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How to be healthy in the new year: What is lifestyle medicine? Does lifestyle medicine work? What are the benefits of lifestyle medicine? How to become a lifestyle medicine doctor?
Our guest and chair of the American Medical Association Board of Trustees Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA, answers the question: What is lifestyle medicine and how it can benefit you?AMA Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger hosts.
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Speaker
- Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA, chair, Board of Trustees, American Medical Association
Transcript
Unger: Hello and welcome to the AMA Update video and podcast. Today, we're talking about the growth of lifestyle medicine and how it's giving physicians new tools to take care of patients. Our guest today is Dr. Michael Suk, chair of the AMA Board of Trustees in Danville, Pennsylvania. Dr. Suk is also a diplomate of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine and became a certified lifestyle medicine physician in 2020.
I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer, in Chicago. Welcome back, Dr. Suk.
Dr. Suk: Thanks, Todd. A real pleasure to be back with you and happy to talk about this topic, and especially this time of year.
Unger: Well, I can't open any email or look on any website without reading something related to lifestyle medicine. 2024 has been a huge year for this topic. Before we talk about why, why don't you give us a little bit of an overview about what lifestyle medicine is for those who might not know?
Dr. Suk: Well, thanks, Todd. Interestingly, lifestyle medicine is not only a specialty of itself, but it's also an adjunctive specialty to any other medical specialty that's recognized by the Board of Medical Specialties. As you know, I'm a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who decided to get a secondary board in lifestyle medicine, largely because I think the scope and breadth of lifestyle medicine covers—has applicability to 1,000—all of the specialties that are out there.
But in a nutshell, lifestyle medicine is really—it's a medical specialty that focuses on therapeutic lifestyle interventions, really, as a primary modality to help treat chronic conditions, including, but not limited to, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and even obesity. Folks who are certified in lifestyle medicine tend to use evidence-based, whole person, prescriptive lifestyle changes in order to treat some of these chronic conditions that can be adjunctive, as I said, to their primary specialty. So for me, an orthopedic surgery, for example, focusing on one, two, three of the six pillars of lifestyle medicine can actually help my patients get better, be healthier, and in the case that they need orthopedic surgery, be better equipped and in better shape to have it done.
Unger: Well, as just more evidence of the ascendance of this particular area, last year, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine was inducted into the AMA House of Delegates. And the organization now has over 11,000 members, including you, of course. What do you think is behind the growing interest in lifestyle medicine?
Dr. Suk: Well, as I said, I think that for the medical specialties, it is something that weaves across all areas of medicine in that chronic disease is a part of every patient that we treat, regardless of your specialty. Lifestyle medicine covers, really, six main pillars that each have an applicability to just about everything.
The first is a focus on nutrition. And while there's a great evidence to demonstrate that a plant-based nutritional diet is potentially more healthy than others, really, the focus and awareness on nutrition is really critically important in anything we do.
Second pillar is on physical activity. Movement is life, as they say. Life is movement. And bringing that aspect of awareness, and also promoting that within your specialty, is also very healthy.
The third is in the world of stress management. And stress management—we all know that we're—it's a focus of both not only physical stress, but also mental well-being, which is a big focus of the AMA, as you know, particularly even on the self-care for physicians.
The fourth is to avoid risky substances or risky behaviors. And these are the types of things like alcohol. Just be aware of the effects that this can have not only on your acute well-being, but also on your chronic—potential chronic disease.
The fifth is the area called restorative sleep. And it's an area that I think is really important. And we're all paying more attention to it these days. We all recognize that getting six, eight hours of sleep is really critically important to our well-being overall. And by incorporating aspects and advice around sleep in your day-to-day practice—I think can be helpful for patients as they deal with a whole variety of different diseases.
And then really the sixth pillar, which is really critically important, is—again, it's a holistic approach to making sure that people have social connections because we know that the environment and—that we exist and developing meaningful relationships is a real pathway to a healthy and—healthy life.
And so when you look at the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, look at the evidence base that supports it, both from peer-reviewed journals and also real primary evidence, you know that each of these pillars touch upon not only just the human being and the well-being of the patients that we see, but have a role in, really, any medical subspecialty that's out there. And in the world of orthopedics, this is something that was very attractive to me and—which is why I pursued that degree.
Unger: Now, I think those six pillars that you read sound like my New Year's resolutions for 2025. Do you think that there is also this demand—I don't know if it's just so many people getting older and wanting to live longer and healthier lives—that is also at work here?
Dr. Suk: It's interesting, Todd. When you talk about living longer lives, there's a terminology that's used quite often. It's this concept of longevity. And it's this perspective of having a longer lifespan.
I think what lifestyle medicine brings is not just a lifespan, it's a health span. It's how is it that we can lead more productive, active lives not just in terms of time and duration, but how do we lead that same type of life in a longer way, but also in a healthier way? And so that's the terminology that I tend to use a lot when I speak to patients about aspects of these six pillars. It's really increasing one's health span, not just lifespan.
Unger: And when you talk about health span, talk about that a little bit more. This was a term that just came up in another conversation and that difference between lifespan and health span.
Dr. Suk: The focus on making people live longer is potentially one goal. But that's chronological in nature. You can live to be 100, but be on your deathbed for 100 years. And that wouldn't be a very, very effective and productive life. You could live to 90, which is less of a duration. But if you're living in a healthy and productive way, that's probably far more beneficial in terms of the way we think about the span of the course of our lives.
Unger: I'm going to predict that health span is going to be one of those words of the year for next year. It's so interesting. I'm also interested in that overlap that you saw as an orthopedic surgeon because I think maybe that's not going to be obvious to everyone. When you look at those six pillars and you think, these are going to be helpful to me in what I do, which things stuck out to you as being most helpful?
Dr. Suk: Well, clearly, for me, the world of musculoskeletal medicine is largely about activity. It's about restoration of physical function. And so the aspect of physical activity and focusing patients' lives on helping to get them to be and think about more physical activity was really a critical component to what I do in orthopedics.
And when I say physical activity, it's really important to recognize that I'm not just promoting exercise. I'm not telling people to go join a gym. But I start with the simple statement of saying, getting off the couch is better than sitting in the couch. And if we can promote activities such as step counters and things like that, then we know it's going to have a beneficial role to play not only in the prevention of chronic disease like osteoarthritis or like muscle pain and things like that, or chronic back pain, but also if they are a candidate for potential surgical intervention, it's going to prepare them in a prehabilitation standpoint to make their recovery even better. So you can see that that one pillar itself has a direct role in almost everything that I do.
Increasingly, also, when we focus on the world of nutrition, it's really something that has become, probably in the last decade or so, a high focus on what we do in orthopedic surgery. What we eat helps us heal. And so by focusing on this—for example, we've done some great studies here at Geisinger where we have promoted certain nutritional supplementation prior to total joint replacement. And we've seen increased muscle mass as a result of—during recovery. This leads to greater physical activity, which leads to greater prevention of chronic disease.
And then when you look at the other things, like focusing on not only nutrition, but stress management, restorative sleep, and social connections, you can see the whole body perspective on how patients can get better, both in an acute way, but also in a way that they—that we potentially can prevent them from ever needing my services at all.
Unger: Those are great examples of how you're incorporating the lifestyle medicine principles into your practice. And I think, as you mentioned up front, you're not alone in this. We've heard from Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, who is our AMA president-elect. I've heard from other people in the OB/GYN worlds that are also interested in lifestyle medicine as it applies to their own specialties. Do you see other particular specialties out there that would benefit most from incorporating these principles?
Dr. Suk: I think the better question is, do I see any that wouldn't? And I can honestly say I don't see any that wouldn't. And it's funny to talk about Bobby and a number of others.
In my conversations, when they found out that I was doing, or at least had been certified in lifestyle medicine, it took many people by surprise. But it makes a lot of sense. For folks like Bobby and others, they were living the lifestyle pillars, anyway. And by gathering additional evidence and learning about what the peer-reviewed literature says in this particular field—I think is beneficial for everyone. And I strongly encourage them to go ahead and get their certification.
As to something you said earlier, it's—the fact that it makes common sense leads to the reason why they have such a great rise in the number of people who are interested. And it's not just a U.S. phenomenon. It's an international phenomenon that's occurring. And their membership has grown tremendously.
We're really proud, as you know, to—that they applied for and they have been granted full delegate status within our House of Delegates because it provides them a tremendous platform to participate in the house of medicine and part of our overall policymaking process, which, as you know, is quite influential.
Unger: And I look forward to seeing more activity in this particular arena. I mentioned my own personal New Year's resolutions earlier in the conversation. I'm not alone in this area. I mentioned before—so much out there. There's so many influencers in this arena. You can't look at anything right now without talking about longevity. When you think about everything that you've learned and the patients that you're seeing right now, do you have any advice to share with folks out there about lifestyle, lifestyle medicine and what advice to look for?
Dr. Suk: It's interesting. Recent studies have demonstrated that for the first time in probably over a decade, or maybe even two decades, we're actually are seeing a fall in the rate of obesity in this country. That just came out recently. Now, a lot of people are attributing this to the possible intervention of these new GLP and medications. And while that may be the case, for me, it's indicative of the fact that it's a first small step toward a longer approach in terms of defeating, or at least mitigating, this idea and the rise of obesity.
So however you get there, my advice is however you get there as a first step, it's important to just take the first step, whether it's increasing your sleep by an hour and trying to get to a goal of eight hours of sleep, whether it's saying, let's moderate our alcohol intake around the holidays, or whether it's, I want to get off the couch instead of sitting in it for an hour. I think these are the small steps that can happen. And with the right provider and the right advice and the right kind of attitude, I think you can make gigantic leaps that will help in the world of increasing your health span, as we talked about, and ultimately lead to what I think is a more productive life that's filled with less chronic disease.
Unger: And I think, as you pointed out before, the more that every physician out there really understands lifestyle medicine, the better off we'll probably be. Dr. Suk, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your experience with lifestyle medicine. If you found this discussion valuable, you can support more programming like it by becoming an AMA member at ama-assn.org/join.
That wraps up today's episode. We'll be back soon with another AMA Update. Be sure to subscribe for new episodes and find all our videos and podcasts at ama-assn.org/podcasts. Thanks for joining us today. Please take care.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this video are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.
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