John La Puma
- Physician, Celebrity Chef, Best Selling Author and Host of Lifetime's Chef MD
Travels From
California
John La Puma Speaker Biography
John La Puma M.D. is board-certified in internal medicine, a professionally trained chef and certified California naturalist. Founder of CHEF Clinic ® and ChefMD, he has pioneered culinary medicine in the U.S., and taught the first culinary medicine, cooking and nutrition course in a U.S. medical school, at SUNY-Upstate with Dr. Michael Roizen, of the Cleveland Clinic.
Dr. La Puma co-hosted Lifetime TV’s national cable television weekly series “Health Corner”, and cooked with Chef Rick Bayless at Topolobampo in Chicago, both for nearly five years. A NY Times best-selling author, for ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine and The RealAge Diet, the latter with Dr. Roizen, his books have sold over a million copies and have been translated into eight languages, and six PBS specials. Dr. La Puma is currently studying nature therapy in medicine, and producing and hosting the 13 episode mini docu-series “A Green Rx”, which can be seen on his YouTube channel weekly.
Dr. La Puma has lectured on food and culinary medicine at Harvard, the University of Chicago, TEDMED , Kaiser Permanente and aboard The World . His present work focuses on using specific prescriptions of nature therapy as A Green Rx to treat nature deficit disorder, acute pain and digital addiction. Other conditions under study are longevity, anxiety, heart disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, diabetes and heart disease. Dr. La Puma farms avocados, rare citrus and medicinal herbs and spices on an urban certified organic demonstration orchard in Santa Barbara, California.
CULINARY MEDICINE: WHAT IS IT AND WHAT DOES IT DO?
Culinary medicine blends the art of cooking with the science of medicine to create high quality meals and beverages that aim to prevent and treat disease and improve well-being. Dr. La Puma co-taught the first course in a U.S. medical school (SUNY-Upstate, wrote the first book (a NYTimes best-seller), filmed the first TV series (120+ episodes on LifetimeTV), and gave the first TED talk (both TEDx and TEDMED). Now taught in 70% of medical schools, culinary medicine discussed and described by Dr. La Puma means lots of water-cooler facts (bake a pizza hotter, longer or both for more whole wheat crust anti-oxidants)(add black pepper to your curries for maximal anti-inflammatory benefits from the turmeric inside)(leave a watermelon on a kitchen counter to keep the lycopene and beta carotene from going away in the fridge). It also means the latest on food farmacies, medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions and delicious foods that work like medicine but taste truly amazing, and are often right in your pantry, fridge or freezer. Have a masterclass from the ChefMD® who started it all–taste culinary medicine.
MAKE YOUR REALAGE YOUNGER, CREATE A BLUE ZONE & FILL YOUR OWN GREENRX
Over 45 million people have taken the RealAge® test, free– the scientifically sound quiz that tells you your body’s biological age as you’ve chosen to live, as opposed to your birthday age. The #1 ager is stress and the #2 is what you eat. In this lecture, Dr. La Puma shares the secrets to making yourself younger with what you eat and how you live. He also covers the new, sixth Blue Zone, Singapore, as an identified place of great longevity and great quality of life, including the small habits that make a big difference among centenarians in Okinawa, Costa Rica, Sardinia, Greece and even Loma Lilnda. And finally, Dr. La Puma shows that weaving together the science of how nature works with the native drive (biophilia) we have to connect with and experience nature, you can fill your own prescription for nature based medicine to feel better, have more energy and joy and create wellness just by being in the great outdoors.'
NATURE BASED MEDICINE: MAKE YOURSELF STRESS-FREE AND WELL WITH LAND, WATER, HEAT, AIR, SOUND, VISTA
Feeling better outside may just seem like common sense, but did you know we spend 87% in buildings and 6% in cars? And 11 hours daily on devices? The country is suffering from nature deficits, and that shows up as anxiety, depression, attention deficit, diabetes, hypertension, myopia, and obesity. These are all worse with the pandemic. But all those illnesses may be preventable, treatable, and even reversible with an added nature-based approach. The talk Dr. La Puma gives shows the relationship between the human microbiome (as big as your brain) and the soil microbiome, and the solid science emerging on how natural settings work in the brain, the gut, the immune system and the vascular system. Dr. La Puma believes that overprescribing antibiotics, overeating hyper processed foods and overusing synthetic farm chemicals in the garden may be at the root cause of our chronic disease epidemic. Though the field of nature-based medicine is just emerging in the U.S., it has been taught and practiced in Asia and the EU for decades. Dr. La Puma illustrates the prescriptive, evidence-based use of natural settings and nature-based interventions to lower stress and empower self-care safely, effectively, and happily.
