For most of the twentieth century, genetics was treated as fixed. You inherited a set of risks, and medicine’s job was to manage what showed up. That picture has changed considerably, and it changes what prevention currently means. Genes don’t operate in isolation. Which ones are switched on, and which stay quiet, is continuously influenced […]

Medicine has never advanced faster, and chronic disease has never been more common. Those two facts sitting next to each other should trouble us more than they do. Part of the answer is that we are treating the wrong layer. Conventional medicine is extraordinarily good at acute disease: a broken bone, an infection, an appendix […]

Preventive medicine has a branding problem. It sounds like a nice-to-have; something layered on top of “real” medicine, for people with time and money to spare. The opposite is closer to the truth. Roughly 80% of chronic disease and premature death is avoidable. That figure comes from the OECD’s most recent health data, and it’s […]

Is Lifestyle Medicine actually medicine, or is it wellness advice with a doctor attached? I hear a version of this question often. It’s a fair one. Because unlike in the US, Lifestyle Medicine isn’t yet a formally recognised specialty in Germany, so there’s no established shorthand for what it is. It’s an evidence-based clinical discipline […]

For most of the twentieth century, genetics was treated as fixed. You inherited a set of risks, and medicine’s job was to manage what showed up. That picture has changed considerably, and it changes what prevention actually means. Genes don’t operate in isolation. Which ones are switched on, and which stay quiet, is continuously influenced […]