While it seems like lifestyle medicine is more of a recent development in medicine, it really is not. Lifestyle medicine is a powerful tool that when is applied to almost any chronic disease can help improve and, in some cases, resolve the chronic disease. About 75% of chronic diseases worldwide can be attributed to poor lifestyle or toxic causes.
In today’s Physician visits, 75% involve recommending or modifying the dose of prescription medication. The problem is that most of the time these medications will only address the symptoms and are not a cure. I am not saying that the doctors are not trying to help their patients because they are. While all doctors will recommend lifestyle changes, this is not their focus. As a society and is not just here in America but in many parts of the world the focus is on getting rid of symptoms fast or getting the miracle pill that will make us better with almost no effort.
When you go to see your doctor, he will ask you are you sick? asks you what the symptoms are? He/she will make a diagnosis, and then write a prescription for medication that will help you with those symptoms. The majority of the time the reasons or the cause is never addressed.
However, the reasons or causes for the disease or illness is more complicated and requires more changes from the patient who is sick and is not as simple as taking a pill. The problem again is that many medications only address the symptoms and not the cause. Many times, these medications bring with them side effects or nutritional deficiencies that can aggravate or create other problems.
Lifestyle medicine is not a new concept
Throughout history and in many cultures lifestyle medicine has been followed but may be known under a different name but the concept is the same. Hippocrates stated, “Everyone has a physician inside him or her; we just have to help it work. The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well”. The human body is wonderful in that can help heal itself as long as it has what it needs. In many instances and in many illnesses this intrinsic healing mechanism may not be enough, but it is part of the overall treatment.
One of the best things about lifestyle medicine is that we can help prevent disease, imagine always being healthy and almost never getting sick and getting to the golden years able to do al the things you always dreamed you would do. Lifestyle medicine can also help improve illnesses and even reverse illnesses.
Function vs. Dysfunction in Medicine
Function in medicine is when everything is working at an optimum level and there are no illnesses. Dysfunction is when we are sick or not feeling well. Functional medicine looks for the causes of disease and goes about resolving or addressing the causes of illnesses.
Resilience
The definition from the Oxford language dictionary:
noun
1.
the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
“the often-remarkable resilience of so many British institutions”
2.
the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
“nylon is excellent in wearability and resilience”
Physiological resilience: the ability of nearly every important function in the body to be pushed away from its ideal function and still return to normal function; ready for the next challenge.
There are times that the stretching goes beyond the body’s ability to go back and the reasons can vary from nutritional deficiency, poor immunity response, lack of sleep, environmental toxins, and stress. Many times, these causes can be reverse or improve to get the body back to that resilience state. There are many times we are way past the capacity of the body to come back but there can be improvements.
During your younger years you use your resilience with dietary indiscretions, drug, and alcohol abuse which may not take a big toll on our health then but by the time we get to our forties and fifties, we start seeing the consequences because our physiological resilience has been stretched to its maximum or even beyond.
For women, these can be even more intense when you add childbearing and menopause. For women lifestyle medicine can help not only relieve stressors of childbirth but also menopause. We all need to take care of our bodies; we only have one.
You can’t obtain good health by just focusing on one thing while ignoring others. You cannot improve your health if you focus on exercise but ignore stress, nutrition, or sleep. Implementing lifestyle changes and seeing good results will take time. Is not a fast and easy fix like taking a pill?
Take away point
The sooner you make lifestyle changes, the longer you have to see the changes. If you start in your 20’s or 30’s is different than if you start in your 50’s and 60’s. Obviously, the older you are the more damage and the less physiological resilience will be present. But changes at any point can help you improve not only your health but also the quality of life.
We should all try to follow lifestyle medicine prescriptions given by your doctors along with more traditional treatments.
