Lifestyle Medicine

Lifestyle medicine offers an individualized, holistic approach to caring for your body. This board-certified specialty encourages therapeutic lifestyle changes to treat and prevent chronic health conditions including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, obesity, diabetes, and digestive health issues.

Lifestyle medicine focuses on balancing six pillars that are essential to your overall health and wellness. These six pillars include:

• Whole food, plant-based nutrition
• Physical activity
• Stress management
• Avoiding risky substances
• Restorative sleep
• Social connections

Making realistic health modifications based on these six pillars can help promote optimal wellness for you and your family.

Why Choose Lifestyle Medicine at Henry Ford

Henry Ford is a national leader in lifestyle medicine. Lifestyle medicine doesn’t take the place of your primary care doctor or specialty-based providers. Instead, your lifestyle medicine provider will work with your other medical providers to navigate your unique health needs and offer support.

Henry Ford lifestyle medicine providers are aimed at empowering patients to make these lifestyle changes by offering the tools and skills to do so based on your unique health needs, daily habits, and medical history. This style of care is tailored to each patient, regardless of age or specific health goals – it is just a matter of identifying what changes you can make in your life for the better.

What To Expect From Lifestyle Medicine Care

At Henry Ford, most patients meet with a certified lifestyle medicine provider one-on-one, either virtually or in person. Group visits are also available. During these appointments, you will receive a comprehensive overview of your lifestyle filtered through the six pillars and a treatment plan that encourages you to want to take action to reduce your risk or limit the burden of a chronic disease.

Before your first appointment, patients are asked to keep a food journal for two weeks – logging what you ate and when you ate it. This journal will be used as a starting point to highlight potential risks within your current lifestyle. From there, your provider will work with you to understand what you’d like to get out of lifestyle medicine care. They may ask you about your wellness goals and any health concerns you have to help them make appropriate treatment recommendations.

Patients are typically seen on an ongoing basis with scheduled touchpoints as they achieve their wellness goals.