now is the time, and we are running late...
The massive explosion of chronic disease in the U.S. is leading toward an era in which healthcare workers, medicines and treatments, hospital beds, and physician-patient time has been overwhelmed. Meanwhile, Americans are largely unaware of the toll their lifestyle habits take on their health. When they view their eating habits, 90% of Americans believe their eating habits are healthy. However, a 2013 survey found only 13.1% meet fruit intake recommendations, and only 8.9% eat enough vegetables (5). Compounded by our disordered eating, our society “largely relies on drugs to correct our health issues,” said Dr. Stancic in "Off Script", an article published in dirt magazine (6).
She believes drugs have become a modern day enabler, giving patients license to stick with bad habits by masking the symptoms of disease. “Little credence is given to lifestyle as a therapeutic approach to prevent and manage disease, despite the fact that we know lifestyle is a more effective therapeutic approach than a drug in many instances”, she notes.
"Once we get on the pharmaceutical bandwagon, it gets hard to come off,” she said. She knows this firsthand. Dr. Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) at the age of twenty-eight, in the last year of her medical residency. At that time, a neurologist told her that if she did not take her prescribed medications to prevent progression of MS, she could expect to be in a wheelchair by the age of 40. code blue recounts Dr. Stancic’s desperate search for help in managing her disease, which ultimately led to her present-day practice of lifestyle medicine. Her personal and professional success has led her to disseminate her message and, ultimately, to make this film.
Sometimes you choose films, sometimes films choose you. No matter the order, in my work I look to voice the stories of passionate people who wish to inspire and work for a better future. Dr. Stancic is one of those people, and she aspires to mold the direction of medicine, one patient at a time. code blue is a term used in medical facilities when a patient is in cardiac arrest and needs to be resuscitated for the heart to resume a normal rhythm. It is time to call code blue on the current practice of medicine. Pull the paddles, clear… SHOCK…. a healthier future awaits us.