H E A LT H
ASK THE DR.
The future of medicine is here, and it’s all about you. BY DR. FRANK LIPMAN
When it comes to handling life-or-death health situations, the medical system in the U.S. excels and is often miraculous. When accidents happen and bones get broken or severe infections set in, our health care system is well equipped to fix the trouble. It’s like having a pit crew standing by, ready to put people back together and get them back on the road. But, to continue the racing car metaphor for just a moment longer, regular maintenance is where the rubber meets the road—and it’s also where our current medical system doesn’t win the race. Mainstream medicine, or as I like to call it, “Old Medicine,” needs a 21st-century operating system upgrade—with ongoing maintenance a primary component. Think medicine 2.0, or what I’m calling “New Medicine.” Emergency and acute medical problems tend to grab the headlines, but a far larger number of people find themselves in a different category—what we in the wellness world call the “walking unwell.” They are a silent majority of people saddled with chronic health concerns that aren’t incapacitating or don’t trip alarms on standard lab tests, but nevertheless interfere with living life to the fullest. Be it a misbehaving belly, aches and pains, a foggy brain, lack of energy or poor sleep, night after night, no one should have to accept feeling crummy much of the time as “normal.”
Old Medicine keeps it simple, and not in a good way: Our “health care” system is set up for disease care rather than health care—either you’re sick or you’re not, with nothing in between. New Medicine sees the full spectrum of health, from wellness to disease—and the many shades of gray in between. It gets to the bottom of what’s causing unwellness, and identifies the behaviors and lifestyle habits that may be undermining health. From there, New Medicine provides a custom road map to help you improve function and move you along the spectrum from unwellness toward optimal health, no matter what stage of life or health you’re in. It incorporates the principles of functional medicine, best-inclass testing, wearables and state-of-the-art tech tools. The patient experience? Personalized, customized, relational and highly communicative. New Medicine is the future of medicine, and not a moment too soon. Here are five thoughts on what it brings to the table, and how it will, in time, change the diseasedriven “sick care” system into a sustainable, wellnessfocused, health partnership:
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1 NEW MEDICINE IS TRUE HEALTH CARE AND IS POWERED BY PREVENTION. Old Medicine is reactive. It’s not so much about prevent-
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