Stepping away from Medicine — and towards Health

After more than fifteen years in clinical medical practice, I made the decision to retire from medicine. It was not a decision made lightly, nor one driven by disillusionment with my colleagues or a loss of respect for the medical profession. On the contrary, it arose from a deep respect for medicine—and an equally deep concern for the system in which it now operates.

I remain profoundly grateful for my medical training and for the privilege of having practised medicine. I trained internationally, completing my undergraduate medical degree in Spanish in Argentina, before returning to Australia to attain Fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in Victoria. I spent the majority of my clinical career working in integrative and functional medicine and owned and operated my own clinics. Those years shaped my understanding of human health, illness, and the responsibilities that come with clinical authority.

I also retain enormous respect for my colleagues who continue to work within the medical system. Modern medicine performs extraordinary work, particularly in acute, emergency, and interventional care. Every day, clinicians operate under immense pressure, heavy administrative burden, and increasing regulatory constraint, often while delivering care of the highest technical and ethical standard. My decision to step away from clinical practice is not a rejection of them, nor of medicine itself.

Rather, it is a response to what I see as system-level problems within healthcare that increasingly limit our ability to promote genuine health.

A System Built for Disease, Not for Health

Over time, it became increasingly clear to me that the modern healthcare system is structurally designed to respond to disease once it has declared itself, rather than to cultivate health before it is lost. This is not the result of individual failure or poor intent. It is the consequence of how incentives, evidence hierarchies, regulatory frameworks, and industrial interests have aligned over decades.

Clinical practice guidelines, population-based algorithms, and narrow definitions of “evidence” have progressively centralised decision-making away from the consulting room. In doing so, they have constrained clinician discretion and reduced adult autonomy over personal health decisions. The result is a system that often struggles to engage with complexity, individuality, and long-term biological trajectories—particularly in the realm of chronic disease.

From my perspective, many patients are not denied care outright, but are denied access to wellness. Their symptoms may be managed, their diagnoses catalogued, yet the deeper biological and environmental drivers of their decline remain insufficiently addressed. This is especially evident in metabolic disease, neurodegeneration, immune dysregulation, and age-related functional loss—conditions that now account for the overwhelming burden of illness globally.

Evidence, Bias, and the Limits of the Current Paradigm

I have become increasingly critical of how evidence-based medicine is implemented outside of acute care. While the principles of evidence-based practice are sound in theory, in practice the system has developed structural biases that are rarely acknowledged. Financial incentives, regulatory gatekeeping, publication bias, and industrial sponsorship exert influence at every stage of the research and approval pathway.

In my view, this has created a self-reinforcing system—internally coherent and institutionally defensible, but often poorly aligned with real-world outcomes for patients living with chronic, complex conditions. When evidence becomes synonymous with what is easiest to regulate or monetise, rather than what best reflects human biology, innovation and prevention are inevitably constrained.

This does not make the system malicious. But it does make it misaligned with the task of preserving health over a lifetime.

From Treating Disease to Understanding Physiology

My work today is focused not on treating named diseases, but on understanding and supporting human physiology—how systems adapt, fail, and recover across time. I am particularly interested in maladaptive biological responses and the environmental mismatches of modern life that drive chronic disease at scale.

This has led me into education, advocacy, and strategic consultancy. I work on the formulation and evaluation of nutraceuticals, repurposed medicines, and emerging therapeutic approaches that aim to intervene at the level of physiology rather than pathology. I also collaborate on the design of artificial-intelligence-based health engines intended to support a new model of healthcare—one grounded in systems thinking, biological signal interpretation, and clinician- and patient-level decision support, rather than guideline abstraction alone.

Alongside this work, I write extensively. I am the author of eight books on health and contribute to professional education and industry advisory roles focused on prevention, optimisation, and the responsible integration of novel therapeutic modalities.

Not Leaving Medicine — But Redefining Care

I do not see my transition as leaving healthcare. I see it as stepping into a space where health, rather than disease, is the primary objective.

There will always be a vital role for acute care, emergency medicine, and specialist intervention. But if we are serious about addressing the chronic disease epidemic, we must expand our conceptual and practical frameworks beyond late-stage intervention. We must allow room for biology, individuality, prevention, and informed adult choice.

My hope is that, over time, the divide between “medicine” and “health” narrows rather than widens. Until then, my work will remain focused on building bridges—between physiology and practice, evidence and reality, innovation and responsibility.

That is why I retired from medicine.
And that is why I continue to work, with conviction, in health.