This futuristic post envisions a medical system that focuses on wellness, prevention, and treatment of root causes - one that brings together food, farming, and medicine in a system where local farmers grow quality foods for local clinics to prescribe in home-based healing. Such a system does not currently exist.
Yet, regenerative farming does exist. Lifestyle medicine exists. And more patients are using food in treatment protocols. As more physicians use diet and lifestyle as treatments and more farmers grow to fill the increasing demand for high-quality foods, a more relational, community-based system of health becomes possible. As agriculture and medicine undergo major shifts, clinics, homes, and fields become an integrated system of medicine and a powerful support for Living Well Locally.
Although food is not the only element, it does play a critical role in correcting metabolic dysfunction and in supporting the body’s innate capacity for the self-healing process that can reverse many chronic conditions.
The mission of Living Well Locally (LWL) is to encourage a rethinking of what is possible in health and wellness, what that might look like at the community level, and what the economic, social, and environmental impacts might be.
Here we explore the question: Could clinic, home, and field become an integrated pathway to wellness?