Lifestyle Medicine?
Lifestyle Medicine involves the use of evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic approaches, such as a predominantly whole food, plant-based diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, alcohol moderation and tobacco cessation, and other non-drug modalities, to prevent, treat, and, oftentimes, reverse the lifestyle-related, chronic disease that’s all too prevalent. Poor lifestyle choices like dietary patterns, physical inactivity, tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption, as well as psychosocial factors, e.g. chronic stress and lack of social support and community, contribute to chronic disease.
Why is Lifestyle Medicine Essential to Sustainable Health and Healthcare?
The rise in chronic disease trends and related healthcare spending in the United State and in many other countries around the world is unsustainable. Type 2 diabetes alone is a looming global pandemic with incalculable consequences.
This being said, there is good news.
The good news is that 80% or more of all healthcare spending in the U.S. is tied to the treatment of conditions rooted in poor lifestyle choices. Chronic diseases and conditions—such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, multiple types of cancer—are among the most common, costly and preventable of all health conditions.