What is lifestyle medicine and how can it help you transform your life?

Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that has been gaining traction recently, and for good reason. But what exactly is it, and how can it help you transform your life? Healthy Conditions explains what you need to know about lifestyle medicine.

In simple terms, lifestyle medicine is an all-encompassing approach to healthcare that integrates six pillars of health. By using these pillars, chronic lifestyle-related diseases can be treated, reversed, or even prevented. Lifestyle medicine uses physicians, dietitians, physical therapists, mental health professionals, and other lifestyle medicine practitioners to treat patients.

While you may just now be hearing about lifestyle medicine, it isn’t a new practice. In fact, the foundations of lifestyle medicine have always been used to treat health issues. For instance, patients who are diabetic may be advised to lose extra weight, eat healthier, and exercise more as part of their health plan prior to treating the issue with medication. This goes hand in hand with lifestyle medicine practices.

What are the pillars of lifestyle medicine?

1. Nutrition – promoting a whole-food, predominantly plant-based diet
2. Physical activity – encouraging regular, consistent physical activity
3. Stress management – managing negative stress to lessen immune dysfunction, anxiety, and depression
4. Restorative sleep – improving sleep quality
5. Social connection – creating positive social connections to benefit physical and mental health
6. Avoidance of risky substances – stopping usage of substances such as tobacco and alcohol

What services are provided by Healthy Conditions?

At Healthy Conditions, we focus on using evidence-based medicine to create lifestyle plans in order to help our patients take back their health. When you schedule an appointment with Healthy Conditions, we will focus on the prevention, treatment, and reversal of lifestyle-dependant chronic illnesses by:

• Analyzing whole body health to understand your symptoms and what may be triggering them
• Recognizing obesity and weight issues for the chronic diseases they are, and treating every patient with the compassion and expertise they deserve.
• Proving unconditional support, education, and action
• Designing a therapeutic lifestyle change program catered to your unique needs
• Crafting lifestyle change plans and cheering you along the way
• Providing access to educational talks to motivate and inform

Lifestyle medicine works because it focuses on the patient as a whole. Often times we treat symptoms, rather than seeking out the underlying causes. By focusing on whole body health, and making the necessary changes, we can improve our health and transform our lives.