Authors and poets who address the human condition, mortality, eternity, and continuity with nature that I recommend are Mary Oliver, Pema Chödrön, Pa… - Casey Means

At the start of my residency, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed and all doctors had to get up to speed on the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), a new program under the Quality Payment Program (QPP), where a physician would now receive substantial adjustments to payments from Medicare if they met specific quality-of-care criteria. One would think that “quality” and “merit” in medicine would mean that the patient was actually getting better. But when I dug deep through the MIPS website to find the specific quality metrics for each specialty, I was shocked to see that these quality criteria were primarily based on whether doctors prescribed drugs regularly or did more interventions. Yes, a government incentive program focused less on actual patient outcomes (i.e., Did the patient get healthier?) and more on whether doctors prescribed long-term pharmaceuticals.

Lavender oil is well studied and especially potent in minimizing stress and helping with sleep, as outlined in the peer-reviewed paper “Lavender and the Nervous System.” Rub a few drops of lavender essential oil between your hands, cup your face, and inhale deeply a few times.

Fortunately, we’re entering a new era of medicine. Doctors no longer need to serve as the middlemen for interpreting lab results. This new era will benefit patients profoundly. Levels CEO Sam Corcos calls this concept “bio-observability” — the ability to observe your own biology through technologies like wearables, continuous monitors, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) lab testing. Let me be clear: bio-observability is one of the most disruptive trends our health care industry faces. You should not blindly trust your doctor and you should not blindly trust me. You should trust your own body. Your body can “speak” to you through accessible testing and real-time data from wearable sensors that help you understand how individual symptoms are connected to overall metabolic health.