What Is Lifestyle Medicine?

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What Is Lifestyle Medicine?

Living well is the best medicine, and that’s what Lifestyle Medicine is all about. Lifestyle Medicine is an evidence-based approach to whole-person well-being. It shows how eating well, staying active, managing stress and making other healthy lifestyle choices can lead to the prevention, management, and treatment of most chronic medical conditions. Lifestyle Medicine is the preferred method of prevention and treatment because it encourages and resources individuals toward steady, sustainable steps leading to lasting lifestyle change and personal wellbeing.

AIM to Live Well” is our core Lifestyle Medicine program that was developed to encourage and educate patients toward sustainable lifestyle changes leading toward optimal health and well-being. AIM to Live Well offers a physician-led transformational learning cohort that reorients patients toward living with AIM:

  • AWARENESS
  • INTENTION
  • MEANING

Our interactive 24-class-hour course is spread over 10 months will help patients from all walks of life to LEARN, PRACTICE, and SHARE their dynamic journey toward wellness.

Here’s what we cover:

AIM: 5 Key Lifestyle Practices

There are five key lifestyle topics on which we focus during our course. Instruction and practices related to each of these topics are highly impactful for a person’s long-term health and well-being. Together, we work to increase personal awareness and intentionality in each of these areas, linking lifestyle choices and actions to personal meaning for sustainable outcomes.

Fork

Choosing whole, plant-based foods as a regular habit greatly affects the health and well-being of the body. Research shows that making healthy diet choices can reduce the risk of heart disease, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and other chronic and serious conditions. It can help you maintain a healthy weight and prevent you from developing conditions to which you are genetically pre-disposed. AIM focuses on building healthy diet habits that are sustainable and nutritious.

Feet

This lifestyle focus is all about being active through engaging in regular, safe, physical activity. Staying active can help reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease and other heart problems, and can improve your mood and energy level. It can reduce your risk of serious injury by improving your balance and strengthening your bones and muscles. Staying active has a vast amount of health benefits. It’s important to make sure you start slow, consider any limiting conditions you may have, and talk to your physician about exercises that are right for you.

Fingers

Here, we explore personal maladaptive attachments and any addictive behaviors that may be preventing you from achieving your optimal level of wellness. Through AIM we help you recognize what those are, how they affect you, and how you can break free from any negative, unhealthy habits.

Breath

‘Breath’ relates to living well with stress, along with issues of rest and sleep.

We teach you actionable ways to pause, breathe deeply, and re-boot for peak wellness. Evidence shows that living well with stress and improved quality of sleep are highly correlated with long-term wellness. Many stress-related conditions have been linked to an increase in conditions like obesity-related illnesses, heart disease, mental illness, asthma, and many other common illnesses.

Heart

Our lifestyle topic, Heart, emphasizes the value and role of personal connections with self, others, and a higher power in our journey toward well-being. Our course highlights the impactful evidence of forgiveness and gratitude in the development of our health-promoting connections.

AIM: Course Details

Our AIM  to Live Well course is a complete whole-person wellness program. Our group sessions help patients pursue lifestyle changes by learning about and building sustainable healthy habits over the course of sixteen, 90-minute sessions. The goal of our program is to help patients realize healthy lifestyle choices are possible and sustainable and unique to their individual experience. No two journeys will look the same, and yet everyone’s AIM journey can lead toward healthier outcomes such as. improved weight and improved or reversed lifestyle-related chronic diseases such as:

  • Diabetes
  • Heart disease
  • High blood pressure
  • High cholesterol
  • Stroke
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Certain cancers

AIM: Additional Resources And Continued Education

AIM Community: Making healthy lifestyle changes is not meant to be a solo effort. Through monthly, guided gatherings, we provide ongoing support and intentional community experiences to current and previous participants of AIM. The purpose of these meetings is to offer space and practices and resources in order to continue with newly gained healthy habits after the 16-session AIM course has ended. Our AIM Communities help participants ‘stay the course’ of their lifestyle changes and offer regular, supportive transformational continuing education for a sustainable lifelong healthy lifestyle.

AIM Deeper: Our shorter, focused AIM Deeper classes allow you the opportunity to deep-dive into any of the various key lifestyle topics, such as Living Well With Stress, orMind-Body Practices for Changing Habits.

AIM Coaching: Along with regular group support (see “AIM Community”) we also offer personalized, one-on-one sessions with a wellness coach/transformational AIM educator, who provides participants with personal, support and other pertinent resources tailored to their needs. These patient-centered interactions offer encouragement, tools and so forth needed for keeping the AIM to Live Well lifestyle principles and actions a priority in daily practice.

Contact us for more information about our AIM to Live Well program, and start making lifestyle choices today toward a healthier you.