Intro To Lifestyle Medicine

What is Lifestyle Medicine? 

But what actually is lifestyle medicine?  Sounds great, but what does it mean? 

Lifestyle medicine is using scientifically researched, evidenced based interventions to treat, prevent and reverse disease.  These interventions are “therapeutic lifestyle changes”, or TLC for short.  This sounds complicated, but actually therapeutic lifestyle change is just making changes to the way we live our everyday life in order to be more healthy. 

There are six key areas what Lifestyle Medicine encompasses, also known as the “pillars” of Lifestyle medicine.  These are Nutrition, Physical Activity, Sleep, Stress Management, Relationship & connectedness, and avoidance of substances such as tobacco and alcohol.

These areas are all inter-linked, each one has an effect on all the others.  For example, let’s work through a fairly common scenario and see how it impacts the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine:  One evening I stay up binge-watching something on tv, I go to bed late, and get not enough sleep I wake up tired and feel irritable, so I am snappy at the kids when they are not getting ready for school fast enough, and then I feel guilty for being a grumpy mum.  By the time we’ve got out of the door, I rush to do the school run and get to work, but am running a bit late so my stress levels go up .  At lunchtime, I realise I didn’t remember to bring my healthy packed lunch because I was tired and distracted, so I grab something pre-packaged from the local shop or takeaway, but this doesn’t really fill me up properly, so by mid-afternoon I’m reaching for the biscuits.  By the time I get home I’m really tired, my energy levels have slumped after snacking on biscuits all afternoon, so I skip going to the gym and I’m still feeling stressed from work so I pour myself a large glass of wine, then I can’t be bothered to cook so we order takeaway).  But because I’ve had the wine and heavy food late in the evening my sleep quality is not as good as usual, and so the vicious circle continues… 

By putting positive changes in place in any of the key areas of lifestyle medicine, it has a follow on effect on the others.  Making just one positive change leads to more changes, reversing that negative spiral and improving wellbeing. 

So, what does a lifestyle medicine physician do? 

As an LM physician, I look at where you are now with your health, and work together with you to put in place an scientifically evidence-based “lifestyle prescription” and an individualised specific action plan tailored to your own circumstances and abilities, to move you in the direction of improved health. 

I use a coaching approach, to empower you to make the choices and changes that will work for you, so you can identify and reach your own goals.