Lifestyle medicine is a branch of medicine that utilizes evidence-based methods to prevent, treat, and manage chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or even orthopedic problems like chronic back pain, by making changes in lifestyle with the guidance of a physician. Lifestyle medicine focuses on assisting patients to stay active, sleep better, eat more healthily, improve social connections and mental health, and reduce harmful substance use. It also considers broader factors affecting an individual’s health and well-being, such as poverty, health inequality, and ecological health. While traditional Western allopathic medicine emphasizes the management of the condition, lifestyle medicine ultimately aims to eliminate the root cause of the condition. The goal of lifestyle medicine is to prevent, suspend, and reverse conditions that are directly related to lifestyle choices.
What Does Lifestyle Medicine Involve?
Lifestyle medicine involves the use of therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic disorders, including but not limited to, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disorders. A certified lifestyle medicine physician is trained to apply evidence-based, whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle changes to treat and, when employed intensively, often reverse such disorders. Your physician will apply the six pillars of lifestyle medicine - a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, restorative sleep, physical activity, avoidance of risky substances, stress management, and positive social connections – to offer effective prevention for these disorders. While nutrition is generally the largest part of lifestyle medicine, the other five pillars aim at crucial areas of life that have been scientifically shown to affect our health. A physician practicing lifestyle medicine may start by prescribing a change in diet, but if the patient is devoid of quality sleep and is constantly stressed out by their work, a more robust treatment plan would be generated to address the effect of insomnia and anxiety on that patient’s overall well-being.
How Does Lifestyle Medicine Treatment Work?
For the treatment, reversal, and prevention of lifestyle-related chronic conditions, your physician will extensively focus on the pillars of lifestyle medicine, including:
- Nutrition: This involves eliminating refined sugars, processed foods, and any triggering ingredients, which is a fundamental change that should be made. As lifestyle medicine looks at food as medicine, intake of better quality food results in a healthier and better working body.
- Exercise: Performing thirty minutes of regular physical activity has been scientifically linked to improved physical and mental health. Changing a sedentary lifestyle for a more active one can spur weight loss, lower high blood pressure, and improve blood flow. Leading an active lifestyle is an important segment of implementing lifestyle medicine.
- Substance Abuse: Shunning risky substances makes a big positive impact on your overall well-being. Getting rid of cigarettes, alcohol, or other harmful substances is an important step to accomplishing healthy living. Depending upon the level of consumption, one may begin by reducing the amount and consulting with their healthcare provider to help to quit completely, especially when it comes to tobacco use.
- Stress: Adopting stress management practices, such as attending therapy, practicing yoga, or participating in meditation helps the physical body as well. Lowering stress can eradicate high blood pressure or hypertension. Dependence on certain unhealthy foods, substances, or other unhealthy practices can be reduced through stress-reducing activities.
- Relationships: This aspect of lifestyle medicine is important for those seeking to maintain healthy behaviors. Increasing social connections, improving current relationships, and getting rid of toxic relationships based on unhealthy behaviors, support your efforts in maintaining healthy habits.
- Sleep: A good night of sleep resets our minds, regulates our appetites, and lowers our stress levels. A lack of sleep can upset our entire system, cause our energy levels to plummet, and make us turn to unhealthy behaviors such as eating sugary foods for a quick energy boost.
Lifestyle medicine focuses on each of these aspects and modifies it as needed to bring about healthy practices. Primary care doctors and healthcare professionals are increasingly adopting this practice to work effectively with patients on making slow lifestyle-connected changes.
Summary
Most chronic health conditions are preventable. To be successful in preventing and treating the causes of these conditions, a strong emphasis must be placed on aspects of lifestyle medicine. Lifestyle Medicine encompasses research, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of dysfunctions caused by lifestyle-related diseases. Lifestyle medicine's ultimate goal and primary focus is to promote healthier lives through salutary environments and healthier lifestyle choices resulting in treating root causes of diseases rather than superficially managing symptoms.
Other Lifestyle Medicine Services
