MDNews - Greater Boston

HOSPITAL FEATURE Nourish Health With Food For Life BY N OW, T H E O B E S I T Y epidemic a nd t he accompanying increase in the occurrence of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and common cancers have become old news. How is the healthcare system responding to this crisis? "We don't have a healthcare system," says Mona Sigal, MD. "We have a sick care system of the first order." Dr. Sigal ought to know; she has been practicing medicine for more than 26 years. As a board-certified emergency physician, she has seen firsthand what chronic disease in crisis mode looks like. Mona Sigal, MD 10 | Greater Boston MD NEWS I MDNEWS.COM "Very early on in my career, I became extremely interested in the connection between disease and lifestyle. I began to realize that much of the pathology I learned about in medical school and residency, and later saw in practice, was very much lifestyle induced or exacerbated." As an emergency physician, Dr. Sigal came to the realization, that "at best, I was putting out fires. But I wasn't really making a difference in anyone's life. If patients survived to go home, they just returned to their old ways of eating and living." And they kept coming back to the emergency department — only worse with each time. While staying on top of her emergency medicine career, Dr. Sigal educated herself as much as possible about the diseaselifestyle connection. The more she read and researched, the clearer it became: Of all lifestyle measures, nutrition seemed to be the key. And so began a journey into medical nutrition education and the science behind it. "Two facts became strikingly obvious: I needed to change course. And I needed to become an educator," says Dr. Sigal. But the world around her also began to change. Just a few years ago, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine was founded as an offshoot of the American College of Preventive Medicine. "As much as I was educating myself through reading and conferences, it became clear that if I wanted to dedicate my work to a different way of practicing medicine, I needed to change careers," she says. In 2007, Dr. Sigal left emergency medicine to pursue nutrition and lifestyle medicine full time. "There is no formal residency or fellowship training in lifestyle medicine, yet some programs are under way, particularly in California," Dr. Sigal says. "But the direction is clearly shifting in medicine. The scientific evidence is overwhelming, and there is no denying it anymore: We must address the medical issues we face in practice with a completely new mindset." T he e duc a t ion a l jou r ne y i s exciting enough. PHOTOS COURTESY OF NHWFFL Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine Center on the North Shore Founded by Mona Sigal, MD

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