Personalized Lifestyle Medicine – the Future of Medicine is Here Now!
In my newsletter last week I mentioned that I and just come back from attending a most exciting convention, entitled Personalized Lifestyle Medicine:the Future of Health Care.
The convention was sponsored by Loma Linda University’s Preventive Medicine department.Specifically was from their Lifestyle Medicine department. Loma Linda and Harvard are the only two medical schools in the country with such a department.
The lectures were at very sophisticated level of “medicaleze” and I am going to summarize some of the highlights for you here.
My good friend Jeff Bland, Ph.D. was the lead speaker and he was brilliant as always.
Here is a picture of me (looking relaxed) with Jeff at this convention:
We now know, as I’ve told my patients and readers many times, that our genes are NOT written in stone. We now recognize that a chronic illness comes from the interface of our personal genes with the environment that we surround ourselves with. Genes are turned on and off by our environment.
The newest science of genomics (the study of our genes) has has come to realize the critical importance of what used to be called “Junk DNA”. So-called Junk DNA is DNA that is not organized into chromosomes and just floats around the chromosomes. Scientists did not understand what it was for and so they called it “junk”.
However we now realize that in the “Junk DNA” resides the information that codes for the regulatory regions of our genes. These codes regulate which parts of our DNA is turned on or turned off at a given time. Clearly such regulation is needed! Otherwise if all the genes were on it once, we would have a huge mess of life which each gene trying to express itself at once.
We now know that our Environment communicates with the “Junk DNA”, which then sends its signals to turn on or off i.e. regulate, the genes as they are arranged in our chromosomes.
Specifically, we now realize there is NO ONE GENE that causes a specific disease. Just genes that control the function of our metabolism, and lead to a disease. And this set of genes can be expressed in many different ways, depending on the environment we are in and that we create for ourselves.
What this new science does for us, is to allow us to be in charge of the expression of our genes rather than to be a victim of our genes.
We now have available to all of us the opportunity to find out what our genes are. Many companies are running genetic profiles and individuals can get this done, without even needing doctors’ orders.
Many of my patients are very fearful to let their genetic code be run. They feel that it will give them bad news and tell them how they’re going to die.
Rather, I urge you to realize that understanding your genetic code (called your genome) is not to tell you how you’re going to die, but rather how you need to live in order to optimize and maximize your life so you can easily live healthy to 100 years old.
With this new science, and an appropriate healing practitioner who understands this, you can create the lifestyle you need to live a healthy happy joyous life.
From the Main Journal Article , here is a chart of how we perceive Personalized Lifestyle Medicine and why we need it in our current disease climate :
The trajectory of disease and role for personalized lifestyle medicine.-From article below
The following is a definition of Personalized Lifestyle Medicine from an article entitled Personalized Lifestyle Medicine: Relevance for Nutrition and Lifestyle Recommendations, by my colleagues Jeffrey Bland PhD and Deanna marriage PhD.
“Lifestyle Medicine is a newly developed term that
refers to an approach to medicine in which an individual’s health metrics from point-of-care diagnostics are used to develop lifestyle medicine-oriented therapeutic strategies for improving individual health outcomes in managing chronic disease. Examples of the application of personalized lifestyle medicine to patient care include the identification of genetic variants through laboratory tests and/or functional biomarkers for the purpose of designing patient-specific prescriptions for diet, exercise, stress, and environment.
Personalized Lifestyle Medicine can provide solutions to chronic health problems by harnessing innovative and evolving technologies based on recent discoveries in genomics, epigenetics, systems biology, life and behavioral sciences, and diagnostics and clinical medicine. A comprehensive, personalized approach to medicine is required to promote the safety of therapeutics and reduce the cost of chronic disease. Personalized lifestyle medicine may provide a novel means of addressing a patient’s health by empowering them with information they need to regain control of their health.”
I urge all my patients and readers to join me in using Personalized Lifestyle Medicine to maximize your health and well-being throughout your life.
As I’ve written, in my previous articles, more and more people are suffering for years and years at the end of life with chronic debilitating diseases. As my Alzheimer’s article a few weeks ago showed, billions of dollars are being spent just on the care of these people by their loved ones.
We all need to look at our lifestyles and how they interface with our genome to try to stay healthy until we are ready to die.
The Main Journal Article about Personalized Lifestyle Medicine
The Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute
Jeff Bland’s easy to read article on Chronic Illness
To Learn More About Genetics Sign Up Here
About Dr. Soram Khalsa
As an MD, Dr Soram specializes in Integrative Medicine combining diet, nutrition, acupuncture, herbs and nutrition. Visit Dr Soram’s Healthy Living Store where you’ll find high-quality nutritional supplements:
