'I Found My People' at Lifestyle Medicine 2023
For: Medscape
That was by far the common refrain I heard this month at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) annual conference in Denver. More than 3200 physicians, health professionals, and health system leaders attended in person or virtually to learn how to incorporate lifestyle medicine into their practices and help patients prevent, treat, and potentially reverse chronic disease.
It wasn't only the learning opportunities that drew us together, but also the belief that our system of healthcare is failing — failing both patients and clinicians trapped in a costly but ineffective model of "sick care" that encourages the management of symptoms with ever-increasing quantities of pharmaceuticals and procedures rather than actually treating the root causes of disease and restoring health.