On November 13-16, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine held its annual conference in Orlando, FL. Attendances were notable at 2,000, and the event is a prelude to the certification of a new round of Lifestyle Medicine-certified healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, etc. Lifestyle Medicine is a great point of light in the mess that is healthcare, for it addresses the chronic illnesses that have become the leading causes of death in the US and the developed world in general, most of which should not even be the domain of medicine.
Two leaders of the Lifestyle Medicine community were honored with lifetime awards; Dean Ornish, MD, who most recently published a brilliant general introduction to the actual practice of Lifestyle Medicine for the lay public, titled Undo It!, and T. Colin Campbell, originally a co-founder of ACLM, and author of The China Study, which was his introduction for the general public to whole foods, plant-based nutrition, written for the general public, but complete with all the references to a lifetime of peer-reviewed research. More recently, Campbell published another remarkable book, The Future of Nutrition.
The work of Dean Ornish blows me away, and I recommend his book Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases. It is undoubtedly one of the most complete and readable books on the reversal and prevention of most chronic diseases with Lifestyle Medicine, including diet, exercise, meditation, relaxation, sleep hygiene, and healthy relationships. It all flows naturally from a 40-year track record of medical research and a wonderful ability to explain it all in understandable terms. His work, in many ways the foundation that laid the groundwork for the development of Lifestyle Medicine as we know it today. As I reported in an earlier piece, I was shocked recently to hear him say in one presentation that he took the Covid “vaccine,” when it is crystal clear that with a healthy lifestyle like he practices and is teaching others, our natural immune system should be in great shape, plus there are ample early treatments available. There was no medical evidence that these vaccines could ever work, including the failure of finding any AIDS vaccine and the miserable failure of flu vaccines, which are entirely worthless. There is even the drug-free protocol of Dr. Nandita Shah at SHARAN India, and there was research in BMJ to say that people on plant-based diets had a 73% reduced risk of “moderate to severe” Covid outcomes. In other words, there is a level of cognitive dissonance at work here that I find hard to comprehend, but such seems to be a sign of the times.
Then there was T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., who also made a presentation to acknowledge the receipt of his lifestyle achievement award. His presentation came before Ornish, which in a way makes sense, for his nutrition research was the precursor to the whole development of lifestyle medicine, although a lot of these things developed in parallel. Campbell (88) had planned to come to Orlando in person, but he and his wife had just returned from another conference in Arizona for his own T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, which offers its course through e-Cornell. He developed his work over four decades before publishing it in popular form (with complete references included) as The China Study in 2007, just when Cornell canceled his nutrition course without even warning him. The reason was apparent; his finding that milk does not do a body good goes against the grain for a land-grant university that is beholden to agribusiness. A friend of mine who is a biochemical engineer went to Cornell and was signed up for that class in 2007 when it was canceled. He promptly went out and bought the book.
Neither Campbell nor Ornish presented in person, but via video conference, in Campbell’s case because, after returning from their conference, he and his wife both felt a bit under the weather, and, you guessed it, tested positive for Covid-19. In both cases, their experience was relatively mild, but it was a valid reason not to attend in person. The Campbells, however, different from Ornish, were not vaccinated. At least he understood the meaning of his work on nutrition, and that the harm to the immune system of the interference by the “vaccine,” even aside from the possible adverse reactions, was incompatible with his chosen lifestyle. And they did fine, as did all of my unvaccinated friends.
Campbell ended his address by talking about this cognitive dissonance in the lifestyle medicine community, and pointing out that the American College of Lifestyle Medicine would never get very far unless they put lifestyle before medicine. In contrast, the current system treats lifestyle as an optional extra.
Campbell’s entire body of work emphasizes a holistic (he’s no linguist, and he spells it wholistic, but I forgive him) concept of nutrition. The idea is that we know animal proteins promote tumor growth, and we know that we don’t need nearly as many fats as we traditionally assumed. He concludes that the ideal mix of nutrition rests on a wide variety of inputs, the colors of the rainbow, as long as they are whole (i.e., minimally processed) plant-based foods. Roughly, you should get your calories 80% from unrefined carbohydrates, 10% from (plant) proteins, and 10% from fats, as they come naturally, e.g., in pulses, etc. We can get the entire range of nutrients by having such a varied intake, and arguably only vitamins D3 and B12 may need supplementation because they are hard to get in sufficient amounts through nutrition. Since I also practice this nutrition style, I laughed when all the research about Covid and D3 started coming out, for that was already completely second nature to me. When I dealt with Covid myself in early 2021, I immediately upped my daily intake of D3 to 5,000 iu from 2,000 for the first week, and by the time I got my test results back, I was already over it. Another friend who is a concentration camp survivor was 87 when he had Covid, and he lives relatively healthy, and he also was over it in five days, just like I did myself. But I digress.
The essence of Campbell’s critique is that the materialistic, reductionist mode of reasoning that is imparted with medical education flies in the face of the more holistic, whole systems type of thinking, and the terrain theory of disease. Medicine simply invents disease and raises hypochondriacs, who come to a doctor all trained to think that for every ill, there is a pill, and the doctors know which side their bread is buttered, so they prescribe the pills. We’ll need a new type of healthcare that actually cares for health first. The conflict could not be more apparent than what was on display here. Ornish nominally practices what he preaches, but can still not let go of his medical conditioning, and Campbell really gets it, and I am sure he will happily consult a doctor if he needs to, but will doubtlessly see through most of the faulty reasoning and come to his own conclusions as to when the body is in need of some extra support.
I remember a few years ago when he broke a bone playing tennis, and his surgeon was blown away by the rapid healing of his then 84-year-old patient.
So there you have it. The country is seeking alternative healthcare formats, and at the moment, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is too beholden to the medical-industrial complex. We need the emergence of a non-GMO lifestyle medicine in which the natural healing ability of the body comes first. Overall, healthcare spending can probably be cut in half with healthy lifestyles, and the use of medications can be minimized to probably a small fraction of what it is today. Freedom Healthcare is one organization I have associated myself with, and I am getting increasingly involved in helping to develop their development into a national alternative.
Since the benefits of a healthy lifestyle will reduce the need for medical interventions, in the long run, and with growing numbers, a group of such people should present a greatly reduced insurance risk so that at some point really, only reinsurance is needed for the any serious illnesses. You have to start somewhere.