Michigan pharmacist sentenced for $4M Medicare fraud scheme; ACLM publishes official position on lifestyle medicine for high-value, whole-person care; daily coffee may slow aging in serious mental illness – Morning Medical Update

Michigan pharmacist sentenced for $4M fraud scheme

Another Michigan pharmacy owner has been sentenced for fraud — this time to nearly four years in federal prison. Nabil Fakih, 50, admitted to billing Medicare for prescription medications, including anticoagulants and inhalers, that he never dispensed and, in many cases, never even stocked.

Prosecutors said Fakih manipulated inventory records and shuffled proceeds across accounts and properties to hide the scheme, which ran from 2011 to 2017 and cost Medicare about $4 million. In addition to his 46-month sentence, he must repay the full amount and forfeit multiple real estate holdings and more than $700,000 in cash.

ACLM publishes official position on high-value, whole-person care

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) has released a position paper urging health systems to adopt lifestyle medicine as a scalable framework for delivering high-value care and achieving the Quintuple Aim — that is, better health outcomes, higher patient and clinician satisfaction, greater health equity and lower costs.

The paper argues that evidence-based interventions targeting nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress, substance use and social connection can meaningfully prevent, treat and even reverse chronic disease. ACLM highlights training pathways, board certification and clinical toolkits that enable clinicians across specialties to integrate lifestyle medicine in both individual and group settings, in person or virtually.

Read the full position paper in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine.

Daily coffee may slow biological aging in serious mental illness

A new BMJ Mental Health study suggests that moderate coffee intake — three to four cups a day — may slow biological aging in people with major psychiatric disorders. Researchers found that patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder who consumed this amount had longer telomeres, translating to roughly five “younger” biological years compared with non–coffee drinkers.

Heavier coffee intake didn’t offer the same benefit, echoing public health guidance that recommends limiting caffeine to about 400 mg per day.

While observational and not proof of causation, the study highlights a potentially simple lifestyle factor that may counteract accelerated cellular aging often seen in serious mental illness, possibly through coffee’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.