Why I'm Doing This: A New Vision for Healthcare
For too long in my career, I’ve practiced the way I was trained: a largely reactive approach, bouncing from patient to patient identifying symptoms, and then treating disease when it appears - like an assembly line. The system is designed to diagnose and manage symptoms rather than prevent illness from occurring in the first place. It’s a model that benefits from sickness rather than health. It wasn’t until I got my second fellowship in integrative medicine that the shift began to occur.
I began to realize that it wasn’t just about me, but the entire system. What if we could shift from a reactive healthcare system to one that is predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory? What if we could empower individuals to take control of their health rather than waiting until they have a diagnosis?
I believe we’re standing at the tipping point in the current model of healthcare delivery. Advances in multi-omic testing, AI, and drug discovery, have given us an unprecedented ability to understand our health at a molecular level and treat diseases more precisely. We now have the tools to predict disease before symptoms arise, optimize health rather than just manage disease, and personalize medicine down to the individual level.
A Broken System Needs a New Approach
But there’s a major obstacle: the current medical system is not built for this kind of care. Physicians are trained to memorize, and then apply pattern recognition to treatment. They are inundated with administrative tasks, and spend most of their time with documentation to justify the cost of care, spending less and less time at the patients’ side over time. Most healthcare interactions revolve around short-term problem-solving rather than long-term health planning. Insurance companies often won’t cover tests that could provide early warning signs of chronic diseases because they are designed to pay for treatment, not prevention. It’s a vicious cycle that has led to poor research study design and a growing mistrust from patients and physicians.
This is why I believe in physician-guided direct-to-consumer health solutions—not as a replacement for traditional medicine, but as a necessary shift to put power back into the hands of individuals. If you can access advanced metabolic, genetic, epigenetic, and microbiome tests without waiting for a doctor’s or an insurer’s approval, you gain the ability to make more informed decisions about your health.
Beyond Genetics: A Systems Biology Approach
I find that many people think their health destiny is written in their genes. If their parents had heart disease, cancer, or diabetes, they assume it’s only a matter of time before they do too. But that’s a false narrative, genetics is only one small piece of the puzzle. The way your genes are expressed is shaped by many factors, including your epigenome, microbiome, metabolic network, and environment—all of which are modifiable.
Considering these other factors is one of the central principles of systems biology and precision medicine: rather than looking at isolated biomarkers, we need to examine the complex network interactions between different biological systems.
To put these complicated topics more simply, we might say:
- Your gut microbiome also influences your immune system, metabolism, and even brain function.
- Your epigenome determines which genes get turned on or off based partly on lifestyle factors like stress, diet, sleep, and environmental exposures.
- Your metabolic health can determine and predict your risk for chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
By understanding and optimizing these systems, we can go beyond treating disease and instead work toward living more joyful and fulfilling lives. Because when we are healthier, we are happier.
A Future Where Health is in Your Hands
I’m doing this because I believe the future of healthcare lies in empowering you with the knowledge and tools you need to take control of your health. The healthcare system isn’t going to change overnight, but that doesn’t mean we have to wait for it to catch up. If you have read up to this point, you can understand that I’m sick of it, and you probably are too. So, let’s go on this journey together.
With the right data, the right insights, and the right interventions, we don’t have to wait until we’re sick to take action. We can make choices today that shape our long-term health, resilience, and longevity.
This is just the beginning. In the next posts, I’ll explore how multi-cancer early detection (MCED), aging biology, personalized health strategies, and direct-to-consumer testing are reshaping the future of medicine—and what this means for you.
The future of healthcare is not just about living longer—it’s about living healthier, stronger, and more in control of your own biology than ever before. And I’m here to help make that happen.
Let’s build this future together.