Lifestyle Medicine, and Common Cause: Even Causes Have Causes

As I write this, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the American College of Preventive Medicine have made considerable progress toward a prenuptial agreement that may allow for the mutual rewards of marriage in the foreseeable future.  As I write this, those two entities along with the Institute for Functional Medicine have made considerable progress toward the drafting and submission of a joint manuscript elucidating the perhaps overlooked architecture of our native alignment.

The former endeavor is, ultimately, much about the details of practice, and the practicalities of administration.  The latter is all about principles.  The first principle underlying a mutual devotion to causes is this: even causes have causes.

Preventive Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, and Functional Medicine all profess to target the true causes of disease, and there is a valid basis for each such claim.  The specific contentions of each enterprise are the substance of that manuscript now in the works; it’s not my place here to preempt those better arguments, by better sources.