Precision medicine is the growing capability of healthcare practitioners to make decisions that relate, to a much greater degree, to an individual patient than we have been able to do in the past.

On television and in magazines you see advertisements from the cancer centers about genetic testing, and how it is improving doctors’ ability to make treatment decisionsbased on an individual’s cancer — rather than offering the usual treatment.

There is now also the concept of applying this technology of genetic patterns to evaluation of patients, both well and sick, to determine what might be necessary and what would be the best treatment for each patient.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is developing a program to get genetic testing on approximately 1 million patients and then follow this data and the patients over time to see how accurate the predictions based on genetic testing might be.

Therefore, we are moving into the category of precision medication.

You can visit www.NIH.gov to obtain more information about this program. You might even want to become a participant in the program, as it does have the potential of offering significant improvement in treatment of disease and prevention of disease.

The data collected from the program of will, in all probability, provide much more accurate detection of the value of prevention in avoiding aging and development of disease.

Modern technology has allowed us to do genetic testing quickly and at a reasonable cost. As the technology progresses, the cost of the genetic testing will probably further decrease.

The ability to make decisions based on the individual’s genetic pattern should also increase the shift back to holistic medicine. As medicine is practiced today, the majority of prescription drugs treat only symptoms and do not address the underlying cause of symptoms.

Holistic medicine, on the other hand, tends to treat the cause of the problem, and thereby eliminate the symptoms. To me, that is a much more valuable approach in medicine.

This is particularly true when you listen to the complications that arise from the prescription medications that we routinely use today. As I have noted in the past, the association between statin drugs and cognitive defect is still not noted on the television and in media advertisements — but they do exist.

Therefore, my suggestion is that you find out more about the programs of Precision Medication, and consider becoming a participant in the research pattern.