Lifestyle Medicine
As defined by The American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine is the “evidence-based practice of helping individuals and families adopt and sustain healthy behaviors that affect health and quality of life.” The deadliest and most crippling disease processes seen today certainly have a genetic component, but research strongly suggests many diseases are multifactorial. This means that our environment or behavior plays a major role in even the leading causes of death in America. Lifestyle medicine in Phoenix is the same as it is everywhere else.
What Is Killing Us Now?
The leading causes of premature death in the United States include cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes. Current Center for Disease Control trends predict 1/3 of the U.S. adult population will be diabetic by 2050 and certain ethnic groups may be more towards 1/2. Also alarming is the instance of strokes, obesity, and diabetes rising in young adults (5-14 year olds). These diseases don’t just take years from our life, but life from our years.
What Can We Do About It?
The good news is that numerous studies link most premature deaths to three things that can be modified by the patient. These modifications include: tobacco cessation, improved diet and increase in physical activity. This has been researched extensively for decades.
One study released in 2009, called “Healthy Living is the Best Revenge,” released pertinent data regarding 23,000 people studied in Germany. This group was followed for eight years using a point system for physical activity, diet habits, smoking, and body mass index.
The conclusion of the study states that adhering to the four basic principles listed above strongly impacts the prevention of chronic disease – by 80%, in fact. Implementing these changes can eliminate 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and 60% of cancer. If the FDA approved a drug that could boast similar results, millions would be buying it.
Lifestyle medicine can be very straightforward and achievable. Hippocrates, seen as the father of lifestyle medicine, stated, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” and “walking is man’s best medicine.” Dr. David Katz, the President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, has similar views and breaks it down into six categories: feet, forks, fingers, sleep, stress, and love.
Feet
Jogging was once called “roadwork” for the few who were athletes decades ago. Most people a few generations back would get their exercise through their day job. Now it is commonplace to have desk jobs that require little to no physical effort. This has become a major problem if exercise isn’t implemented outside of work.
It is widely understood that physical activity improves cardiovascular health and decreases the risk of diabetes and obesity, among other benefits. But there are so many additional perks. Multiple studies show that aerobic exercise can significantly improve anxiety and depression symptoms and protect against the harmful consequences of stress. Do you have problems with memory and focus? Several studies have documented that physical activity improves brain health and plasticity as well.
If you don’t like “roadworking,” find something else to get your feet moving and you, too, can reap the significant benefits. When you live in Arizona, the “feet” part of lifestyle medicine in Phoenix is easy to accomplish in the winter months because of the mild weather, which makes it more convenient to get moving.
Forks
“Eat your veggies!” your mom would exclaim. We all know moms know best and there are hundreds of studies out there proving just that. The number of studies and overwhelming evidence released on the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables is significant, yet there is not much publicity. Why? Big money is generated in other studies that can sell weight loss pills instead. There is a meta-analysis of nine studies consisting of over 200,000 men and women that showed a significant decrease in cardiovascular disease risk by the consumption of fruits and vegetables. Another source examined 200 studies that found a relationship between fruits and vegetables and 10 different types of cancer. Strong evidence from these studies suggests that there is a protective effect from several common cancers by simply consuming fruits and vegetables. This just skims the surface.
Fingers
It is a well-known fact that smoking can cause lung cancer, but it can also cause bladder, esophagus, stomach, and several other types of cancer. There are other disease processes caused by smoking. It causes heart disease and strokes, as it affects the arteries in the cardiovascular system. Smoking can also have reproductive side effects in women such as ectopic pregnancies and premature, low birth-weight babies. It can have an impact on bone health and increases the risk of periodontal disease, cataracts, and macular degeneration. It suppresses the immune system and increases inflammation throughout the body. This is a summary of all the effects of smoking. There is no surprise that smoking is bad for us, but it may be astonishing to see so many other parts of the body affected by smoking.
Sleep
Sleep is essential for optimal physical health, immune function, mental health and cognition. Insufficient sleep is a public health problem. Nearly 30% of adults in the United States report sleeping six or fewer hours per day. Sleep deprivation has adverse effects such as cognitive impairment, poor mood and judgment, poor cardiovascular health, obesity and metabolism, just to name a few. When asking what is lifestyle medicine, getting sufficient sleep is an important component.
Stress
Mental stress has its importance, but its function is different now than it was 1,000-10,000 years ago. Stress then would function to keep humans alive and safe. For example, a lion spotted across the plains would activate stress hormones, causing the human to run away and live. Stress is used to protect us from immediate, short-term harm. It can be the motivation to prepare and perform in school and work and other functions in life. Yet if it’s chronic, it can cause major health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic headaches, a decreased immune system, anxiety, and depression. Stress is the gateway to anxiety and depression. Anxiety disorders affects 1/5 of the people in the U.S. today.
Love
Love promotes health. Meaningful relationships with friends and family can activate areas in the brain responsible for emotion, attention, motivation and memory. Studies have demonstrated that those with loving relationships are far less vulnerable to chronic disease and premature death than those without. The opposite is certainly true. In fact, there is a disease called broken heart syndrome. It is a disease that physically weakens part of the heart and is commonly mistaken for a heart attack. Fortunately, most people recover rapidly with no long-term heart damage.
Conclusion
Our society is always looking for the silver bullet. We live in a culture that is continually advertising unsustainable diets, promising quick exercise schemes, and pushing pills. We always buy into the “best kept secret” that are “quick” and “easy” with minimal effort required. What is lifestyle medicine in Phoenix or anywhere? Lifestyle medicine reminds us that the things that will make us strong and healthy both physically and mentally are not secrets at all.
It is our goal as family physicians to examine multiple areas that contribute to the well-being of the patient. We don’t want to exclusively treat and manage diseases that have already happened, although we do that, too. We would like to help prevent disease through a myriad of critical health factors, some mentioned above. Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.” These tools are long enough to help us all live a long, healthy, happy, and prosperous lives. And we are excited to help!
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- Contributed by Mike Snarr, DO