Life Medicine – a new paradigm for multi-system health regeneration (ANH Course)

Robert Verkerk BSc MSc DIC PhD FACN

Founder, Alliance for Natural Health

Executive & Scientific Director Alliance for Natural Health International & Alliance for Natural Health USA

12 weeks, 75 mins per session – Tuesday at 4:30 pm BST / 11:30 am EST – Start date Tuesday 19^th September 2023

Course Outline:

This course is about the ‘medicine’ required for healthful, long lives and will show students how we can co-create and regenerate health by working with multiple systems as well as more closely with nature. The course begins by unpacking a state-of-the-science understanding of what ‘life’ is, including theories as to its most likely origins and its interdependence with the biotic and abiotic world. It will then move on to consider a refreshing view of humanity and its often neglected interdependence with nature. Using the multiple lenses of systems and evolutionary biology, ecology, epigenetics and energetic science, the course identifies the multiple systems that need to be in balance in order that optimum health and resilience are achieved, while identifying markers that allow the evaluation of each system’s function.

For most, medicine means consuming or ingesting a pill, capsule or herb, being injected, or being manipulated. This kind of medicine might be better described as ‘doctoring’ and there’s no doubt it’s sometimes needed. But decades of research now tells us it is the things we do in our daily lives, often for months, years or even decades, that are the strongest determinants both of health — and of disease.

With 4 decades of multidisciplinary science in the fields of health and environmental science behind him, the course facilitator, Rob Verkerk, Ph.D., will take you on a unique journey that aims to help you to create and regenerate health using the understanding of what this incredibly complex phenomenon called life — and human life especially — actually is.

Dr Verkerk will invite you to open the door to your own multi-dimensional transformation — and if you’ve got there already — it will help you to start the transformation of those around you. This course is suitable both for health professionals (any modality) as well as laypeople with a keen interest in health.

Learning Outcomes: On completion, this course will enable you:-

• To offer a range of views that explain both the existence and potential origins of life
• To understand and enumerate the main premises of the new discipline of ‘life medicine’ that draws on various established disciplines, including lifestyle, preventative, integrative, precision, alternative, energy and allopathic medicine.
• To outline the extent and nature of the burden of non-communicable and metabolic diseases on human health and health systems
• To learn to interpret health, resilience and disease states from systems biology, ecological and evolutionary perspectives
• To learn how to structure and assess multi-factorial determinants of health and chronic disease
• To identify key factors that contribute to multi-system dysregulation and metabolic diseases, as well as those that help optimize multi-system function
• To compare top-down public health policy and messaging with bottom-up individual engagement in life medicine (guided and self-care)
• To learn clinically verified ways of motivating people to change both their behaviour and and environment in ways that positively influence health outcomes
• To identify the key tenets of life medicine, its prescription, potential obstacles and barriers, as well as approaches both for self-monitoring and monitoring by health professionals.

About Robert Verkerk PhD:

Robert Verkerk PhD is a multi-disciplinary scientist, researcher, educator, regulatory expert and campaigner with nearly 40 years of experience in the non-profit sector, academia and as a consultant. He has a MSc and PhD from Imperial College London where he continued as a postdoctoral research fellow for a further 7 years, working on projects in Eastern and Southern Africa, as well as Central and South-East Asia.

In 2002, Dr Verkerk founded the non-profit Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) International and has acted as its executive and scientific director since. In April 2023, he also acquired the leadership of Alliance for Natural Health USA. ANH has been at the forefront of protecting and promoting natural and regenerative health approaches internationally since its inception.

Since March 2020, Dr Verkerk and his team at ANH have been heavily involved with the covid-19 pandemic, evaluating science, policies and multi-disciplinary strategies that aim to facilitate a return to normal societal function with minimum collateral damage. Critical to this is ongoing research, education and campaigns focusing on building multi-system resilience, including the use of healthy dietary and lifestyle interventions.

Dr Verkerk has authored some 60 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings, is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and has been the scientific advisor to the UK-based integrative cancer charity, Yes to Life for 15 years.