I’m a cardiac surgeon so I look after a lot of people with non-communicable diseases. And a year ago, I was accepted to do a PhD to help patients be more physically active.

Here’s what I’ve learnt about ‘lifestyle medicine’ in the last year 🧵(my personal thoughts/musings)
Doctors do not receive enough training in not only nutrition and exercise but also around things like stigma, counselling and psychology. Which would not be insurmountable if we had more allied health professionals
But we don’t. Of course depends on where you live, but the system is vastly underresourced to provide help to all those who need it, including ridiculously short consult times that are increasingly laden with paperwork. Everyone is stretched to the limit and working hard
Added to which, IMO there is not enough acknowledgement of the social determinants of health in healthcare at an individual and system wide level so HCWs interventions/intentions can’t overcome these complex factors.
And I now know (in the early stages of my PhD) that designing and delivering advice or an interventions to improve health behaviours is complex and nuanced. And needs multidisciplinary collaboration including stakeholders to have a shot
Lifestyle medicine spans everything from tackling even this snapshot of complexities around health to something more nefarious. Lifestyle medicine claims range similarly from sensible to ludicrous.
Denouncing all lifestyle medicine is throwing the baby out with the bath water. However, if I could change a few things about the provision of lifestyle medicine it would be:
1. Rebrand away from woo
2. Collaborate!
3. Get educated, properly and research
4. Get resourced whether that be for doctors or allied health professionals (I’m looking at you governments)
5. No medicine is a magic pill and likewise ‘lifestyle’ changes may not be either.
You can follow @drnikkistamp.
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