Mainstream Medicine Tries To Jump On Bandwagon

Article Of The Week:

Physician Competencies For Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine

Journal of the American Medical Association July 29th, 2010
Lianov, L., M. Johnson. JAMA. 2010; 304(2): 202-203.

Doctor's Soapbox:
Here is up to the minute proof that what I have been preaching week in and week out is the key to health. Even mainstream medicine is admitting it, and has been. Lifestyle is the key to health. The only difference now is not only are they giving it lip service, but they're trying to get medical doctors to start practicing it. There's only one problem, medical doctors do not have the education or knowledge to provide it. As the article says,

"Even though the most widely accepted, well-established chronic disease practice guidelines uniformly call for lifestyle change as the first line of therapy, physicians often do not follow these recommendations."

Why? If research has proven again and again that people with chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, etc.) get better faster and live longer, higher quality lives when instituting lifestyle change as the primary treatment, why aren't medical doctors screaming this from the rooftops? There are a couple reasons. First and foremost is money. Medical doctors have 2 tools, drugs and surgery. Those tools are very expensive and very profitable, teaching people to eat better, exercise more, and reduce stress is not as easy to give patients and requires a lot more thinking by the doctor (plus there are no kickbacks from Big Pharma). The second reason, which stems from the first, is that medical doctors don't have the knowledge base or paradigm to teach lifestyle. As the article states,

"Physicians also have cited inadequate confidence and lack of knowledge and skill as major barriers to counseling patients about lifestyle interventions."

So who does that leave to provide true health and healing? What profession provides lifestyle "medicine"? Chiropractic, specifically, chiropractors with the Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner (C.C.W.P.) degree through the International Chiropractic Association.

While medicine tries to bail out their sinking ship by jumping on the wellness bandwagon and failing because they don't know how that bandwagon works, take care of yourself and your family by learning how to live a wellness lifestyle from an expert: John Bartemus, DC, CCWP.