My wife has a t-shirt that says “What a year this week has been,” and 2020 felt like a challenging, tough millennium.
We’re all taking the lemons we’ve been handed and trying to make lemonade, and for me as a primary care physician, that’s meant changing up a lot of things behind the scenes and delivering care through video visits. Which despite some tech issues has worked pretty well, if like my patients you’ve been able to see your healthcare provider by firing up your laptop or smartphone while staying at home during the pandemic, and not having to leave essential work to travel to a brick-&-mortar office.
Even before 2020 I’d been planning to do more online outreach, as I’d started a functional medicine course with 21st century updates on communicating with patients. The pandemic convinced me that now is the time. Most folks see their doctors a few times a year, and with how quickly medical knowledge is changing, those “touch points” aren’t enough to stay informed.
I started an email list for a select group of my patients, to discuss topics like breakthroughs in sleep medicine, weight loss and nutrition, isometric strength training, and gut and brain health. From the feedback I received, I realized that there’s a huge gap between the rushed visits and prescription writing that conventional medicine offers and the comprehensive discussions on inflammation, gut-brain axis, and lifestyle adjustments that people want and need — it’s the difference between teaching the alphabet and folks being hungry for Shakespeare.
These posts and their insights won’t be medical advice, nor can they take the place of formal consultations with a physician or other healthcare provider. But I hope they get you thinking about taking better care of yourself, and figuring out what that means for you and your particular goals.
At the time of this writing, more than half a million of our fellow Americans are no longer with us because of Covid-19. About a third of us have actually been infected. There’s not one of us who hasn’t been touched by this, and many have been forced to have a hard look at what matters most in our lives.
If health, wellness, and the ability to stay active and vital are a big part of what matters most to you, I hope you’ll find the coming posts to be of value.
P.S. Here’s a PDF that I wished I had as a patient, that I share with all my patients, that can help you make the most out of visits with your own doctor:
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