Catalysts for Change: Accelerating the Lifestyle Medicine Movement Through Professionals in Training

Abstract

While the Western diet has evolved to become increasingly high in saturated fat, cholesterol, protein, sugar, and salt intake, nutrition education and training of health care professionals to counsel their patients on the hazards of such a diet has trailed behind. Primary care physicians have an opportunity to bridge the gap by providing nutrition and dietary counseling as key components in the delivery of preventive services. Increasing research points to the value of a whole-foods plant-based diet in combating chronic disease, yet the knowledge of health professionals about the topic is comparable to that of the general public. This education crisis is apparent in medical training with restricted time for dedicated lectures on nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, emotional well-being, and avoidance of risky substance use. Together, educators and learners are valuable catalysts for culture change in medical education, training, and clinical practice. Barriers to physician ability to counsel about lifestyle are many, but one that stands out is lack of training and comfort with counseling. This has implications for the training of health care professionals. American College of Lifestyle Medicine has a committee, Professionals in Training, composed of interprofessional and multidisciplinary students, residents, and fellows nationally and worldwide who are committed to expanding exposure to lifestyle medicine and implementation of lifestyle medicine in parallel curriculum and personal care.

The Effectiveness, Impact, and Viability of Culinary Medicine in Medical Programs: A Systematic Review

“…Reasons for excluding articles reviewed as full-text included wrong study design (n=10), [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] wrong population (n=2), 21 a failure to report any outcome measures (n=2), 8,22 wrong intervention (n=3), [23][24][25] and two studies were found to be a duplicate data set. 26,27 Of the 12 included studies, the majority were qualitative studies (n=4) [28][29][30][31] or cross-sectional studies (n=4); [32][33][34][35] and the remainder were prospective case series studies (n=2), 36, 37 a case study (n=1) 38 and a mixed-methods study (n=1).…”

Translation of Lifestyle Into Clinical Practice: Making the Case, Providing the Cure

“…Many student and trainee leaders have contributed to this work, but scholarly activity in this area has particularly been advanced by Dr Beth Frates, Dr Mark Faries, Dr Sami Beg, Dr Edward Phillips, Dr Tonya Cramer, Dr Brenda Rea, Dr Jennifer Trylk, and Dennis Muscato through their support of Professionals in Training through initiatives such as the Donald Pegg award, the Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum, and LMed. 16 The influence of epigenetics is another theme that we see throughout the conference and this issue. Epigenetics makes that case that genes are not destiny, and it is becoming increasingly clear that, in the era of personalized medicine, epigenetics is the science that will help make the case for lifestyle interventions as a mediator of gene expression.…”

“…Many student and trainee leaders have contributed to this work, but scholarly activity in this area has particularly been advanced by Dr Beth Frates, Dr Mark Faries, Dr Sami Beg, Dr Edward Phillips, Dr Tonya Cramer, Dr Brenda Rea, Dr Jennifer Trylk, and Dennis Muscato through their support of Professionals in Training through initiatives such as the Donald Pegg award, the Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum, and LMed. 16…”

Healthy Food, Healthy Teeth: A Formative Study to Assess Knowledge of Foods for Oral Health in Children and Adults

“…Oral health food knowledge has been studied in a range of health professionals [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ]. The classification of foods as healthy or otherwise was in accordance with recommendations and advice outlined in government-endorsed dietary guidelines for healthy eating of the respective countries of study [ 42 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ].…”