Lifestyle Medicine
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Lifestyle practices and health habits are among the nation’s most important health determinants. Changing unhealthy behaviors is foundational to medical care, disease prevention, and health promotion.
Health professionals have significantly underestimated the importance of lifestyle factors as contributors to illness and disease, as well as treatments. This also includes the importance of individual and social well-being and the optimization of cognitive function. In light of considerable evidence of their effectiveness in clinical and normal populations, therapeutic lifestyle changes are underutilized and even overlooked.
Lifestyle medicine involves the therapeutic use of lifestyle interventions on health and quality of life, and considers not only risk factors and markers, but also preexisting related factors. It is an evidence-based practice of helping individuals and families adopt and sustain healthy behaviors that affect health and quality of life.
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"Lifestyle medicine adds to conventional medicine in that it focuses on the upstream and midstream conditions for disease, as well as proximal risk factors and the disease itself. It differs from nonmedical clinical practice, that is, practice by clinical allied health professionals, in that it may include medication (e.g. for smoking cessation or hunger control) and even surgery where appropriate (e.g. for weight control) as in standard medical care. It also differs from purely behavioral approaches in that it examines the social and environmental etiologies as well as individual behaviors." 1
How does Lifestyle Medicine differ from Conventional Medicine? It is first critical to note that lifestyle medicine is not a rejection of conventional medicine. In fact, the two are complementary. Think of it like this...Conventional Medicine is primarily focused on treating symptoms to help you feel better. This is very often achieved through prescriptions and/or surgery. Lifestyle Medicine is primarily focused on what caused the symptoms, prevention, management, and reversal of what is causing the symptoms. This is achieved through therapeutic lifestyle interventions. To better illustrate, here is an overview of the fundamental differences in approaches of the two.
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Lifestyle Medicine
Emphasis on promoting behavior changes
that allow the body to heal itself. Patients are active partners in their care.
Treats the underlying lifestyle causes of
disease. Medications used as an adjunct to
therapeutic lifestyle changes. Educates, guides and supports patients
to make behavior changes. |
Conventional Medicine
Emphasis on making a diagnosis and treatment
with pharmaceuticals or surgery. Patients are passive recipients of care.
Focuses on symptoms of signs of disease, not
the underlying causes. Medications are the primary therapeutic
intervention. Care is directed based upon the medical
model. |
1 Garry Egger, MPH, PhD, AM; Hamish Meldrum, MD; Stephen Penman, MD. Medicine Today, Journal of Clinical Practice, September 2017; 18(9): 46-52.