Dr. Will Cole, functional medicine specialist

This week, Rabbi Rami speaks with Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner based in Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Inflammation Spectrum: Find Your Food Triggers and Reset Your System.

Despite how much Americans spend on health care, we don’t rate high in health, happiness or longevity. Functional medicine, a newer approach that can complement traditional Western medicine, may be able to boost those ratings. In addition to spending a lot more time with patients than traditional doctors, functional medicine practitioners also aim to quantifying health with lab tests and optimize nutrition with lifestyle changes.

“There is a difference between health span and life span,” Dr. Cole notes. The goal with functional medicine isn’t just to increase life span but also to stretch that health span out, so our bodies do not give out long before the rest of us does.

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