Jim Loomis, MD is Medical Director of the Barnard Medical Center, and one of the stars of the blockbuster documentary The Game Changers.
Dr Loomis' journey to plant-based practice for himself and his patients began with a viewing of Forks Over Knives, at a time when his own health was starting to fail.
Once he discovered and benefited personally from Lifestyle Medicine, he began to see that the paradigm of human health he had been taught was seriously flawed.
He summed it up this way: “If I'm not sick, then I must be well.”
This kind of thinking keeps medicine on the defensive, dealing with health problems that never needed to manifest in the first place. And in addition to the untold suffering brought about by all this unnecessary disease, disability, and premature death, the medical system is strangling the US economy. Of the $3.5 trillion spent on health care annually, Dr Loomis pointed out, roughly 80% is entirely preventable through simple and cheap lifestyle interventions.
Diabetes, for example. Dr Loomis points out that while diabetes is viewed by modern medicine as a chronic disease, it's actually nothing more than a normal physiological response to abnormal patterns of eating.
Fun facts about Dr Loomis: he was the team doctor for the St Louis Rams (football) and the St Louis Cardinals (baseball), as well as the tour physician for the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, which I believe went undefeated during his tenure there.
He's an avid triathlete, having competed most recently in the Lake Placid Ironman in 2019 (at the age of 60).
As a medical spokesperson for The Game Changers, Dr Loomis loves to point out that there isn't a special “athlete diet” – we're all athletes, and we all need to eat to fuel our bodies for peak performance.
He's not only fun and personable and a living example of the power of lifestyle, but he speaks with a command of the facts and a common sense perspective that makes him an ideal mouthpiece for the movement.
Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.
Links
Dr Loomis on Instagram and Twitter
The Barnard Medical Center (Washington DC)
WaPo article about Dr Neal Barnard's exposé of the egg industry's misleading “science”
Susan Benigas on Plant Yourself
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