Those of you who attended our annual conference last year in San Diego don't need me to tell you how special it was.  You felt it, as did I.  I have long lost track of the number of medical conferences I've attended over the years, but no inventory is required to tally those that were more redolent with enthusiasm, hope, passion, and promise.  Exactly none. 

 

The palpable energy of our meeting was in a class of its own in my experience, and with good reason.  Nothing else in all of medicine can advance the human condition as lifestyle medicine can.  Where people live the longest, get sick the least, and most often manage to go peacefully and gently into that good night in the fullness of time- they have neither pharmacotherapy nor advanced medical tech to thank for it.  They have lifestyle, carried along in the salutary currents of Blue Zone culture.

 

The timing of this column is ideal to highlight our upcoming Lifestyle Medicine 2015 conference in Nashville.  If you plan to attend, I look forward to seeing you there.  If you don't, permit me to suggest you reconsider.  The energy you felt (or missed) in San Diego was merely the early coalescence of this mighty, global wave.  Over the intervening year, it has swelled impressively.