Introduction to Talking Lifestyle Medicine 🌿

Hi, I am Dr Jeremy Hawke (Podiatrist)👣, Certified Lifestyle medicine practitioner (ASLM) and International Relations consultant. Lifestyle medicine is a global health practitioner specialty, which is paving the way forward for preventing and even reversing some of chronic diseases. I will discuss details on this topic later. 

Welcome to Talking Lifestyle Medicine Blog. Thank you for joining me.  Today I want to ask you to follow me and join us for a journey on Lifestyle medicine and cover the important subjects that form the foundation of Lifestyle medicine. Each week we will cover topics that include subjects that relate to Lifestyle medicine and our planet Earth 🌏. Together we will share information which I will attempt to enlighten you upon the evidence that substantiates their influence on your wellbeing. Please share this information with your family and friends all around the world, so we can keep the strength of these messages travelling eternally. 

This planet earth is the only one we know that can sustain life for us, and all of the other life forms that we have the privilege to share it with. We owe it to the animals,mammals, birds, fish, plant life to mention a few, to take responsibility in applying our intelligence to their welfare, as we are one of them, our survival depends on their survival in the most deeply complex ways, right down to the singular cellular organisms that make all life possible. As we travel along our journey, I will help you to understand how the health of the 30 trillion cells in an adult body is about the way they relate to each other. 

So good health is about the absence of disease, right? So let’s consider some background to Lifestyle medicine. My aim is to introduce you to the evidence-based research that surrounds the specialist area of lifestyle medicine. Lifestyle medicine has been defined by 2018 Lifestyle Medicine Core competencies:

 

Lifestyle Medicine offers a unique approach that leverages a whole food plant – based diet, physical activity, sleep, emotional well-being and avoiding risky substances to not only prevent, but also treat and reverse lifestyle-related diseases.        

 

Looking at Lifestyle medicine from the “pillar” model we can see the major areas that are focused on are as follows: 

Nutrition 🍃

Exercise ⛹

Sleep 😴

Substance use/alcohol control

Social connection 🎶

Stress reduction 🧘 

There are many habits or behaviors that can lead to a loss of balance and homeostasis in our lives. These can include the following: 

Under nutrition and overeating/under eating

Lack of exercise and sedentary lifestyle

Smoking

Alcohol overuse

Lack of social connection and isolation

Stress, anxiety and depression

Social injustice

Insufficient or poor sleep habits

Cultural loss of identity

Healthcare access issues 

Let’s talk a little bit about myself. As a Podiatrist👣, I have spent my career working with patients with their health care management as a primary focus. My interest in nutrition and self-care stemmed from my first career as a Ballet dancer, which formed the foundation to my passion for Human movement, locomotion and Podiatric medicine. I have been a keen competitive and long distance swimmer and Marathoner, and envisions the core of Lifestyle medicine principles to be the most significant paradigm for ongoing prevention, remission and reversal of many chronic diseases we are faced with globally. I consider the best management programs to be the ones we can work on now. As what we do now paves our path to better health, and memories each day of how far we have come from since our new yesterday. So now is the time for change. I consider the flow on from being our own ambassadors for change, to influence all we love and care for around us. 

Please follow me on “Talking Lifestyle Medicine blog” as we tread a path of sharing and discovery of the types of changes that we can consider adopting to improve our health and the health of those we love, together 🧘‍♂️🙏.