Daniel A. Monti - Tapestry of Health

WEAVING WELLNESS INTO YOUR
LIFE THROUGH THE NEW SCIENCE OF
INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE

DANIEL A. MONTI, MD and
ANTHONY J. BAZZAN, MD

KALES

PRESS

in association with the

MARCUS INSTITUTE OF INTEGRATIVE HEALTH

Kenneth Kales, Editor and Publisher

Barbara J. Greenberg, Associate Editor

Susan Cane, Assistant Editor

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Interior design by Jennifer Houle

Illustrations by Amy Saidens

Index by Schroeder Indexing Services

Copyright 2020 by Daniel A. Monti and Anthony J. Bazzan

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Monti, Daniel A., author. | Bazzan, Anthony J., author.

Title: Tapestry of health : weaving wellness into your life through the new science of integrative medicine / Daniel A. Monti, MD, Anthony J. Bazzan, MD.

Description: San Diego : Kales Press, [2020] | Includes index. | Summary: Preeminent leaders in the next generation of medicine present an essential guide to integrating multilayered healthcare approaches into one. Transforming the way you feel, think, look and thrive requires a healthcare approach that integrates all aspects of your well-being, including the physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social and nutritional. Doctors Monti and Bazzan lay out, step-by-step, how to gain and maintain long-term vitality by integrating a broad range of restorative medicine, nutritional science, and healthy lifestyle practices. This convergence of time-honored approaches and cutting-edge technologies offers new preventions and cures while maintaining the fundamental principle that the parts cannot be well unless the whole is well. This book is so incredibly timely and important because it helps you understand this new paradigm of health... You, as a patient, play the most important role in this shift as an active participant in behavioral, lifestyle, and dietary interventions so that these changes become woven into your daily life.Sara Gottfried, MD, multiple New York Times bestselling authorProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019053333 (print) | LCCN 2019053334 (ebook) | ISBN 9780979845697 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781733395809 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Integrative medicine.

Classification: LCC R733 .M66 2020 (print) | LCC R733 (ebook) | DDC 610dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053333

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053334

First Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0-9798456-9-7 print edition

ISBN-13: 978-1-7333958-0-9 ebook edition

kalespress.com

San Diego, California

To our patients and their astounding human spirit

The part can never be well unless the whole is well

PLATO

T he medical conditions, diagnoses and treatment plans that we describe in individual patient stories are based on actual cases. The patients names and backgrounds have been changed to protect their privacy. The information in this book is not intended or implied to be a diagnosis, treatment or substitution for consultation with your physician.

W hen Im asked how I came to practice integrative and functional medicine, given that I was educated to be a mainstream physician, researcher and educator, my answer is surprisingly universal.

There are three key drivers. First, I witnessed another wayin my case, a great-grandmother who believed you dont find health in a pill bottle, you architect it with your daily life. Second, I was personally let down by conventional medicine. And third, there was an armful of revolutionary books that demonstrated a more effective way to create health.

This is one of those books.

As with the words and actions of my great-grandmother, when you read this book, you will grow to understand that an entire world of prevention, healing and repair exists through nutrition and lifestyle; that eating whole foods is the foundation of robust health; that you cannot survive without restorative sleepthe foundation upon which health beginsand that regular exercise and a contemplative practice can keep your body humming. All of this points to the need for a careful scientific examination, translated into an actionable plan, that is long overdue.

This book is the result of that kind of understanding, and will challenge you to think creatively and to question dogma. Even as I trained in the mainstream medical system, it occurred to me that something was terribly wrong. On one hand, US healthcare offers unparalleled innovation and scientific advances. On the other, the United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world, which leads to serious, costly and largely preventable diseases and conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, gallstones, stroke, sleep apnea, heart disease and cancer. Clearly, mainstream choices are not improving our health, especially when you consider that lifestyle choices are responsible for 70 percent of the cost of our nations healthcare. If lifestyle is the chief cause of our rising healthcare costs, wouldnt lifestyle medicine make sense as our top priority?

Something else troubled me during my training: The disdain for nutrition and lifestyle approaches to chronic disease. I noted from the scientific literature that dietary and lifestyle approaches for diabetes worked better than medications, yet few physicians (myself included) were sufficiently educated in nutritional intervention or how to guide lifestyle changes. Among my brilliant professors at Harvard Medical School, none were interested in nutrition or lifestyle factors. They were Nobel Laureates who taught classes on genomics, immunology and translational aspects of molecular biology. When asked about lifestyle medicine, they would get pained looks on their faces and suggest perhaps I should consider the School of Public Health. I was confused, because the molecular influence of pharmaceuticals seemed similar to the molecular influence of food, exercise and sleep, yet somehow these approaches were considered less robust, even beneath the rigorous practice of medicine that was espoused in Boston.

Fortunately, the culture of medicine is changing. Medical doctors Daniel Monti and Anthony Bazzan are on the leading edge of changing this paradigm of medicine into something that encompasses true health, rather than simply managing disease. Both of them, like me, were trained in the conventional medical model and became disillusioned with our broken healthcare system. They are leaders in the field: compassionately treating patients, carefully educating the next generation of doctors and conducting rigorous research. They are intimately engaged in improved health in every facet imaginable. Their passion, caring and competence comes through in the book you are holding in your hands.

Dr. Monti completed his medical training at SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine and his residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He is a professor of psychiatry and emergency medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and their founding chair of the nations first Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences department at a medical school. Dr. Monti has authored dozens of medical journal articles, served as editor for medical textbooks, and is a coauthor of Integrative Psychiatry and Brain Health , which is part of the Andrew Weil Integrative Library. His research focuses on increasing quality of life and healing traumatic experiences for patients battling cancer, including through the application of mindfulness and the Neuro Emotional Technique, as described in this book so that anyone with a distressing history can unwind conditional responses. Additionally, Dr. Monti has performed landmark studies on nutritional interventions such as N-acetyl cysteine, a precursor of the master anti-oxidant glutathione, on clinical outcomes ranging from breast cancer to Parkinsons disease.