BRINGING PLANT-BASED NUTRITION TO A VERY REACTIONARY FIELD OF MEDICINE by Muzammil Ahmad, MSc
I
came into medicine with the vision to “help people” and “save lives.” Both great reasons to attend medical school – however, soon into my medical journey, I realized medicine is very reactionary. It is great to save lives and make people’s lives easier once they’re sick. The focus tends to be on helping once the help is needed, meaning helping patients once they’re already sick. Also, a huge focus in medicine tends to be on long-term management through medications for people with common chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes. I soon realized that my passion for helping people by preventing them from getting sick and helping them potentially reverse these diseases would require a different approach. This led to my looking into nutritional research, where I came across plantbased nutrition. I was so surprised at the abundance of literature on this
topic, yet there had been no mention of it during my medical school journey. Learning about the field of plant-based nutrition led me to spend my evenings and weekends learning more about it, as I knew I had to learn this for my own health and to be able to help my patients better. This eventually led me
to stumble upon amazing plant-based doctors who promote a whole food plant-based diet for health, longevity, and disease prevention and reversal. This eventually directed me toward the field of Lifestyle Medicine, a branch of medicine that focuses on prevention, treatment, and reversal of disease through utilization of lifestyle factors.
