Podcast: Dr. Will Cole
Courtesy of Dr. Will Cole
One of the leading voices in functional medicine talks with Rabbi Rami about chronic inflammation, and why it is time for entirely new approaches to health and wellness.
This week, Rabbi Rami speaks with Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner based in Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Inflammation Spectrum: Find Your Food Triggers and Reset Your System.
Despite how much Americans spend on health care, we don’t rate high in health, happiness or longevity. Functional medicine, a newer approach that can complement traditional Western medicine, may be able to boost those ratings. In addition to spending a lot more time with patients than traditional doctors, functional medicine practitioners also aim to quantifying health with lab tests and optimize nutrition with lifestyle changes.
“There is a difference between health span and life span,” Dr. Cole notes. The goal with functional medicine isn’t just to increase life span but also to stretch that health span out, so our bodies do not give out long before the rest of us does.
Dr. Cole and Rabbi Rami discuss using food as medicine, and how we either feed or fight against our health. (Do not miss the part where they talk about bagels!) They also talk about how inflammation affects not only our own bodies, but ties in to larger issues such as political strife and climate change.
They also explore how inflammation affects anxiety and depression. “Mental health is physical health. The idea that it is two separate things is just not true,” Dr. Cole explains.
Read more about Dr. Cole’s take on this in our story, Calm the Body, Calm the Culture. And for more great conversations, subscribe to our “Essential Conversations” podcast here.
