Self Care and Lifestyle Medicine

Over the past few months I've been researching into the area of Lifestyle Medicine. I hadn't read much about it before., but soon fell down a rabbit hole of information. I realised how much it aligned with my well being journey. I'd like to share a short introduction into the area, and how we can start the journey fitting it in to our everyday life.

Lifestyle Medicine is based around the prevention, management and reversal of chronic conditions. This can include diabetes and cardiovascular disease. And it could be able to prevent or reverse up to 70% of chronic conditions! It's a holistic approach which uses skills to support behavioural change. The skills and tools learnt leads to the approach being 80% more effective than simply being given advice. The whole concept blew my mind! If it's so effective in preventing chronic diseases, why are doctors not talking about it more?!

It's divided into 6 pillars: mental wellbeing, healthy relationships, healthy eating, sleep, physical activity, and minimising harmful substances. I'm going to keep it short for now, and dive into each of the areas more at a later date. But by working on these 6 areas, we can improve both our physical and mental wellbeing.

So how can we start to incorporate this into our own wellbeing journeys? First off, lets keep it simple and pick on one of the pillars that you think you can improve on. Then think of a small step you could take towards this improvement. This is linked to another activity that you do daily. For example, if you want to improve on the physical activity pillar, do 20 squats every time you brush your teeth. If you want to improve on the mental wellbeing pillar, practise some mindfulness while washing up. By linking these activities it helps to reinforce the behaviour. This makes it sustainable long term. And by starting small, it gives us the best opportunity to be successful. We should then feel motivated to keep adding more.

I hope this short introduction has been useful. What will you add into your day to improve your wellness journey?