Takeaway
Lifestyle medicine involves co-creating plans with patients for diet, physical activity, sleep, stress, and social connection. This can have an impact on both prevention and treatment of disease.
By Lucia Ponor, MD, Johns Hopkins Medicine
The surge in costly disease management, avoidable hospitalizations, clinician burnout, and polypharmacy is a clear indication that our healthcare system is in crisis. Addressing these pressing challenges demands more than mere incremental fixes—it requires a fundamental change in how we deliver and prioritize care.
Many chronic diseases stem primarily from unhealthy lifestyle choices, including poor nutrition—characterized by diets deficient in fruits and vegetables and excessive in sodium and saturated fats—physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol consumption or smoking.
An alarming 90% of the nation’s annual healthcare expenditures, totalling $4.4 trillion in 2023, are allocated to managing chronic physical and mental health conditions. We must consider the recommendations of leading organizations, such as the American Heart Association, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology, the WHO Guidelines for Risk Reduction of Cognitive Decline and Dementia, and others, which unequivocally endorse lifestyle modifications as a vital first step in effectively addressing many chronic ailments.
Lifestyle interventions
Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions, including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and obesity. Lifestyle medicine comprises six pillars: a whole food plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, sleep management, avoidance of risky substances, and positive social connections. It’s an ancient, yet very effective way to enable whole person care.
Lifestyle medicine-certified clinicians are trained to apply evidence-based, whole person, prescriptive lifestyle change to prevent, treat, and, when used intensively, even reverse chronic conditions. My mission as an LM Board Certified physician is to inspire, educate, and empower healthcare professionals and learners to practice and promote evidence-based lifestyle medicine to prevent, treat, and reverse chronic disease. I want to create opportunities for service and outreach that promote healthy lifestyles in the community, foster interprofessional collaboration, and, finally, raise awareness of the role of lifestyle choices in personal and population health.
Here are a few tips for how to incorporate lifestyle medicine principles into your practice:
1. Partner with your patients—this is a journey that will take time.
2. Even if you only address one pillar at a time, that’s a huge success.
3. Use the SMART acronym: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
4. Be an example—it would be unfair to smoke or eat unhealthy food and then ask for the opposite of patients.
5. Both patients and healthcare professionals are only human, each with their own challenges—be patient, dear doctor, with your patients!
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This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.