We Can’t Medicate Our Way Out Of A Lifestyle-Driven Epidemic

Chronic disease keeps rising even as medicine advances, and we’re asking the wrong system to solve the wrong problem. 

We open up about the false choice between being “pro meds” or “pro plants,” and show how a smarter path blends life-saving treatments with upstream lifestyle changes that actually move the needle. From heart disease to type 2 diabetes and severe mental illness, we share where medication is non-negotiable, and where daily habits do the heavy lifting that pills can’t.

We walk through the real drivers of today’s health crisis: ultra-processed food environments, sedentary work, eroded sleep, chronic stress, and weaker social ties. 

Biology responds to inputs, and when those inputs are off, biology wins. You’ll hear why primary care is overwhelmed by behavior-driven conditions, why a system built for acute care buckles under chronic needs, and how policy and urban design can nudge healthier defaults without blaming patients. Then we bring it home with practical steps you can control: building routines around whole-food plant-forward eating, movement, sleep, stress relief, and community, while using indicated medications as allies, not enemies.

We also share a mindset tool you can use today: projection. Look at your choices through the eyes of your future self or your younger self to shrink fear and cut through delay. That reframing helped us tackle a multi-year athletic goal and can help you start a habit you’ve postponed, whether that’s cooking more at home, walking daily, or finally getting consistent with sleep. The takeaway is simple and powerful: act early when change is easier; if it’s later, increase the dose of healthy behaviors and let medicine support you. 

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Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules 

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome back to season three of the podcast. This year's gonna be amazing. We'll be talking about all of the different pillars of lifestyle medicine from nutrition to exercise to stress to sleep and everything in between. Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome back to another episode. Today I want to talk about something a little uncomfortable about medication. Now, the weird part about being on social media and promoting lifestyle medicine is that people automatically think that I am anti-modern medicine or anti-medication. Now, my goal with lifestyle medicine is simply to help integrate lifestyle medicine into our modern healthcare system, not to replace it. Because weirdly, I've gotten kind of backlash from both communities, the lifestyle medicine community and the modern medicine or conventional medicine community. I am not trying or claiming that medication are not useful. I mean, imagine what we would do without modern medication in patients that have heart failure, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, problems that cause anywhere from a third to a fifth of our mortality. And in patients that have done everything, including lifestyle change. Now, what I'm doing here with my platform is promoting lifestyle medicine, meaning talking about all of the different pillars of lifestyle medicine and how they can help prevent and in some cases reverse chronic disease. Not pretending that plant-based diets are going to help heal broken bones. They can absolutely help support the healing process. But the goal is to apply lifestyle medicine in adequate dose to adequate chronic diseases that haven't had been shown to respond to lifestyle medicine. And we already know that about 70 to 80 percent of visits to a primary care physician are related directly to medical conditions impacted by the choices that we make every single day. So my goal here is simply to see have we done everything that we can with our lifestyles to either avoid the burden of chronic disease, avoid medication, or avoid higher doses of multiple medications. We know that people who prioritize lifestyle medicine take less medication, and if they are to require some, they'll take less less higher doses, so they'll have less interactions with other medications when they actually need it. Having this extreme view that it has to be either one or the other, is not just unhelpful, it's actually probably harmful. Now, I prescribe medication every day to patients that have done everything that they can, but still suffer from either bad genetics or from interventions that were done too late. Now, keep in mind that a lot of these chronic diseases, once they've evolved for 7, 10, 15 years, they've caused irreversible damage. And then if we decide to fight biology by resisting or refusing medication, biology will win. And not only will quality of life be shortened, there's a high probability that your quantity and the number of years that you live will be shortened as well. So today I want to talk about the burden of medication. Makes us feel uncomfortable to say it out loud, but is really important to discuss. We're one of the most heavily medicated societies in history, and yet we are still one of the most unhealthy. The rates of obesity they keep climbing, mental health disorders now impact more people than ever, and chronic diseases they show up not only earlier in life, but in younger patients. And this raises a serious question. We have more meds, more technology, more specialists, more imaging, more medical knowledge than ever. But why are we still getting sicker and sicker? So this episode is not anti-medicine, it's not anti-medication, it's about being honest about the solutions that we have to put on the table. Lifestyle medicine is one of them, and I'll be honest, a lot of people they simply don't want to change, or they've not yet been convinced that changing will either be one feasible or two will offer benefits that they're looking for. So that's not what explains the higher rates of chronic disease. So we can't blame genetics for dramatic rises in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety, or autoimmune conditions. Something else has changed. Now that something else is our environment and our food system, the way we work changed, the way we sleep has changed, the amount of movement that we do day in, day out has changed. Our stress levels have changed, and even our social structures have changed. We never evolved to be sitting at a desk all day, and we never evolved to eat ultra-processed foods multiple times per day. Never evolved to live in constant low-grade stress, and we never evolved to be disconnected from our community. Unfortunately, when biology meets our modern environment, biology reacts. You know, biology always wins. Medications, they save lives, uh, advanced surgical techniques save lives, emergency care saves lives, and modern medicine does incredible things every single day. And I've been a doctor now for almost 20 years, seeing with my eyes the wonders of our modern medical system. Now, if you have heart disease, you need medicines to live a healthier and longer life. And if you choose to not take them, that's on you. But unfortunately, you may end up just being aesthetic. And if you have diabetes already and it's been there long enough that you cannot reverse it, type 2 diabetes, for example, medications matter for you. If you have type 1 diabetes, that's not your fault. And medications matter for you too. You will die if you don't take them. And if you already have been diagnosed with cancer, you understand that medications matter. And even with severe mental illness, medications also save lives. But the truth is that we cannot medicate our way out of a lifestyle-driven epidemic. Medications are great to treat downstream consequences, complications of chronic diseases that have been left unchecked for too long. Medications won't fix the upstream cause, or what people like to call online, the root cause. Now, meds can lower blood sugar and blood pressure and cholesterol, and they can improve symptoms and help reduce the burden of risk factors, but they don't change the environment that created the problem in the first place. And expecting doctors to fix that is not only unfair to doctors, it's unfair to medicine, and it's unfair to patients. So people all ask me, what's the big deal? No, the big deal with our lifestyle choices is that our healthcare system right now is overwhelmed by chronic diseases. Like I said, 80% of visits in primary care are related directly to medical conditions that are impacted by the choices that we make every single day. Now, unfortunately, this burden that chronic disease places on our healthcare system, it means that patients that have real medical needs, they wait months for tests, months to see specialists. And some of my patients wait weeks and months just to have an appointment with me. And this is our daily reality. My own patients will wait months to get an appointment with me, which means that when I see them, they've accumulated sometimes five or six complaints, knowing that they're gonna want to go through them all, otherwise, they wait months for more appointments. And when I see them and I order tests, they wait even longer. Now, this isn't the doctor's fault. It's not acceptable, and operating this way is not sustainable. And chronic disease crowds out the care that people need for acute care, and it consumes time and money and energy and human resources, and the strain on the patient is enormous, the strain on their family is enormous, and the strain on providers is often worse. All of this strains the entire system. And the problem is not about blaming anyone, it's about simple math. A system that was designed for acute care can't survive in this storm of being overwhelmed by chronic disease. Lifestyle medicine has to be part of the solution. Not the only solution, but a core solution that needs to be integrated into our modern healthcare system. We need to tackle and to fight against the chronic disease epidemic before chronic diseases have been there so long that they create irreparable damage. And the battle must be fought at multiple different levels. Has to be fought at the government level, where policies must prioritize health. Healthier food environments in schools and hospitals and less reliance on cheap, convenient, ultra-processed foods. Greater subsidies for whole foods, for nutritious foods, and even just urban designs in our communities that better support walking, cycling, social connection. And our communities should be designed to support health by default. And the healthy choice should feel normal and convenient, not difficult. Our environments are they need to be built to nudge us towards healthy choices. Now, built environments, they shape behaviors, our food environment will shape behaviors, and even our social environments will do the same. Changing is not always about willpower, it's also about exposure and opportunity. Now, some people call it luck. Luck is opportunity meeting preparedness, and being prepared and having the opportunity is something that we can actually have control over. But system change alone is not enough. And here the conversation gets a little bit harder because system change, policy change, and community design matters. But all of these alone are not enough. At the individual level, we have to accept a difficult truth. And I say that all the time if you continuously fight biology, biology will win. Now, I would I would never say I told you so to a patient that all of a sudden gets diagnosed with a chronic disease, but I'd be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge the frustration of watching my patients suffer from preventable and lifestyle-driven diseases. Now, for years I watched my patients suffer from chronic diseases that progress, that create damage, that create complications, that requires medication, while they resist any meaningful change. And I don't think that's because people are lazy. I don't think it's because they don't care. It's because changing is hard. And modern life constantly pulls you towards the unhealthy choice in the opposite direction of health. So real change has to occur on every level. The micro level, which is the individual, needs to change, the meso level, which means the community needs to change, and the macro level, talking about policies and systems. And all of these three levels matter and none of them will work in isolation. Now, even if the governments change, even if policies improve and communities are now perfectly designed for health, you can still lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. And change must ultimately come from you. There's no law or policy that can force you to go to sleep earlier or to move more. And there's no medical guideline that can force you to eat nourishing foods, and no doctor can force consistency. Being healthy is built through daily decisions, boring decisions, unsexy decisions, but decisions that you repeat on a daily basis. When those decisions they align with biology, something very remarkable happens. Things heal, energy improves, your blood markers will improve, your symptoms get better, and even your confidence in making other changes gets better. Like I said, changing is hard, and whether it's our diet or our physical activity or simply being consistent with our sleep schedule, anything other than our usual routine that we're used to is usually met with resistance. And when we step outside of our comfort zone, our minds will almost always respond with self-doubt. I can even hear my own voice in my head saying, Is it really worth it? Can I really do this? Do I really want to do something as challenging as that right now in this phase of my life? I'm so busy, my kids are getting older. We all have that voice that starts to question our abilities and the timing of change and even our readiness. Now, the vast majority of the time, that voice is not warning us about real danger, but just protecting us against feeling discomfort. Now, there's this biological phenomenon that we call hermesis. Now, hermesis simply refers to a biological principle or a concept where a low dose of a stressor triggers a beneficial adaptive response. Now, in simple terms, it's the idea that a little challenge will just make the entire system stronger. So when I feel that self-doubt or hesitation creeping in, I use simple tools that I've learned through my medical teachings, tools that can help me confront change or even confront that voice that plays in my head. Now, one of these tools is projection. And this tool isn't for everyone and could actually cause symptoms of anxiety or panic if it's used incorrectly in the wrong person. So that's my disclaimer. Now, when I want to change something, I imagine myself either far into the future or I project myself in my younger years, and I ask myself this question: how would that version of me see this moment? I'll give you an example. Years ago, I asked my wife if she wanted to dedicate years to training for ninja warrior competitions and maybe even aim to qualify for the world ninja championships. Now, at the beginning, she laughed at my idea. I kind of chuckled at it too. It felt too big, it felt demanding and kind of unreasonable to dedicate years of our lives hoping to someday qualify for the world ninja championships. But then we projected ourselves forward into the future. When we imagined being 60s, we actually talked about it. Being in our 60s, sitting down together and simply watching old videos or looking at old pictures of ourselves climbing and competing and falling. Now, slowly but surely our mindset started to shift. And the stress of training and long drives to competitions and bruised hands, all of those stressors suddenly felt much smaller. Now, what felt heavy was the idea of looking back and realizing that we had never tried. We had never tried conquering something that we were very passionate about. The regret of letting that fear decide for us ate us alive. So we committed. And I remember our first competition. We were so nervous. From about 2018 to 2024, we trained, we competed at more than 20 ninja warrior events, and we finally qualified and stood on the stage of three consecutive World Ninja Championships in Vegas, Orlando, and California in 22, 23, and 2024. And we drove 10 hours to Montreal to compete and 10 hours to come back. We even flew across the US. We fell off obstacles. I tore my quad muscle partially, but we got back up. We took pictures, took videos, and collected a whole bunch of memories that we'll carry with us for the rest of our lives. Now, the best part of all of this journey was actually seeing my daughter's eyes light up as they watched their mom be a superhero and tackle obstacles that only a few mothers dared to try. And that same tool, projection, either projecting yourself in the past or projecting yourself in the future, I still use it and it still guides my decisions to this day. If you're thinking about getting healthier, uh or trying a new habit or a new hobby, picking up a paintbrush or learning to sculpt or dusting off that old woodworking equipment in your garage, try projecting yourself forward into the future. Would your future self thank you for taking that leap? Then even project yourself backward into the past. And would the younger version of you be proud of the person that you chose to become today? Most of the time, the real risk isn't failing. It's realizing that years later you never gave yourself the chance to try. And I'm not the type of person who lives with regret. But unfortunately, in my line of work, I see regret every single day. And some mental health issues are born from regret, and a lot of physical health conditions as well. Changes that were always put on the bag burner or on hold for later tend to creep up and cause issues that are now irreversible. Now, I think most people know what types of foods or behaviors are healthy, what's good and what's not good for us. I don't think it's necessarily education or information that's lacking. People have access to all sorts of information online. Hopefully, they'll choose the right ones. So it It's not the info that's missing, it's the how. It's the practical tips and tricks that people can put or integrate into their lives to make small steps towards healthier behaviors. Even small changes compound over time. Now, I personally think that mindset is one of the main pillars of helping to facilitate change, and mindset around conviction and connecting deeply with why you want to change and the possible benefits that you'll have out of changing, and the mindset of building confidence that if you decide to change, you'll be able to sustain it over time. Now, this episode wasn't about mindset, and I'll talk about that in another future episode, but about talking that lifestyle medicine doesn't need to replace modern medicine. They can work together. But lifestyle medicine needs an adequate dose of behavior to trigger sustainable but also significant change. And if you change too late for a lot of the chronic diseases that plague our modern medical system, sometimes it's too little too late. These chronic diseases, to have a chance to be reversed, need either lifestyle interventions very early in the process of their development, or they'll require a higher dose of lifestyle interventions down the road, more exercise, an even better diet that's optimal and on point. But sometimes it's just simply too late. We know that people who have chronic diseases that go unchecked for decades, they cause damage, and then medications, they're indicated and they're necessary to help people get their lives back. My goal is to act before that happens. And although most of my content, my platforms bombard you with information trying to help make sense of all of the contradictory claims that you see online, I still understand that the biggest part of changing is knowing how. Some people live their whole lives in denial of where their decisions may lead. And I hate saying I told you so to patients, but it does wear help professionals down. Seeing patients that are constantly making bad choices, knowing where they lead. A lot of different things can be true at the same time when it comes to integrating lifestyle medicine with the beauties and marvels of modern medicine to your life. Cool. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you at the next episode. Peace. Hey everyone, go check out my website, plantbased.com, to find free downloadable resources. And remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr.Jules Cormier and on YouTube at Plantbased Doctor Jewels.