About Lifestyle Medicine
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
At its core, Lifestyle Medicine empowers individuals to manage and improve their own health. It is an integrated whole-person approach to health that focuses on managing lifestyle-related chronic medical conditions, or difficult physiological life transitions, using mind-body techniques, lifestyle modifications and ongoing support. Lifestyle Medicine considers your unique lifestyle, environment, behaviours, physical and mental health, emotions, thoughts and habits and empowers you to take positive actions toward better health and vitality.
What are Chronic Medical Conditions?
Chronic medical conditions and lifestyle-correlated conditions account for a substantial percentage of the cause of invalidity, loss of productivity and declining health worldwide. They are health conditions that often make one feel disempowered, hopeless and disadvantaged.
Many chronic medical conditions, including diabetes & endocrine conditions, autoimmune conditions, cardiovascular conditions, cancer, chronic pain and mental health conditions, all share common risk factors that are often preventable or sometimes reversible by changing how we live life. To manage, treat and prevent chronic health conditions and lifestyle-related diseases, we must actively and effectively deal with the root causes of the problem that lies in our daily choices and decisions and how we live our lives. The vulnerability to chronic medical conditions is shared by all humans regardless of their social, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender or age background. It is not something that is happening to “ the other people ”, “across the fence”, or “to people with bad habits”. We are all vulnerable to the simple fact that we are all just humans living in the 21st Century. The most vulnerable period in a woman’s life is ten-fifteen years around Menopause. Menopause is marked by the last menstrual period in a person’s life. Most of the time, one can feel ashamed, guilty and isolated for suffering a chronic illness or menopausal symptoms. Still, the driving factor towards the disease or discomfort is often not in our conscious choices but in environmental factors and externally reinforced behaviour patterns. Understanding the many factors that can drive us toward disease is becoming increasingly difficult. It can often feel like a lonely and painful journey.
Chronic medical conditions and unpleasant menopausal symptoms are influenced by and can be correlated to:
Physical inactivity/sedentary lifestyle/too much or too strenuous activity
An unhealthy relationship with food and drinks
Smoking
Alcohol, Caffeine or Carbonated drinks overconsumption
Substance use
Chronic accumulated unattended stress- known as “Allostatic Load.”
Poor or inadequate sleep and lack of rest
Social isolation/miscommunication/lack of meaningful relationships
Loss of culture, identity and meaning
Lack of sense of belonging
Loneliness
Other societal influences (increased perception of social divisions and differences)
Environmental factors (recent COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, air pollution, over-exposure to increasingly unregulated social media)
How can Lifestyle Medicine help with Chronic Medical Conditions?
Lifestyle Medicine aims to understand, manage, treat and prevent chronic and lifestyle-related health conditions by dealing with the root cause of chronic disease or condition. By understanding our bodies and minds and learning to reconnect with them in a curious, non-judgmental and kind way, we can start the process of Lifestyle rehabilitation. By re-examining our daily choices and decisions concerning how we live our lives, we can influence real systemic change that supports our body’s natural ability to heal and thrive. Human bodies are incredibly resilient.
Almost everyone knows and understands the impact of poor lifestyle choices on our health and well-being. The difficulty comes in changing our habits and sustaining those changes long-term without feeling strained and even more stressed and overwhelmed in the process! To achieve our best health, we must understand and actively and effectively deal with the root causes of the problems that lie in the daily choices and decisions we make in how we live our lives. Some factors are outside our control, and some are within our control.
Dr Ivana emphasises the importance of a collaborative approach to health and healthcare, creating a genuine partnership between herself and her clients. This partnership encourages self-empowerment and self-care with tools and strategies that offer a framework for managing complex health problems effectively. Dr Ivana’s goal from this partnership is for you to develop a strong understanding of your own body and your own unique mind and foster the capacity to lead and sustain those changes on your own and daily, without any need for her future assistance.
What is the correlation between Menopause and chronic disease?
The Menopause transition is a crossroad of healthy aging.
Perimenopause is the best time to review our health and to do an inventory of our lifestyle habits. Most of us need to make some changes to transition healthy to our third stage of life.
Ready to make some changes?
Menopause is a time in any woman's life when, due to hormonal shifts, old habits often stop serving an individual. It is when women need to review their lifestyle habits, reevaluate their life goals, sometimes even redefine their purpose and frequently change a few habits to minimise the symptoms and optimise their health.
Your willingness to self-reflect and change is the starting point for this transformative collaboration. This is not always an easy step, especially if one is already suffering from troubling menopausal symptoms or any chronic medical condition.
Dr Ivana is here to support you in understanding your symptoms and developing and growing into your best, healthiest self.