Why Lifestyle medicine?
By all accounts heart disease tops the list of things you don’t want. In addition to being our number one cause of death, it is also a major contributor to disability, chronic pain, and fear of the future.
We have put enormous research and money into figuring out how to prevent heart attacks with pharmaceuticals. One of the most prescribed classes of medications in this country are the HMG Co-A reductase inhibitors, or “statins”. And they seem to work. And all you have to do is take a pill…
The problem, of course, is the side effects (which I have gone in to elsewhere) and the thought that we can do better than passively taking a pill and hoping for the best.
Lifestyle medicine is extremely difficult to study scientifically. But there are a few studies that give us an alternate view of what “healthy” can mean. The Nurses Health Study followed a little over 80,000 women for 14 years. Researchers have pulled tons of information from that study, but a few points really fascinate me.
There was a small group of women in that study that did not smoke, had a healthy weight, did some form of moderate exercise, and had a basically healthy diet. Their risk of having a heart attack was 82% lower than the rest of the participants. This is actually amazing. By comparison, statins have been shown to reduce the risk of having a heart attack by 31 to 36%.
The women in this subgroup were not gurus or magicians. They were just as busy and challenged as the rest of us. But the few lifestyle choices they made had a huge impact on the path their lives took. In fact, by taking very basic steps they changed their risk of heart disease in a way no medication can reproduce.
But how many of us actually live this way? If we again take the Women’s Health Study as an example, only about 3% of us will do this by ourselves. And that single fact is why the drugs exist.
What Whole Life Medicine is about, in very simple terms, is helping the rest of us act like that healthy subgroup. Actually, we get you there and then just keep going. Our expertise lies in giving you the information, motivation, support and finesse you need to make that happen. We use education, nutritional advice and supplements, and specialty referrals when needed so that you enjoy maximal results with minimal frustration and waste. So if you, your family, or someone you know can use our help, start today!
In good health,
David R. Gurley, MD
Whole Life Medicine
888.399.5580
info@wholelifemedicine.com
