Alternative Therapies Archives

November, 2009 - VOL. 15, NO. 6		November, 2009
Lifestyle Medicine: Treating the Causes of Disease
Mark A. Hyman, MD; Dean Ornish, MD; Michael Roizen, MD
Recently, at a small gathering in Martha’s Vineyard in support of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Larry Summers, PhD, economist and director of the White House’s National Economic Council, spoke about our narrow escape from economic depression. Dr Summers also addressed the even larger impending risks to our economy if the costs of healthcare are not successfully addressed now. He was asked how we could control these costs without tackling the root causes of the problem, the fact that most of the chronic diseases that affect 160 million Americans and account for 78% of our healthcare costs are caused by lifestyle and environmental factors—namely our diet, sedentary lifestyle, smoking, chronic stress, and environmental toxins. But most believe that doctors don’t “do” lifestyle. Dr Summers dismissed “lifestyle” as a community and public health issue that was already included in the current plan. He didn’t understand that physicians can and must practice clinical lifestyle medicine to effectively treat disease and dramatically reduce healthcare costs. Lifestyle factors leading to chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer are the domain of doctors and not merely a “public health problem.”
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