Preventive medicine has a branding problem. It sounds like a nice-to-have; something layered on top of \u201creal\u201d medicine, for people with time and money to spare. The opposite is closer to the truth.<\/p>\n
Roughly 80% of chronic disease and premature death is avoidable. That figure comes from the OECD\u2019s most recent health data, and it\u2019s worth sitting with for a moment, because it means the overwhelming majority of what fills a cardiology, oncology or orthopaedic clinic did not have to happen. That alone should change how we decide on healthcare spending.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to imagine a genuinely sustainable healthcare system that doesn\u2019t put prevention at its centre, especially with the increasing strain of an ageing and increasingly multimorbid population.<\/p>\n
For an individual, the cost isn\u2019t necessarily financial. It\u2019s the knee that no longer tolerates stairs. The stamina that so quietly disappears, you adjust your life around it without really noticing. It\u2019s watching your independence become negotiable, one small accommodation at a time, until you\u2019re managing a body rather than living in it. Improving your lifestyle now costs a fraction of what it will cost you later.<\/p>\n
Which of these costs are you already paying? And which would you rather save yourself from while you can?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Preventive medicine has a branding problem. It sounds like a nice-to-have; something layered on top of \u201creal\u201d 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\u2019s most recent health data, and it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifestyle-physician.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}