What is Lifestyle Medicine
After many of my clients asked what Lifestyle Medicine is and how and where they can “get” Lifestyle Medicine services, I decided to relay the following information to all those interested in finding out more about this evidence-based comprehensive solution to massive increase of chronic disease.
The Discipline
Defined as “the application of environmental, behavioural, medical and motivational principles to the management (including self-care and self-management) of lifestyle-related health problems in a clinical and/or public health setting” (Egger, Binns, & Rössner, 2010), Lifestyle Medicine provides an interdisciplinary, whole-system approach to the prevention and reversal of chronic and lifestyle-related diseases through the modification of the behavioural, social and environmental drivers.
Bridging the gap between health promotion and clinical practice, it involves clinicians, public health professionals, healthcare executives, researchers, scientists and educators working together to prevent, manage and treat conditions that result from:
- Physical inactivity
- Poor diet or nutrition
- Smoking
- Alcohol overconsumption
- Chronic stress
- Anxiety
- Poor or inadequate sleep
- Social isolation
- Loss of culture and identity
- Other influences of society and environment
Lifestyle Medicine is growing in popularity around the world as a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to the challenges faced by our society and our health system. In Australasia, Lifestyle Medicine has grown under the guidance of ASLM (Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine).
The evidence
“Lifestyle as medicine has the potential to prevent up to 80% of chronic disease. No other medicine can match that.” (Dr David Katz)
Chronic and lifestyle-related conditions are a substantial global, national and individual health issue, now responsible for around 70% of deaths worldwide. What is more, our healthcare system is rapidly becoming unsustainable under the strain of the chronic and lifestyle-related disease epidemic.
In order to address this growing burden, we must actively and effectively deal with the root causes of the problem. Many chronic conditions – the most common including cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory conditions, chronic musculoskeletal conditions, diabetes and mental health conditions – share common risk factors that are largely preventable or treatable.
Lifestyle Medicine is transforming the way we manage, treat and prevent chronic conditions by addressing these behavioural, social and environmental drivers; the modifiable aspects of the whole person (physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual), health behaviours, environment, and other circumstances. This is underpinned by an enhancement of self-empowerment and self-efficacy to manage and improve our own health.
Importantly, Lifestyle Medicine also recognises the upstream determinants of disease; promoting health equity, environmental sustainability, social justice and corporate responsibility. As a result, it recognises that not one health discipline or profession alone can meet our health needs. Instead, Lifestyle Medicine emphasises the essentiality of an interdisciplinary approach to health and healthcare, which shifts away from siloed practice and creates a genuinely collaborative means through which complex problems can be solved.
In reality you do not actually “get” Lifestyle Medicine as you would get medication or surgical intervention. In Lifestyle Medicine, your Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner acts as a facilitator or “coach” and provides you with the education and the tools (the “Why’s” and the “How’s”) to travel the pathway to achieving your goal. You, the client, become the “driver”.
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