Conscious medicine. This might be a new phrase to many, but Dr. Mike Stone, a pioneering expert in holistic healthcare, is committed to sharing his comprehensive approach focusing on connection, communication, and community at the heart of a patient’s healing journey.
As a concierge precision care physician, Dr. Stone has a background in emergency medicine where he worked for two decades. Precision medicine is a targeted approach that takes a patient’s history, genetics, epigenetics, goals, and environment into account when devising a treatment plan.
“As an emergency doctor, I got frustrated with not having the time to really form a deep connection with patients,” Dr. Stone says. “I wasn’t able to address the root cause and underlying issues that were bringing them into the emergency department. I wasn’t able to add value to the long-term health of most patients in that context.”
Now working as Chief Medical Officer at Wild Health and Founder and Physician of Nexus Medicine, Dr. Stone has helped develop a different system of healthcare that enables time and space to adopt a multi-faceted approach, considering all factors of a person’s lifestyle. Dr. Stone creates personalized plans including advanced diagnostic testing, epigenetics, and a holistic approach to well-being that focuses not only on preventing disease in the future but also on living your most joyful and vibrant life today.
“The current healthcare system in the U.S. focuses on sick care rather than preventative medicine,” Dr. Stone says. “Until we shift from a ‘wait to get sick’ model to a ‘keep you from getting sick’ model, the limitations of our healthcare framework will remain the same. Incentives for physicians are misaligned in our current system, where reimbursement for high-cost interventions to care for those with advanced disease far outweighs preventive lifestyle-focused care.”
At the center of the Conscious Medicine philosophy is connection. “Our support is ongoing,” says Dr. Stone. “We do not prescribe a plan and check in a year later. We are in constant communication and even will take on specific challenges or interventions alongside our clients to let them know they are not alone on this journey. Welcoming clients into our community allows us to model healthy living, foster positive behavior change, address difficulties that arise, and support our clients as equals.”
This in-depth contact to support patients in building new habits to transform their health is multifaceted. Clients work closely with Dr. Stone and his team, and plans are tailored holistically around sleep, nutrition, physical training, connection, contemplative practice, stress, and resiliency. No two health plans are ever the same, as plans are based on every individual’s unique preferences and characteristics.
An important aspect of the Conscious Medicine approach is allostasis, which takes advantage of our natural ability to adapt our physiology through periods of stress and recovery. Dr. Stone explains it as “the concept of adding a deliberate stress or sprint to one aspect of your health, recovering from that stress appropriately, and then adapting so you can handle more stress in the future and be stronger across whatever metric you’re evaluating.”
Using weight training as an example, he continues, “If you bench press ten repetitions at 135 pounds, the next day your muscles hurt because you have literally stressed them and caused micro-trauma to the pectoralis muscles and the triceps. After recovery days, you are able to go back and do eleven or twelve repetitions of that weight. It is a cycle of stress, recovery, adaptation, stress, recovery, and adaptation. What’s even more inspiring is our ability to deploy an allostatic approach across multiple phases, including emotional, nutritional, spiritual, and community health.”
Allostasis in the latter context might look like in-depth conversations about your emotional state and how you feel about your life. “How often do people have these genuine, tough conversations about their marriage, finances, or fears?” says Dr. Stone. “The more you have these talks, the more you open up and foster meaningful connections in your life. It’s something that’s pushing you so that you’re able to recover from that push, and therefore adapt and become stronger.”
The uniqueness of holistic allostasis can be illustrated by its three-pronged approach: living in joy, communicating with patients, and medicine being a community affair. Unlike traditional Western practices, Conscious Medicine treats chronic disease risk reduction and physical health as of equal importance to finding joy and connecting to others. Diet and lifestyle factors are key components of a holistic approach and are entirely individualized for each patient.
“We are built to be in tune with nature,” says Dr. Stone. “Stress and recovery is a natural cycle that can build strength in all areas of our lives. Being able to connect to patients and meaningfully improve their lives is a privilege but it is our bodies, highly intelligent organisms, that actually do the work. I see myself more as a sherpa or a quarterback, providing guidance rather than dictating absolute terms.”
“I can certainly lend expertise and advice but at the end of the day, the patient is the one in charge of what they do and their bodies know how to respond to that. If we can help program something that’s the right fit for the right person, it works itself out.”
To find out more about how allostasis and a holistic approach can transform your long-term health, explore the Nexus Medicine website, or reach out to Dr. Mike Stone through his LinkedIn.