ithaca.

O’Brien will be opening her practice April 1 at the Integrative Medicine Center on 301 W. State St. Patients will be able to seek O’Brien’s expertise in drugless medicine on Mondays and Thursdays.

O’Brien, who is a certified Ayurvedic practitioner and Chinese herbalist — alternative methods of medicinal practice that uses herbal substances and altering one’s diet to “heal” ailments, based on studying one’s genetics — has operated a practice in Andover, N.Y., for more than 10 years, treating patients with ailments such as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and eczema.

O’Brien said it was a lack of others in her professional field and the high interest in the Ithaca region that led her to open a second practice.

“For years I have been treating people from all over western and central New York,” she said. “I do get a lot of patients and clients from Ithaca. I have had requests to be out there for many years.”

Ayurvedic medicine focuses on genetics and internal body consumption habits as causes of ailments and disease. O’Brien said by altering the body’s chemistry, disease processes can be stopped and even reversed. An aspect of Chinese medicine deals with looking at those processes.

“Chinese medicine is a little bit different, but it is similar to Ayurvedic medicine in that it looks at certain disease patterns when diagnosing what is wrong in the human body,” she said.

O’Brien first became interested in studying Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine after “Western” approaches to medicine failed in treating her chronic fatigue disorder.

“About 15 years ago, I had chronic fatigue syndrome,” O’Brien said. “I was a patient and had gone the Western medicine route, and I wasn’t making any progress. The advice I kept getting wasn’t specific to my body personally. So, what drove me into the skill was out of frustration from my own personal attempts to get well.”

Upon completion of multiple degrees in Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese herbology, O’Brien opened her current Andover, N.Y., practice where she treats patients, tailoring specific nutritional and herbal diets to help alleviate ailments.

“Everybody is different from what is wrong with them to what caused them to be ill,” she said. “For example, if I have a patient who has fibromyalgia, everything I suggest for patients, from foods they eat and beverages they drink to herbal and chemical supplements, is geared to clear that inflammation.”

Tammy Wood, of Putnam Valley, N.Y., has been visiting O’Brien for more than three years for high blood pressure.

“[O’Brien] basically saved my life,” she said. “She takes medicine with a whole different spin. Using the natural ingredients God gave us, she saved my life, basically. I had such high blood pressure, and she has brought it way down.”

Patricia Soper-Oakes, a chiropractor in Hornell, N.Y., is also a patient of O’Brien’s. Her professional comfort with O’Brien’s alternative form of medicine is so strong she said she recommends her own patients to O’Brien.

“Whenever one of my patients has a metabolic problem, I recommend them to her,” Soper-Oakes said. “She has done fantastic jobs.”

O’Brien has also treated hypertension, postmenopausal problems and even leukemia.

“When I first started my practice, I saw a man who had leukemia,” she said. “I gave it a shot, and he has been in remission ever since.”

Freshman Talia Sternberg, an integrated marketing communications major, said the Ithaca community could benefit from O’Brien’s practice.

“Too many people rely on prescriptions drugs, which have so many negative side effects,” Sternberg said. “It’s cool that there will be this new opportunity for people to have an alternative to the prescription drugs.”

O’Brien said Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine could also help the average college student.

“When we are young we take our health for granted and we don’t think about the consequences,” she said. “The best advice I can give to a college student is to take all health problems seriously and do things now to correct those problems before you get into your late 20s and early 30s.”