Our health system is awesome at fixing up sickness, if I have an accident or get an infectious disease, get ear ache or a sore tooth, then it’s good to know that we have world class medical professionals and a system to deal with all of that.

But, let’s face it, our health system is not so awesome at preventing us getting sick, and providing us with the tools to have a great life where we are the best we can be.

Let’s face it, we spend billions on sickness and very little on health.

Let’s face it, we need to change medicine.

I’m a big fan of what has been achieved in medicine. We stand on the shoulders of giants in so many ways – Louis Pasteur, Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, Joseph Lister, Otto Warburg, Watson and Cricks….

We’ve come so far, but each change has been painful and slow.

It took more than 50 years to move on the evidence that smoking kills to doing something about it. It took about the same time for the evidence that asbestos caused lung cancer to doing something about it. Also, in 1846, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis found that hand washing after autopsy of dead mothers reduced neonatal death from sepsis 9-fold. He never got to see his breakthrough as he was ostracised, institutionalised, and in a twist of fate died himself of sepsis.

The time has come for change. Nutrition as medicine is a no brainer. The evidence is already there.

What’s different this time is that we have the crowd. Just like the consumer is demanding a change in regard to single-use plastic bags so to is the consumer now beginning to ask for change in the medical arena. We expect our doctors to understand nutrition and lifestyle medicine. So #letschangemedicine. We don’t have to wait for another 50 years.

Here’s what to do:

Step 1: Watch this TedX talk on the video below – just out by NZ researcher Julia Rucklidge on nutrition and mental health. It’s a game changer.

Step 2: Start making a noise yourself. People want to listen, they will follow!

Step 3: Stand by, we’ve got some bigger announcements coming in the next couple of weeks about how we are going to contribute to #letschangemedicine