What is Lifestyle Medicine and how does it relate to Occupational Therapy?
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Lifestyle Medicine is defined as, “The application of environmental, behavioural, medical and motivational principles to the management (including self-care and self-management) of lifestyle-related health problems in a clinical and/or public health setting” (Egger et al, 2017). Lifestyle medicine differs from non-medical clinical practice in that the former may include medication (e.g. for smoking cessation or hunger control); lifestyle medicine adds to conventional medicine in that it more closely examines environmental and distal determinants, as well as individual behaviours, that influence disease. “Lifestyle as medicine has the potential to prevent up to 80% of chronic disease. No other medicine can match that.” (Dr David Katz).
Lifestyle Medicine is transforming the way we manage, treat and prevent chronic conditions by addressing these behavioural, social and environmental drivers; the modifiable aspects of the whole person (physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual), health behaviours, environment, and other circumstances. This is underpinned by an enhancement of self-empowerment and self-efficacy to manage and improve our own health. Lifestyle Medicine also recognises the upstream determinants of disease; promoting health equity, environmental sustainability, social justice and corporate responsibility. As a result, it recognises that not one health discipline or profession alone can meet our health needs. Instead, Lifestyle Medicine emphasises the essentiality of an interdisciplinary approach to health and healthcare, which creates a collaborative approach through which complex problems can be solved. Lifestyle Medicine enables the client to be in control of their own health and well-being by exploring changes to their habits as opposed to relying on an external stimulus e.g. long-term medication/treatment to reduce the symptoms experienced. .
The Occupational Therapy Practice Framework 4th Edition (AOTA, 2020) contains threads to each of lifestyle medicines pillars for healthy living—physical activity, nutrition, sleep, stress management, connection, and the avoidance of risky substances. Occupations that we engage into influence our health and well-being in a positive or negative way. Occupation generally gives a positive health outcome when engaging in that occupation, gives the person meaning, liberty to choose, challenges and a general balance (Wilcock,2005).
Lifestyle Redesign as an occupational therapy intervention framework that promotes awareness of the relationship between everyday activities and health. It guides people in the process of crafting occupations, habits, and routines to enhance health and well-being. Lifestyle Medicine holistically addresses both specific activities and the patterning of activities as being health promoting, health compromising, or neutral and enables self-exploration on how activities contribute to their desired health outcomes (Pyatak et al, 2022).
As an example in the chronic pain population, multiple reports have highlighted the benefits of improved occupational performance for daily functioning in different populations, the importance of approaching meaningful everyday occupations. A strong interrelationship between occupational performance and satisfaction, occupational balance, pain self-efficacy, and pain acceptance, detected in the study suggested an ability to impact pain coping capacity (Nielsen et al, 2023).
References:
- Changes in pain, daily occupations, lifestyle, and health following an occupational therapy lifestyle intervention: a secondary analysis from a feasibility study in patients with chronic high-impact pain (Nielsen et al, 2023)
- Optimizing Occupations, Habits, and Routines for Health and Well-Being With Lifestyle Redesign®: A Synthesis and Scoping Review (Pyatak et al, 2022)
- Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2020)
- Lifestyle medicine: The ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of a developing discipline (Egger, 2019)
- The art and science of chronic disease management come together in a lifestyle-focused approach to primary care (Egger, Katz, Sagner, Dixon, & Stevens, 2014)
