There are many different approaches to excellence in health and wellness. Most readers know that medical school did not prepare me for this work in integrative medicine and nutrition, and I had to find it elsewhere (and teach it in medical schools when the opportunity presented itself!).
Not only do you not have to have an MD to achieve excellence, but in some ways you’re at an advantage if you do not, because you have to keep up with wellness (though it is burgeoning as a field) and not with all of medicine.
You can educate yourself in Conferences, many of which are now primarily online.
Note that the hormones, antibiotics, GMOs, chemical cocktails, and neurotoxic pesticides contaminate many processed foods, and some “natural” foods are actually hazardous to your health. Toxic food is making millions of people sick, and is not something we, or the world can afford. Industrialized agriculture is polluting our air and water, treating animals with immense cruelty, and even fueling climate change.
A remarkable series of interviews is now available, recorded April 26-May 4, can educate you too: check out the Food Revolution Summit Empowerment Package here.
Surprising insights from celebrities like Alicia Silverstone and Woody Harrelson, physicians like Mark Hyman, Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn offer candid insights and great ideas about your health: because the time to get informed and take action is NOW. Check it out and sign up here.
There is also the 12 Day diabetes online summit, which is more focused and specific: and probably the easiest actual disease to see measurable results right away, other than high cholesterol, which probably is not a disease, but a risk factor. The diabetes online summit is available online.
You can also undertake more formal training and take a Health & Wellness Coaching Certificate Program; my colleague Rani Polak MD, also a chef, at Harvard has written a Practical Guide to Health & Wellness Coaching Certificate Program: most of the programs here do not have prerequisites, although there are some specifically for health professionals, and they are ones you’ll want to look at too.
Or you can read on your own: for an early look and foundation, see Six Arguments for a Greener Diet, by Michael Jacobson: it doesn’t get the credit it deserves, but it was one of the first calls to action about ecology and nutrition: it takes 698.5 gallons of water to make a single cheeseburger, according to the Sierra Club. In drought-riddled California especially, that’s crazy.
You can now get the entire book free. If you don’t want the book, or just want the 6 arguments but not their detail, here they are:.
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P.S. The Food Revolution Summit features John Robbins, Marion Nestle, JJ Virgin and Raj Patel and tens of thousands of food activists, in the Food Revolution Summit. Listen to it all here.