This article introduces you to the basics of lifestyle medicine. You will learn about the origins of lifestyle medicine, the 6 pillars of the specialty, and how they impact your energy and capacity to thrive.
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
Wellness is a growing priority for people in the United States. This shift towards health is evidenced by the boom in tech, apps, and conversations around improving lifestyle habits, including nutrition, fitness, sleep, mental wellness, and more.
Research shows in 2022, more than 50 percent of US customers report wellness being a major part of their daily life. That statistic is an increase from 42 percent of consumers in 2020.
Lifestyle medicine is a rapidly expanding discipline that specializes in preventing, managing, and reversing chronic disease by focusing on evidence-based lifestyle applications. This specialty began in 2004 in the United States and has become one of the fastest growing specialties since.
The Six Pillars of Lifestyle Medicine
Lifestyle medicine is centered around core tenants to preventing, managing, and reversing chronic health conditions. These tenants are called “The Six Pillars of Lifestyle Medicine.”
They are:
Nutrition: eating a varied, whole foods, plant-based diet.
Physical Activity: regular intervals of aerobic and anaerobic activity daily.
Restorative Sleep: deep sleep and REM sleep that restores the body and brain.
Stress Management: learning how to regulate emotions and mitigate symptoms of stress.
Social Connection: establishing and maintaining relationships with individuals or groups.
Healthy Coping/Avoiding Risky Substances: the promotion and use of healthful, helpful skills, activities, or endeavors to cope with stress rather than using risky substances.
The more intensively the pillars are attended to by the individual, the greater the impact they will have on their overall health.
How the Pillars Affect Your Ability to Thrive
Energy is the capacity to do work. Every single human function and experience requires energy: either energy coming in, or going out.
The wellness lifestyle pillars provide energy that contributes to the holistic health of the human being: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual. The state of our health dictates the quality and amount of energy that we can give to our behaviors and performance. It also dictates our level of resistance against illness and disease.
It requires energy to attend to wellness lifestyle behaviors; however, there is a high return on investment on this energy expenditure. Engaging in wellness lifestyle behaviors is an active way to invest in our ability to live well, perform optimally, and thrive.
How the Six Pillars Translate to Energy for the Body:
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