SPONSORED CONTENT
To understand what lifestyle medicine is, you need to understand the definition of health.
According to the World Health Organization, health is: “A state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Around three quarters (74%) of deaths worldwide are caused by noncommunicable diseases, underscoring the critical need for effective preventive measures.
Noncommunicable diseases have an important distinction: they are chronic, tend to be of long duration and are the result of a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental, and behavioural factors.
Such diseases include cardiovascular diseases (heart attack and stroke), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma) and diabetes. Although these conditions are often treated with medications, lifestyle medicine can help prevent or reverse these conditions.
Lifestyle medicine
Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic interventions — including a whole-food plant-based eating pattern, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connection — as a primary modality, delivered by clinicians trained and certified in this specialty to prevent, treat and often reverse chronic disease.
The concept of making positive changes to one’s lifestyle is key to either preventing or treating noncommunicable disease.
For instance, quitting smoking, eating a nutritious diet low in fats and preservatives, exercising, learning to manage stress and fitting adequate rest into a daily schedule can go a long way in reversing or preventing these diseases.
Nutrition
Everyone needs to eat and what you eat and how much you eat matters.
To make every bite count, you want to make sure your diet gives you all the essential nutrients to keep your body healthy.
Unfortunately, many diets high in fat and over-processed food fall short of providing those nutrients.
The most common shortfall nutrients include vitamins A, D, E and C, and folate, calcium, magnesium, fibre, and potassium.
To make up the deficit, eat the rainbow, or 30 plants a week. Michael Pollan, a long-time contributor to the New York Times Magazine, a teacher at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, and a 2010 TIME magazine honouree as one of the world’s most influential people, challenges our understanding of diet and health.
He proposes a straightforward yet profound answer to the question of what we should eat: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
These seven simple words offer a liberating guide to healthy eating.
Exercise
Being sedentary is a potential recipe for disease. Bodies are meant to move. That does not mean everyone needs to be an athlete, but everyone can find activities they can enjoy three to five days a week.
Following the FITT (frequency, intensity, time, and type) formula, adults need 150 minutes a week of movement that includes strength and resistance work. Broken down, that’s only 21 minutes a day. For example, a brisk walk or run after a meal can lower your blood sugar and prime your cardiovascular system.
Break it down further by doing five minutes of activity every hour.
Try a podcast such as Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s Feel Better Live More to help make lifestyle changes that can improve quality of life and help prevent disease.
Small changes can offer big rewards.
Sleep
In his book Why We Sleep neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker states: “Within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorise and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite.”
Busy lives and domestic pressures often take precedence to sleep but most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep.
To prioritise sleep, create a relaxing bedtime routine and avoid caffeine and alcohol before bed to improve sleep quality.
Lifestyle medicine has the potential to address up to 80% chronic diseases. By adopting a lifestyle medicine approach to population care, we can help curb the decades-long rise in chronic conditions and their associated costs.
This approach, which focuses on preventing, treating, and reversing chronic diseases through whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle changes, not only enhances patient and provider satisfaction but also aligns with the quintuple aim: better health outcomes, lower costs, improved patient satisfaction, enhanced provider wellbeing, and the advancement of health equity.
Sources
1 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28523941/
2 https://lifestylemedicine.org/
About Dr Shoba Subramanian
Dr Shoba Subramanian, BMBS, BMedSci, MRCGP, DRCOG, DipTropMed, DipLM, serves as the senior medical director for UnitedHealthcare Global, focusing on the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. She leads clinical teams in the UK, Europe, Middle East, USA, and Philippines, ensuring safe medical transportation for assistance and insurance members. Shoba also advises on optimising chronic conditions and maternity care through health management programs and oversees the high-cost claims pathway, a process she designed and developed. With Diplomas in Tropical Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and training in aviation and humanitarian medicine, she has worked across eight countries, providing in-person and remote clinical care and coordinating hundreds of medical evacuations and repatriations.
