The Future of Medicine with James Maskell

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In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest James Maskell lays out the blueprint for the future of medicine and the roles functional medicine and technology play in it.

James is the host of the Functional Forum – a monthly meet up that streams live for functional medicine and integrative medicine practitioners. James is also the host of the critically acclaimed Evolution of Medicine Summit – a free worldwide event held online featuring experts and innovators on the cutting edge of creating sustainable change in healthcare. The next Evolution of Medicine Summit will run September 21-28, 2015!

Main Questions Asked:

Can you tell us about your Evolution of Medicine Summit and some of the speakers that will be featured?
What technologies are changing the face of healthcare and might benefit our listeners in their everyday lives?

Key Points Made by James:

Functional medicine is the future of primary care. There’s not a lot of value given in primary care as it is today. You go in and it’s either drugs or surgery and there’s certainly no empowerment. There are better solutions for chronic diseases in functional medicine but it does require that the patient participate.
There are evolutionary concepts around like the Paleo Diet, health technology, and the evolutionary forces within the body like the microbiome.
We have a profoundly reactive system. We don’t do anything until it goes wrong. A successful chronic disease management system has to be very pro-active.
At this year’s Summit, we’re talking about health care from scratch.
What we see is the combination of evolved practitioners who are doing functional medicine and integrative medicine combined with the power of technology to scale education, nutrition and some of these other areas.
Bucky Fuller said, “You don’t change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things you have to start a new system or create system that makes the old system obsolete.” I think that that is a better strategy for us in trying to build a chronic disease management system that actually works.
We have some fan favorites coming back to the Summit this year like Chris Kresser, Dr. Perlmutter, Kelly Brogan, Dr. Hyla Cass, Dr. Nicholas Gonazalez and Tosca Reno.
We’ve seen patients bring their doctors up to speed. In a situation when someone moves from being unhealthy to healthy without drugs or without surgery there is typically a moment where doctors go “What just happened there? What are you doing?”
I hope the Evolution of Medicine Summit would be the kind of resource (to share with your doctor) because it’s free and you can watch it from anywhere in the world.
We need a lot more functional doctors. We need one for every 500 people.
There’s a technology that I really like. It’s an app called MyMee that helps you track your diet. The greatest thing about this is your practitioner is getting it in real time. Active tracking is a powerful force in changing behaviour.
MyMee lets your health coach send a gentle reminder to you to track your meal information. It creates a much stronger connection between the practitioner and the patient.
The Functional Forum is going to be this cross-section of technology and functional medicine that’s going to be the driving force that’s going to evolve medicine more quickly, and why we’re so keen to feature technologies that we feel really change the game.
To everyone listening, you’re in the right place. You’ve got a good mentor here. Developing community is important to really make sure you can maintain whatever changes consistently.