Did you know that some researchers believe that loneliness is worse for you than smoking? James Maskell is the creator of the Functional Forum, the world’s largest functional medicine conference, and is here today to talk about the power of community and why he is passionate about finding a cure for loneliness.
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Loneliness and a lack of community can be linked to multiple lifestyle-driven chronic diseases, and James wants to create a new standard of social connections to help others relieve pain and reverse disease. Re-engaging people into a social community is a necessary medical intervention, and James works to help bring people together around a shared intention of health creation to create the functional medicine approach of the future.
Everything from ways for creating a connection while dealing with an auto-immune disease to the importance of community when going through pregnancy is on the table today as we discuss this exciting evolution of functional medicine and bringing healthcare to the masses.
If you want to gain insight into loneliness research, the role social isolation can have on your health and want to gain tips on how to fix loneliness and create the social community you desire, this is the episode for you.
What role does social community and loneliness play in your health? Share what surprised you most about this episode in the comments below.
In This Episode
- Understanding the connection between loneliness, stress and chronic disease
- The transformative power of embracing community in functional medicine
- Tips for living your life in a more socially connected and healthier way
- Ways that practitioners and patients can use social groups to solve pain points
- Online tools to create offline social connection and a health community
Quotes
“It’s not really the value just of the practitioner and the medicine. There is a real value that’s created by people helping each other. That sounds like an equation that could really scale and grow.” (6:52)
“There are biological reasons for you to have this illness, there are psychological reasons why you have this illness, and there are social reasons why you have it too. And so ultimately my thesis is, a bio-psycho-social issue needs a bio-psycho-social cure.” (10:45)
“Together they come together in this structure where you have time to be able to do the medicine right and you have a structure whereby which people can support each other to learn and to make behavior change the default rather than something that is hard to execute.” (23:09)
“Having things on the calendar that are things that you are just going to do every week by default, especially things that are healthy in their own right are super important.” (26:36)
“Showing up and showing up consistently and making new friends, it could have a dramatic impact on you in the next year, 5 years, 10 years, rest of your life.” (30:18)
Links
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