Beyond the Prescription A Doctor's Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health

Take control of your physical and mental health while navigating a broken health care system with this whole-person guide from an experienced physician.

As a primary care physician with her own healthcare struggles, Dr. Lucy McBride intimately understands why people are frustrated with their care. On the one hand, doctors’ appointments average twelve minutes and focus on testing, diagnosis, and medication without a full patient picture. On the other, the wellness culture is full of expensive false promises. The most effective approaches to health integrate both evidence-based treatments of conventional medicine alongside lifestyle choices, which Dr. McBride distills into a four-quadrant system of health:

- Informatics: Understanding health and medical data and how to interpret it.
- Input: Clear information on everything you ingest, whether food, caffeine, over the counter and prescription medication, supplements, alcohol, etc.
- Infrastructure: Understanding your body’s physical structure and mechanics.
- Insight: Caring for your emotional and mental health to combat anxiety, depression, trauma, etc.

Reading The Empowered Patient is like having your own concierge doctor in the palm of your hands. Dr. McBride helps readers understand the connection between these quadrants of your overall health ecosystem, emphasizing the value of human relationships within a broken system.

With patient stories, user friendly checklists, and action guides for reflection and self-advocacy, Dr. McBride helps you reframe what it means to be healthy, accept the things you cannot control, and direct your energy into working on the things you can control. Whether you’re managing a chronic condition, navigating a new diagnosis, or simply trying to feel better amid life’s complexities, this book is your guide to reclaiming agency over your health.

Lucy McBride, MD, is a primary care physician in Washington, DC. For nearly two decades, she has practiced internal medicine in private practice, emphasizing evidence-based, whole-person care. She attended Princeton University and graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School. As a 1996 Fulbright Scholar, she earned a MA in pharmacology from the University of Cambridge, UK. She completed her internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and later served on its emergency medicine faculty. A nationally recognized voice on health, Dr. McBride writes the popular newsletter Are You Okay? (reaching 35,000 readers weekly). She hosts the podcast Beyond the Prescription and has contributed to The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and USA TODAY. She appears regularly on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour, advocating for a data-driven, patient-centered, holistic approach to health.