The Most Important Recent Medical Innovation is not a Pill

Can you name the most significant recent innovation in health care? It’s probably not what you think.

Before I share the answer, let me tell you what it's not. Medical innovations are important, but they have problems. First off, they haven't been that effective. Some fields like cancer treatment and psychiatric treatment have hardly progressed in recent years. In other fields, doctors may succeed in extending the patient's life, but at a cost. No one wants to spend the last years of their life in chronic pain and unable to move. This paper has some of the details on why medicine hasn't really been great at increasing lifespan and health span, at least since the invention of things like vaccines and antibiotics about a century ago.

So what does work? The technical term is something called peer to peer mentorship. I like to think of it as community support and coaching.

Another way of saying this is that we learn how to be healthy from people who have already been able to make themselves healthy. This is why health coaching in particular is such a revolutionary field.

One person who is leading the way in bringing this revolution to people in the United States is James Maskell, a recent guest on Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s fabulous podcast.

When Maskell started his group programs for men, he wasn’t necessarily trying to help them with their health. He was fulfilling a need in his own life to be around mature, supportive men who could discuss their emotions in a safe space.

But what happened when that space was created was that people who had been struggling for years with an illness or with an addiction or even just with losing a bit of weight, suddenly saw improvements.

Why did this space work so well? In the discussion Maskell goes into some detail about the difference between an expert and a peer.

Experts are important. Experts like doctors can prescribe needed medicines and can play other important roles.

But sometimes experts can get in the way of healing. Referring to studies or to medical literature or just making a decree from “on high” can be a very alienating way to communicate. 99 times out of 100, the doctor hasn’t been through what the patient is going through and often the doctors I know are themselves struggling with their own illnesses. “If this doctor can’t cure himself, how can he help me?” That’s a question many people ask themselves.

Peer mentorship on the other hand has a different dynamic. Maskell describes a situation that happens in his online groups. they would start a Zoom call with a new cohort, and everyone’s video would be off. They don’t know each other, people are hesitant to share their experience. But when someone starts sharing, suddenly everyone’s video comes on. People hear themselves in the other person’s experience. it resonates. They connect. They start to think things like “Well this person’s just like me. If they can do it, I can do it.” And that’s empowering.

Despite our diversity, humans are pretty similar. If we have health issues, chances are very high that those issues are shared by other humans around us. Because our modern world tends to isolate us we can miss that dynamic. But when we bring people together in groups, magic happens. People can learn from others who not only understand their problem academically, but have actually solved it themselves, practically, in their own lives.

In the discussion, Maskell pays particular attention to the role of a health coach, and naturally as a health coach I was pleased to hear that. But even coaches will have their limitations - first hand experience is always more powerful, and a single health coach can’t have been through every possible illness - at least one hopes not!

The power of the group is that there are always people who have been through what you have been through within that group. Using these principles, people like Dr. David Unwin in the UK have been able to reverse chronic disease in a huge percentage of their patient population. Dr. Chatterjee refers to this model as the future of medicine and health care.

This conversation and others like it are inspiring me to redouble my efforts to help people with chronic illness. I’d really like to scale up my group work and I’d love it if you or someone you know might be willing to be part of the next group.

What I’ve been finding as I take these groups forward is that people who have been struggling for years with weight loss, fitness levels, or just getting a good night’s sleep are able to succeed in ways they never have before. The report dramatic improvements and not just in health - relationships, career, overall happiness and even spiritual wellbeing - these all seem to improve dramatically when we use these tools. 

The thing I like about this approach is that it starts with some fundamental truths. First, any transformation has to start with you. Your decisions, your life, your transformation. Second, there is no magic bullet. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But third, we can learn from those who've already done it. I believe that putting these three principles into practice can change any life. 

If you'd like to be part of the magic, do let me know. Click this link and we'll set up a time to talk.