WHAT MAKES A GOOD DOCTOR

“A great doctor is more interested in trying to get you off medications than on them. He or she wants to make you healthier overall, not just cure you of whatever problem brought you into the office that day. If doctors would focus on getting patients to eat healthy foods, exercise and quit smoking, it would have a more dramatic effect than all the pills and procedures combined.”

– Robert E. Sallis, M.D., family practitioner, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Fontana, California (AARP Bulletin, 31 Aug 2017)

“With new lifestyle approaches and changes to a healthy diet, this is now possible.”

– Robert Lufkin MD, medical school professor

“I know that lifestyle medicine makes me a better physician. I feel good when I engage a patient in a conversation about their lifestyle – nutrition, sleep, exercise, stress, risky substance use, positive social connection – and what changes, both big and small, in daily habits could help transform their health. It reminds that I didn’t become a doctor simply to prescribe medicine or procedures but to help and heal people. By incorporating lifestyle medicine into my practice, I feel more empowered to truly help and heal patients – and myself.”

– Dr Raquel F. Harrison, emergency medicine physician for Yale New Haven Health (Source: American College of Lifestyle Medicine)