Each patient brings their own unique background, experience, and beliefs about their illness to the discussion with their health practitioner. What has become clear is that the success of the outcome from therapy provided by the practitioner is partly dependent on the nature of the communication established between the patient and practitioner. The success of this communication is context-dependent and follows from the recognition by the practitioner that each patient is an N-of-1 experience requiring personalization of communication to promote optimal outcomes.

In order for this conversation between patient and practitioner to achieve optimal success, three broad questions are important to consider in the establishment of the relationship. These are the following:

1. In the 20th century, we discovered how primordial matter, over 14 billion years, evolved into humans. How does the patient connect this new understanding of being human in terms of this cosmic evolution to the patient’s belief system?
2. What tools/techniques/understanding can a practitioner bring to the sacred encounter with a patient that incorporates the larger scope of illness that will accelerate their healing journey?
3. How do we help change the patient’s perception that their illness results from a genetic inevitability to one of their opportunity for self-improvement?

This Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute educational program will explore these important questions from the perspective of leaders from three interconnected disciplines- medicine, biology, and cosmology. The faculty includes:

• Brian Thomas Swimme, Ph.D.- renown Cosmogenesis and author of the book, “Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe”
• Joseph Lamb, M.D.- clinical leader in Functional and Integrative Medicine, and primary researcher in the LIFEHOUSE N-of-1 trial
• Jeff Bland, Ph.D.- nutritional biochemist, and author of the book, “The Disease Delusion”

A dialogue among these three opinion leaders addressing these three questions and their relationship to the creation of successful patient-practitioner communications will be facilitated by Deanna Minich, Ph.D.

This two-hour program is the first for the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute to address this very important and challenging topic of practitioner-patient communications. Effective communication requires a shared context between the practitioner and patient. This context is unique to each patient and needs to be built upon a shared understanding of the health-disease continuum and its relationship to belief systems. This program will focus on identifying a shared context for healing through exploring the patient’s concepts of their health and how it connects to their healing journey.