Non-communicable disease affects the lives of millions of people around the world.
Chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, respiratory and musculoskeletal conditions and mental health issues are the result of complex lifestyle factors. They have physical, emotional, environmental and social determinants.
Improve Health and Well-being
Current approaches to medicine and healthcare offer inadequate solutions to the problems we face.
Lifestyle medicine seeks to address these issues to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and societies. It offers healthcare professionals and patients new hope that these conditions can be prevented, reversed and better managed.
Lifestyle medicine is not a panacea for all the health challenges faced by humanity – however for specific, lifestyle related-conditions it must be part of the solution.
Lifestyle medicine’s focus is on the person in front of us and their lifestyle including:
- Physical activity and exercise
- Diet and nutrition
- Sleep
- Stress reduction and mental health
- Harmful substance reduction or cessation, eg tobacco, drugs and alcohol
- Healthy relationships
At the societal level, lifestyle medicine also emphasises the importance of broader factors impacting on individuals’ health and well-being including:
- Environment and ecological health
- Poverty and health inequality
- Social isolation
- Loss of culture and identity
