Dr. Gabriel’s Reflection from the Integrative Symposium & “What is Wellness”

This past weekend, I attended the Integrative Healthcare Symposium in Manhattan. There, I had the great opportunity to meet and learn from a wide variety of health-conscious physicians, researchers, and authors. While there are many specific insights that I’ll share with you all in the coming weeks, most importantly, the event reaffirmed my approach as a physician.

As individuals, we ultimately have two choices regarding our health. The first and most chosen path by our society is the road of degeneration and rapid aging. In the U.S. today, our healthcare system is a sick-first model, one that has become increasingly profitable as chronic diseases rapidly increase in prevalence. Today, conventional medicine often follows a “watchful waiting” approach - that sees us monitor symptoms and act only when they become more serious. With this approach, patients are never truly healthy and repeatedly sick. As was aptly put - patients’ bodies are increasingly like Netflix accounts - that require repeated “subscriptions,” such as medications like Olympic, GLP-1s, and Immuno-suppressants, to function.

This status quo has resulted in an increased rate of aging and younger generations having lower life expectancies than their parents on average.

The second and less traveled road is one of prevention and regeneration: the conference's ultimate focus and the approach I follow. Rather than accepting the increased rate of aging, this path instead emphasizes that how you age is a choice. My favorite summary of this medical approach was an answer to:

“What is wellness?”

Dr. David Perllemutter responded that wellness is resilience. For us to be “well,” our bodies should be:

• Immunologically resilient

• Metabolically resilient

• Physically resilient

• Mentally resilient

Rather than playing catch-up and treating symptoms, we should aim to become resilient and prevent those symptoms from occurring in the first place. In addition to this preventive approach, which helps reduce the rate of aging, the conference and this path further promote regenerative therapies to restore bodily efficiency.

As our food and environment become increasingly toxic, the need to be resilient is more signifcant than ever. It is up to us to decide what path we take!