John La Puma is an internal medicine physician and author of ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine. He can be reached at What is Nature Therapy?

GLP-1 agonists and the hidden power of outdoor exercise

Meds
May 4, 2026

A recent report documented something remarkable: Americans on glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists are falling in love with exercise for the first time. A man who struggled to walk to his mailbox now hikes seven miles a day. A woman who needed a cane ran her first five-kilometer (5K) race. A rock climber went from three workouts a week to five.

These drugs proved what physicians should have said more clearly long …

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GLP-1 agonists and the hidden power of outdoor exercise

Why nature-based medicine is the future of health care

Education
April 29, 2026

This month, 53 medical schools committed to requiring 40 hours of nutrition education. As the physician who co-taught the first U.S. medical school class in culinary medicine, with Mike Roizen, MD, founding director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, I am proud that culinary medicine is now taught in roughly 80 percent of U.S. medical schools. I recognize this as a genuine win. But I have watched this story before, …

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Why nature-based medicine is the future of health care

Grow, share, eat: We have the opportunity to subvert the dominant supply chain

Policy
December 2, 2021

You might not be able to afford the usual Christmas roast this year.

According to the USDA, beef prices in the U.S. are up nearly 10 percent this year over last. And it’s not just in the U.S.  Distribution and other supply chain problems have led to severe price inflation for produce in Beijing, where a pound of lettuce now costs as much as a pound of pork. China’s agriculture ministry …

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Grow, share, eat: We have the opportunity to subvert the dominant supply chain

Why gardening is the best medicine

Physician
August 18, 2020

My first glimpse into the power of urban gardening was not through bucolic farmer’s markets or verdant nurseries, whose beauty I only came to after medical school. My introduction was in our small suburban backyard of clay soil. My dad planted silvery, wild-armed globe artichokes, because they could produce flower buds and leaves we could eat, to improve our digestion. That glimpse was enough to ignite my curiosity about homegrown …

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Why gardening is the best medicine

Food insecurity is an undiagnosed medical problem

Conditions
March 6, 2015

My last patient, Joyce, a 45-year-old single mother of four with high blood pressure and diabetes, is late. She was in the emergency department last week with dizziness and blurred vision, a blood sugar of 345 and a blood pressure of 190/110.

Her last office visit was a month ago, when weighing in at 222, she joked that she wished she could pull those numbers at the casino’s slot machines. She …

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Food insecurity is an undiagnosed medical problem

Americans think that most physicians have it made. They’re wrong.

Physician
August 6, 2014

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There’s at least one hidden reason the health care system is failing people who just want some face time with a doctor: too many dedicated physicians are not just overwhelmed, but burned out.

According to a 2012 JAMA Internal Medicine Mayo Clinic study, 46% of all U.S. physicians are emotionally exhausted, feel cynical about work or have lost their sense of personal accomplishment …

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Americans think that most physicians have it made. They’re wrong.