Organizations and individuals
United for Healthcare Transformation
Addressing a healthcare crisis
How can we address a global healthcare crisis?
While 80% or more of all health care spending in the U.S. is tied to the treatment of conditions rooted in unhealthy lifestyle choices, lifestyle medicine offers hope as a solution. Diseases and conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, obesity and multiple types of cancer are among the most common and costly of all health conditions—but they are also preventable. Lifestyle medicine addresses root causes by focusing on the lifestyle choices that give rise to these diseases in the first place. When implemented, lifestyle medicine can prevent, treat, and even reverse these conditions.
Lifestyle medicine is the use of evidence-based lifestyle therapeutic intervention —including a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connection — as our most sustainable and effective method of fighting, reversing and preventing chronic illness.
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Evidence overwhelmingly supports the efficacy of lifestyle medicine
Can culinary medicine be taught virtually to medical students?
In the wake of COVID-19, Elizabeth Beale, MD, MRCP, DipABLM, successfully adapted ACLM's Culinary Medicine Curriculum into a virtual version for her students at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.
Five things you can do to eat healthier on a tight budget
Inflation is straining household budgets but there are many low-cost, nutritious and tasty food options that health clinicians can explore with patients as part of a lifestyle medicine treatment plan.
There is a growing threat to our national security. It’s probably not what you think it is.
A quiet threat to United States national security is infiltrating the health and wellness of the brave men and women who serve. The growing epidemic of chronic disease in the U.S. has not spared the armed forces, where almost 66 percent of service members are considered to be either overweight or have obesity.
Lifestyle medicine helped save this physician from burnout.
I was 32, seeing about 30 patients a shift for Yale New Haven Health. I liked my job — the adrenaline rush from saving a life is medicine’s ultimate reward. But 80 to 85 percent of the diagnoses I made were straightforward, not immediate life-threatening events or complicated medical dilemmas to solve.
How a commitment to lifestyle changes helped one woman face cancer.
"Terri Schon’s cancer diagnosis in 2019 left her with a nagging question she will never answer. Why? Cancer didn’t run in her family. She had no reason to believe it was genetic. She couldn’t stop wondering if there was something wrong in her lifestyle that caused the disease."
“Your results are normal!” The story of how one woman with diabetes and chronic fatigue restored her health.
"Deena Clark had type 2 diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver and chronic fatigue when she discovered the lifestyle medicine program at St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, Idaho. The intensive program featured a multidisciplinary health team committed to helping her make sustainable changes to her health habits related to the six pillars of lifestyle medicine defined by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine — nutrition, physical activity, stress management, restorative sleep, positive social connection and
How a Mayo Clinic doctor who survived stage 4 cancer and a heart transplant inspires patients.
"Dr. Mussallem, a breast cancer and lifestyle medicine specialist, comes to appointments prepared with scientific evidence backing up why healthy lifestyle choices matter when it comes to breast cancer prevention and management care. Her patients are experiencing a range of emotions that accompany a breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments like chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Fear. Confusion. Determination. 'But patients welcome the opportunity to seize a sense of control over their disease and embrace the six
Communities besieged by chronic diseases need lifestyle medicine. Meet a doctor determined to deliver it there.
"Margarita Schneider-Munoz was in her early 20s when a nurse practitioner reviewing her family medical history shook her head and said something Schneider-Munoz never forgot. 'I am so sorry,' the nurse practitioner told her. She was referring to a family history reflecting that Schneider-Munoz’s grandmother was diagnosed with breast and ovarian cancer in her mid-40s, and that Schneider-Munoz’s father suffered his first heart attack while also in his 40s. The nurse practitioner meant well but her
Lifestyle medicine works. So why can’t physicians get paid to practice it?
"As a passionate advocate for lifestyle medicine, Padmaja Patel, MD, DipABLM, knows many clinicians committed to practicing the fast-growing field and dedicated to restoring their patients’ health through proven, evidence-based treatments. But they struggle with financial unsustainability in a system geared more toward “sick care.” The predominant U.S. fee-for-service health care reimbursement model rewards clinicians for how many procedures and services they perform, not for making their patients healthy again."
A health message so simple and effective that everyone should be doing it.
"Give a patient a sense of ownership over their health, and you give them hope. That’s the approach taken by Sean Hashmi, MD, MS, FASN, Regional Director Clinical Nutrition and Weight Management for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, when prescribing treatment for his patients, many of whom have obesity. Ownership makes patients active participants in their care, not helpless bystanders. 'The best hope in the world is when they feel like they are in the driver’s seat,' Dr.
LM2022 — Redesigning Healthcare Better
ACLM is hosting a hybrid conference on November 13-16, 2022. The in-person event will be at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Florida. This is the premier conference delivering expert continuing education with a focus on lifestyle medicine - the therapeutic dose of proper nutrition, regular physical activity, social connection, restorative sleep, stress management, and avoidance of risky substances. The LM2022 conference theme of “Redesigning Healthcare Better” is the call to action to create a future where lifestyle medicine is offered as the first, affordable, and accessible therapy for non-communicable diseases.