Lifestyle Medicine is a new approach to patient care that uses evidence-based primary prevention measures to treat lifestyle diseases in a clinical setting. Primary prevention involves behavior changes such as hand washing, eating a healthy diet, making time to exercise and maintaining supportive relationships. Lifestyle medicine is not alternative medicine it is an expansion of clinical preventive medicine.

Lifestyle diseases are the most common causes of suffering and death worldwide. These diseases are also called "chronic diseases" from the Latin word chronos which means time. Chronic diseases take a long time of poor lifestyle habits to develop and will last for a long time without comprehensive lifestyle changes.

The term "lifestyle" refers to an individual's work and leisure habits, and reflects attitudes, interests, social values and self concepts. It is influenced by culture, family, friends, education, social groups and economic status. This term is much more useful because it emphasizes the important role of personal behavior choices in the prevention and reversal of these diseases.

Lifestyle diseases have similar underlying causes such as poor eating habits, lack of exercise, unresolved emotional conflicts and uncontrolled stresses. Lifestyle medicine expands current Preventive Medicine practice to address the growing epidemic of lifestyle diseases.

CURRENT PRACTICE	LIFESTYLE MEDICINE
Treats symptoms of lifestyle diseases	Treats the underlying lifestyle causes of disease
Medical provider in control	Patient in control
Medications and surgery	Nutrition, exercise, stress management, life skills and social support
Medication risks and side effects	Increased energy, loss of excess weight, mindfulness, joy and balance
Patient is passive recipient of drug prescriptions	Patient is an active partner in care. Medications used as an adjunct to behavior change
Provider responsible for outcome	Patient responsible for outcome
Diagnosis and treatment	Motivation and compliance
Disease management	Primary, secondary and tertiary disease prevention
Little consideration of the patient's' environment necessary	Understanding patient's environment is crucial to care
Minimal change requested	Comprehensive changes required

Modified from Egger et al. Lifestyle Medicine; Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2008: p 4