By John-Michael Lawrence
The book, “Undo It”, by Dean Ornish, is about taking control of your healthcare through affordable, sustainable means. Your diet and lifestyle. It’s called “Lifestyle Medicine”. Lifestyle medicine results from the Preventive Medicine Research Institute’s decades of research showing that specific lifestyle changes can reverse conditions such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and emotional distress. Often fatal conditions.
This is information needed most by communities that cannot afford to buy this book and cannot afford decent healthcare. Us. So, through a series of “info-torials” (informative editorials), I’m trying to share this information with as many people as possible.
“Lifestyle medicine” is about getting you off of medication instead of prescribing stronger and more medication. This approach resulted from research on the impact of diet, exercise, and stress management on chronic diseases that especially plague communities that cannot afford expensive health care and insurance. This research is so convincing that it has led to Medicare coverage for programs like Synergy, a program that introduces healthcare patients to “preventive medicine.” Follow the money, lifestyle medicine saves Medicare money because it pays for fewer heart surgeries, prescriptions and other medical procedures because of preventative medicine practices.
Preventative medicine practice is achieving good health and lasting wellness through sustainable lifestyle choices. By “sustainable” we mean a plant-based diet that is less expensive than a diet that includes animal protein, an exercise regimen that is fun and that you look forward to, and taking a little time out every day to heal, time for mental and emotional health.
The Lifestyle Medicine Program consists of four major components:
- Whole-foods Plant-based Diet: Emphasis on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.
- Moderate Exercise: Encouragement to engage in enjoyable physical activities.
- Stress Management: Techniques such as meditation and yoga to manage stress.
- Love and Social Support: Importance of connection and intimacy in health.
These are habits and practices you can do on your own, but are more successful if done in a group effort. The next info-torial gives suggestions for plant-based meals. After that, it will address moderate exercise and its effects, then the importance of stress management and social support.
Key Points:
- A plant-based diet can reverse the progression of common chronic diseases and even slow aging at a cellular level.
- Preventative medicine practice incorporates a whole foods, plant-based diet, moderate exercise, stress reduction techniques, and the nurturing power of love and connection.
- Making meaningful yet manageable lifestyle changes will lead to better health and transformative outcomes.
- Simple adjustments can ignite profound benefits and offer a renewed sense of hope for the future of your well-being.
- This field is gaining traction as more people recognize its effectiveness without the need for drugs or surgery.
- These results are backed by four decades of research and endorsed by Medicare. Follow the money.