Marcelo Fiszman, MD, PhD, FACMI, DipIBLM.
1. What's your practice focus and what kind of clients knock on your door ?
My practice focuses on using lifestyle medicine principles to improve mental wellbeing, social connection, healthy eating (plant-based diet), physical activity, sleep, and minimization of harmful substances. I also perform microbiome testing and interpretation to follow the gut health of my patients.
Most of my patients are looking for ways to change their lifestyle and improve their health, instead of solely relying on medications.
2. Tell us about yourself.
I am an Internal Medicine physician with a Ph.D., and a scientist in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for fifteen years. I am board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine.
At NIH, I realized the impact of lifestyle interventions on promoting health, especially reversing chronic diseases. Opening a lifestyle medicine clinic was a reinvention of myself as a clinician. I now follow a path that is closer to my heart and motivated by science.
3. Tell us the story of a patient who you are most proud of helping.
A 48-year-old male patient that came to me 5 years ago after putting two stents due to an acute coronary without myocardial infarction. He was extremely afraid of not seeing his son grow, and we discussed all the changes to his lifestyle. He changed his lifestyle immediately after he left my office and persist until today. Furthermore, he no longer requires any medication and has maintained a healthy lifetime for all these years.
4. What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a practitioner in private practice?
I started my private practice in lifestyle medicine five years ago. The hardest part for me is to get patients to come to my office understanding that they will get a different approach to medicine.
5. What are the top 3 tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a private practice today?\
These would be my pieces of advice:
- Be passionate about your work and don't focus on return of investment.
- When you get results with your patients, they will refer you.
- Find a way to market your private practice.