October Lifestyle Medicine Insider News and Updates

Disclaimer: The information included in Insider is intended to give our readers a sense of what is happening in the news, research journals and other channels related to lifestyle medicine. Inclusion does not imply ACLM endorsement. Note that some links may require registration or subscription.

ECONOMICS

• The National Academy of Medicine’s new publication, “Valuing America’s Health: Aligning Financing to Award Better Health and Well-Being (2023),” explores opportunities to transform the current healthcare system to one that promotes whole person and whole population health.
• Employers and workers are expected to see an increase of about 6.5% or higher in health-plan costs next year, according to this Wall Street Journal article.
• This new Tufts study, featuring two national case studies evaluating the health equity and economic benefits of medically tailored meals (MTMs) and produce prescription programs, represents the first “true cost” analysis of implementing Food is Medicine programs across the country.

WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE UPDATE

• This JAMA Health Forum article summarizes some of the “food is medicine” public and private activity toward commitments made at last fall’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.
• This Center for Science in the Public Interest article digs a little deeper into progress and highlights what hasn’t yet been done.
• More than 31,000 have registered for ACLM’s complimentary 5.5-hour “Lifestyle Medicine & Food as Medicine Essentials” CME/CE course that we committed to providing 100,000 clinicians at the Conference. ACLM has expanded its commitment to offering the course to 200,000 clinicians and extended its availability to 2025.
• As part of its commitment, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has published a proceedings paper detailing its spring Summit on Medical Education in Nutrition held in Chicago in collaboration with the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

MEDICAL AND CONTINUING EDUCATION

• Students in an online physician associate school had increased nutrition knowledge, confidence in nutrition skills, and perceived importance of clinical nutrition after receiving virtual nutrition education and a culinary medicine curriculum, according to this study published in Nutrients.
• ACLM’s page on the AMA EdHub is now reaching a far broader audience with evidence-based lifestyle medicine educational content.

PRIMARY CARE

• This New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst opinion piece says improving the value of primary care will require redesigning the care paradigm to focus on relationships among the four pillars of primary care: patients and their families, physicians, health systems, and their surrounding communities.
• The decline in numbers of primary care physicians is reaching a tipping point, according to this Kaiser Family Foundation perspective item.

PILLARS

NUTRITION

• The Gaples Insitute’s podcast “Diet Quality in the Era of High-Potency Weight Loss Drugs,” is posted on the AMA EdHub.
• A study of egg consumption and risk of coronary artery disease, especially among people with high genetic susceptibility, was reported in this American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article.
• California’s governor signed a bill to ban four food additives commonly found in cereals, candy and soft drinks–brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

• A randomized controlled trial published in Springer Link showed that strength training is more effective than aerobic exercise for improving glycemic control and body composition in people with normal-weight type 2 diabetes.

RISKY SUBSTANCES

• “Small Town Strong” is a new documentary about how CrossFit created the comeback of the town of Portsmouth, OH, from being Ground Zero in the opioid epidemic.
• Is food addiction real? It’s an ongoing debate, according to this Scientific American article.

STRESS MANAGEMENT

• The therapeutic effect of nature is explored in this Forbes article on stress and burnout, which highlights a budget tool that helps make a financial case for the inclusion of nature in every healthcare setting.

SLEEP

• Deep sleep could be key to forestalling slow declines in brain health that may one day lead to Alzheimer’s disease, according to this Science Alert article.

 

CHRONIC DISEASE

HYPERTENSION

• The Journal of Hypertension just published a position paper on lifestyle management of hypertension.
• Preliminary research presented recently at the American Heart Association’s Hypertension Scientific Sessions showed that when compared with readings taken while someone was sitting, readings that showed high blood pressure in people who were lying down did a better job of predicting stroke, serious heart problems, and death.

OBESITY

• Maps just published by the CDC reveal which U.S. states have the highest body mass index among residents.

CANCER

• The America Institute for Cancer Research has published its Third Expert Report, a comprehensive collection of information and evidence for medical professionals, researchers, policymakers, and communities to take a proactive approach in the fight against cancer.
• According to a study published in the American Cancer Society’s Cancer journal, 30%-50% of all cancer diagnoses and over 40% of cancer deaths are linked to unhealthy lifestyle practices including smoking, bad eating habits, obesity, excess alcohol use and not enough exercise. The data suggests that breast, colorectal and lung cancers are largely preventable with lifestyle changes.

HEART DISEASE

• In a study recently published in JAMA Cardiology, more than 50% of survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Denmark reported long-term quality of life up to 20 years after their event, comparable to that of the general population.

DEMENTIA

• Among older adults, more time spent being sedentary was significantly associated with a higher incidence of dementia, a study published in JAMA found.

NON-ALCHOHOLIC FATTY LIVER

• Data from 2017 to 2021 show large jumps in the incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease across all ages in the U.S., but the steepest increase by far is in children. For children up to age 17, the rate of diagnosis more than doubled, as reported by the Washington Post.

TYPE 2 DIABETES

• A recent study published in Communications Medicine highlights the need for purposefully designed clinical trials to inform whether individual factors influence the success of T2D prevention strategies.
• Baron’s reports on the success of diet and exercise in the reversal of type 2 diabetes as well as in success of new weight-loss drugs.

STROKE

• The number of people who die from stroke worldwide will jump 50% by 2050 if no significant action is taken to limit the prevalence of stroke and its risk factors, according to a new report from the World Stroke Organization-Lancet Neurology Commission.

BURNOUT

• A recent study published in JAMA Open Network showed women and younger physicians to be prime targets for burnout.

MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

• ACLM President-Elect Padmaja Patel, MD, DipABLM, FACLM, was among more than 65 women physicians recently recognized by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) with the 2023 AMWA INSPIRE Award for inspiring others as they lead the way forward in medicine and healthcare.
• Regan A. Stiegmann, DO, MPH, FACLM, DipABLM, a former active-duty flight surgeon in the Air Force where she served from 2011-2022, was a recent guest on the “Be the One” podcast, a special American Legion podcast series.
• Kayli Anderson, MS, RDN, DipACLM, ACSM-EP, wrote about the six pillars of lifestyle medicine for Today’s Dietitian.
• AdventHealth Chief Wellness Officer Amber Orman, MD, DipABLM, who is a radiation oncologist, discussed nutrition, exercise, sleep, and social interaction as equally important to the fight against breast cancer as a patient’s medical treatment on WESH 2.
• Elizabeth O’Donnell, MD, DipABLM, a multiple myeloma specialist, recently presented on lifestyle medicine as a possible treatment-free delay to multiple myeloma progression.
• Kristi Crymes, DO, was quoted in a Forbes story, “The Active Leadership Ingredients That Turn Food Into Medicine.”

PARTNER NEWS

• Kroger Health, the healthcare division of The Kroger Co., has announced a collaboration with Performance Kitchen^®to offer medically tailored meals (MTMs).
• Kate Goodrich, MD, MHS, Humana Chief Medical Officer, writes in Humana News that lifestyle medicine supports better health outcomes and lower costs.
• NYC Health + Hospitals has announced that its nationally recognized Lifestyle Medicine Program has expanded to NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi in the Bronx. This is the first of six new sites to make the program available citywide.
• The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, and the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University launched the “Nourish My Health” campaign to improve the nation’s health.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• A Health Affairs Scholar article describes The Better Care Plan, a “blueprint” to address the flaws in our current healthcare system.
• There is no national definition of health. According to another Health Affairs Scholar article, there is an urgent need for an actionable, clear, multifaceted, and holistic definition of health.