What is Lifestyle Medicine?
Lifestyle Medicine is the fastest growing discipline in healthcare today and can prevent, arrest, or in some cases even reverse chronic illnesses. Alarmingly, statistics have revealed that the majority of preventable deaths and diseases are directly related to lifestyle causes. It is no wonder that the future of healthcare is to evaluate, mentor and empower people to reach whole-person wellness, saving billions of dollars in healthcare costs, and minimising the risk of pain and suffering through poor health.
Evidence-based Approach
Lifestyle Medicine is the therapeutic use of evidence-based lifestyle interventions to treat and prevent lifestyle related diseases. It empowers individuals with the knowledge and life skills needed to make effective behavior changes that address the underlying causes of disease. Some of the key features of lifestyle medicine are:
- Emphasis is on promoting behaviour changes that allow the body to heal itself.
- Focus is on evidence-based optimal nutrition, stress management and fitness prescriptions.
- Patients are active partners in their own care.
- Treatment addresses the underlying lifestyle causes of disease.
- Professionals educate, guide and support patients to make behaviour changes.
- Medications are used as an adjunct to therapeutic lifestyle changes.
- Patients' home, community, social and work environments are assessed as contributing factors
It's All Related
Lifestyle Medicine incorporates the whole person, with the understanding that factors in one area of life impact the other areas. Lifestyle Medicine uses the 7 Dimensions of Wellness to create a whole-person snapshot to identify where a particular dimension is within the Harm to Heal™ scale.
