Dr. Edelita R. Jamis

You probably don’t have an idea of how frustrating it could be for my husband and me, both Internal Medicine physicians, to suffer chronic diseases at the peak of our careers here in the United States. He had gouty arthritis, asthma, high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, and obesity. I had diabetes, gastric bloating, sinus allergy, and was overweight. During our vacation in the Philippines, my husband spent five days in bed while taking his anti-inflammatory medications every four hours. Both of us felt frustrated. We made serious changes to our diet and practiced everything we know in medicine, but felt nothing helped. It could be easy for me to blame genetics because my mother had diabetes when she was my age. But I knew that Type 2 diabetes is not hereditary; it is lifestyle-induced. 

​

One day, we stumbled upon several documentaries about the reversal of chronic diseases with a whole food plant-based diet. We were intrigued. We never heard about this in medical school or in our medical training. At first, we had many doubts. We knew and understood that chronic diseases are the result of unhealthy lifestyles but we dived deeper into lifestyle medicine and didn’t stop researching. We attended two International Plant-Based Nutrition Healthcare Conferences and these were far different from the other medical conferences we have attended. We tried to apply the learnings ourselves and dragged our 8-year old twin boys into this lifestyle change and it was life-changing indeed.

​

Months later, we repeated our blood tests and the results were surprising. My blood sugar went down significantly. My husband's uric acid level normalized and lost 40 pounds effortlessly. We had so much more energy now than we had before. Our sinus allergies went away and we no longer needed steroid nasal spray and allergy pills. Our health transformation gave us a tremendous amount of hope. I took and passed the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine in 2018 and since then we have infused Lifestyle Medicine to our patients, with emphasis on a whole-food plant-based diet which yielded remarkable results.

​

I convinced my mother to do the same and true enough, she is now off insulin after being on it for 25 years. Not only that, she cut down all her other medications in half.

 

Success stories from my patients drive me to do more and now I found my true purpose as a physician. I want to help as many patients who seek to be free from medications and their ailments because I believe that there is hope in lifestyle change.