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More MDs teaching patients about lifestyle choices

Hospitalist Leadership Connection, May 2, 2007

A growing movement encouraging physicians to inform patients about the importance of lifestyle choices in preventing and treating diseases appears to be taking root. More physicians are incorporating such information into their practices, an April 17 article in The New York Times reports.

The article reports on an organization founded in 2005 that aims to make "lifestyle medicine" a credentialed clinical specialty and a part of basic medical training.

John H. Kelly Jr., MD, president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, is quoted in the article as saying, "Symptomatically treating disease without assessing patients' lifestyles or offering them guidance on how to change is "irresponsible and bordering on neglect." Kelly is a professor of preventive medicine at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. 

Chronic diseases caused or worsened by unhealthy lifestyles kill 1.7 million Americans and disable nearly 25 million more annually, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Further, a 2005 study in The New England Journal of Medicine predicted that the nation's average life expectancy would decline in the next 20 years as a result of unhealthy lifestyles.

To access the full article, go to www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/health/17life.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin

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