Lifestyle Modifications Reduce Risk of Death by 105%!
FEATURE
Dr. Hayes Explains How to Reduce the Risk for Your Patients
Donald L. Hayes
ONE STUDY FINDS THAT EATING AT LEAST SEVEN DAILY SERVINGS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES WAS LINKED TO A 42% LOWER RISK OF DEATH FROM ALL CAUSES. (1) ANOTHER STUDY SHOWS THAT BY INCORPORATING JUST FOUR HEALTHY LIFESTYLE BEHAVIORS, A PERSON IS 63% LESS LIKELY TO DIE EARLY COMPARED TO PEOPLE WHO DID NOT PRACTICE ANY OF THE BEHAVIORS. (2) THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT PEOPLE LIVE LONGER IF THEY PRACTICE MULTIPLE HEALTHY LIFESTYLE BEHAVIORS. IN FACT, BY INCORPORATING THE FINDINGS FROM BOTH OF THESE STUDIES, YOU LOWER YOUR CHANCE OF DYING FROM ALL CAUSES BY 105%!
According to the World Health Organization, by 2020, two-thirds of all diseases worldwide will be the result of lifestyle choices. Currently, the leading causes of death in the United States aie lifestyle related: poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity, tobacco use, and overconsumption of alcohol.
Benefits of Lifestyle Modifications
An enormous body of evidence supports the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions for lowering the risk of developing chronic disease, as well as assisting in the management of existing disease. Lifestyle behaviors lie at the root of many chronic diseases. Unhealthy diets, sedentary behavior, stress, and poor sleep habits predispose numerous people to diseases that rank among the leading causes of death, such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. The costs associated with these behaviors aie staggering.
Many previous studies examined the independent effect of lifestyle behaviors in isolation, but we now know that maximizing the number of healthy behaviors is the only way to achieve optimal health. Stalling around 2000, research appealed that examined the impact of multiple lifestyle behaviors on various health outcomes, including all-cause mortality. Because of the accumulating evidence, national guidelines emphasize lifestyle interventions for general health as well as most disease or high-risk conditions.
The Challenge for the Chiropractor
Because ofthe overwhekning amount ofresearck and publisked studies on the benefits of lifestyle modification, the challenge is no longer proving that lifestyle interventions work. Now, it is knperative to get chiropractors to commit to incorporating these interventions into then practices in such a way that they aie able to deliver compelling lifestyle strategies to patients.
The AMA Speaks Out on Physician Responsibility
According to the AMA Council on Scientific Affaks, liealth professionals liave a key responsibility to promote preventive measures and encourage positive lifestyle behaviors relating to obesity. They state that several studies have demonstrated the enormous potential of physician recommendations to influence patients’ lifestyle behaviors, and that the primary care setting is a natural fit for practicing what they call “lifestyle medicine.”
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
The field of lifestyle medicine is not new, although I rarely meet a chiropractor who knows anything about this medical specialty. In 2004, John Kelly, MD, created the American College of Lifestyle Medicine at Loma Linda University.
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine defines lifestyle medicine as “the use of lifestyle interventions in the treatment and management of disease.” Lifestyle interventions can include activities such as healthy eating, nutrition, exercise or physical activity, stress management, restorative sleep, tobacco cessation, alcohol moderation, and a variety of other nondrug activities. The essence of lifestyle medicine, from the ACLM’s perspective, is the concept of preventing and treating the trae “cause of disease,” rather than simply managing the symptoms of disease.
Harvard Medical School also Offers Lifestyle Medicine
In case you think Loma Linda University isn’t “mainstream medical” enough, how about Harvard Medical School? Harvard Medical School founded the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine in 2007 at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. The purpose of the ILM is to “reduce lifestyle-related death and disease in society through clinician-directed interventions with patients. Anon-profit professional education, research, and advocacy organization, the ILM is uniquely positioned to ignite clinician involvement in lifestyle medicine.”
Harvard’s Lifestyle Medicine Program Includes Low Back Pain
One of Harvard’s continuing medical education (CME) courses is entitled “Lifestyle Medicine: Acute Low Back Pam.” Then description of this course includes the following: “This course will help physicians manage acute episodes of back pain. The content provides simple tools to use to help influence patient recovery. By reviewing lifestyle factors that influence back pain, the course enables physicians to provide advice and recommendations that will allow patients to recover from their acute back pain episode and to make informed decisions about then behaviors and lifestyle factors related to back pain.”
Chiropractors Can’t Afford to Sit on the Sidelines
I’m sure the movement by the ILM is a sincere attempt to improve lifestyle behaviors of patients because, after all, the research on lifestyle modification is overwhelming. With that in mind, what is the chiropractic profession doing in light of the same research that indicates modifiable behaviors aie the major drivers of “death, disease, and healthcare costs”? Who is leading our charge in the profession and where do we turn to get a “systematic and comprehensive effort to incorporate lifestyle intervention into standard practice”? How do chiropractors get theft “competence and performance-in-practice” up to speed in the field of lifestyle interventions? Where do they turn “to develop strategies to incorporate it into patient care”?
The Chiropractic Version of “Lifestyle Medicine”
I feel it’s time that our profession takes a position on modifiable lifestyle behaviors. Since I personally don’t think the term “lifestyle medicine” is a good fit for chiropractors, I created the term Lifestyle Wellness™. Lifestyle Wellness defines a specific type of wellness—the wellness that can be derived from focusing on lifestyle behaviors. Lifestyle Wellness will incorporate the following unique roles into a chiropractic practice:
• Lifestyle Wellness will have a strict focus on lifestyle behaviors in combination with the use of chiropractic treatment.
• The success of the Lifestyle Wellness program depends on patient motivation and must include staff or healthcare practitioner “coaching.”
• The name describes the approach better than any other alternative therapy. What kind of wellness? Lifestyle Wellness.
• The Lifestyle Wellness approach will apply to every patient in every practice.
• Lifestyle Wellness emphasizes the use of a collaborative care model with other allied healthcare professionals.
• The limited number of lifestyle approaches in the Lifestyle Wellness model is more conducive to staff training.
• This type of care is already recommended in many state and national healthcare guidelines for use in both prevention and treatment.
Evidence-Based Evaluations
Chiropractors must use evidence-based, noninvasive diagnostic tools and techniques that effect healthy lifestyle changes in diet, supplementation, exercise, weight management, proper sleep, and stress reduction. Since health and well-being are closely tied to a direct measurement of the complex impedance of the human body, such a noninvasive diagnostic device could provide a readout of critical electrical tissue conductivity. Those results could be used to make more effective recommendations for nutrition and lifestyle strategies, while providing results that could be reported objectively.
Such a device could be used to monitor and make recommendations for several lifestyle-related disorders, especially the ones caused by free radical damage, chronic systemic inflammation, and metabolic syndrome. Body cell mass is one powerful noninvasive parameter that could be measured and monitored.
How Body Cell Mass Can Measure and Monitor Lifestyle Wellness
Evaluation and monitoring of body cell mass (BCM) is considered in the literature as the only trae way to determine the “nutritional status” of the body, and could easily be interpreted as the state of overall Lifestyle Wellness.
Body cell mass is a function of height, weight, age, and the critical noninvasive electrical tissue conductivity measurements of resistance and reactance values that ai e unique to every individual’s body and that change based on a person’s health status.
Body cell mass is the functional mass of the body and is the place where all of the work in the body is performed. All oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide production, glucose oxidation, protein synthesis, and all other metabolic work take place within the body cell mass. The body cell mass is, in effect, the total mass of all the cellular elements in the body and, therefore, represents the metabolically active components of the body—the part that is really alive!
Five major types of cells comprise the body cell mass. Muscle cells account for 60%; organ cells account for 20%; and the remaining 20% consists of red blood cells, immune cells, and the living part of fat cells. The body cell mass also consists of the water inside each of the cells, called the intracellular water, which contains 98 to 99% of the body’s potassium.
Research on Body Cell Mass
Research has shown that body cell mass correlates directly to a continuum of health, ranging from mortality and morbidity to immunity, longevity, high function, and athletic performance. The purpose of body cell mass analysis is to monitor and improve function. For healthy patients, analysis of body cell mass can help maintain function, productivity, immunity, physical performance, and longevity.
Body Cell Mass and Lifestyle Wellness
Normative body cell mass values exist that are categorized into eight different age groups, starting with ages 15 to 24 and continuing up to values over the age of 85. When a patient is first evaluated, the chiropractor will determine the patient’s state of Lifestyle Wellness based on whether or not the individual has a body cell mass that is normal, better, or worse for his or her age, as compared to peers.
A patient who does not live a healthy lifestyle, smokes, does not exercise, and has lots of stress may suffer from excessive free radical damage, chronic systemic inflammation, and metabolic syndrome. That type of person will more than likely have a lower body cell mass value when compared with other people his or her age who eat well, exercise regularly, and don’t smoke.
With the body cell mass and Lifestyle Wellness status known and used as a starting point, the chiropractor can now put the patient on a Lifestyle Wellness modification program and monitor the patient for progress on a monthly basis. Lifestyle Wellness modifications that result in a progressive increase in body cell mass and subsequent stabilization within the normal range for the patient’s age are frequently associated with survival. On the other hand, progressive decline in body cell mass is frequently associated with multiple organ failure (MOF) and carries a poor prognosis.
By measuring body cell mass and a few other key noninvasive parameters, chiropractors can easily monitor the Lifestyle Wellness status of their patients, make recommendations, and incorporate a Lifestyle Wellness program into the chiropractic practice.
Lifestyle Wellness Community Outreach
Most chiropractors today aie struggling to get enough new patients. Not having a new patient marketing plan puts chiropractors in a dilficult financial position; on the other hand, if a steady stream of new patients is generated, then most practices grow. Thus, incorporating a Lifestyle Wellness program that can bring in new patients may help turn tilings around.
Lifestyle Wellness Community Screenings
One possibility to attract a steady flow of new patients is to hire a part-time person ( 10 to 20 hours a week) to become your lifestyle education assistant (LEA). The LEA can conduct Lifestyle Wellness screenings at no charge in your community.
The most significant way to reduce healthcare costs is to educate tlie public on Lifestyle Wellness protocols and ways to maintain health and prevent disease. It’s with that purpose in mind that you aie pleased to offer your LEA to various businesses in your community.
This type of service is very well received by corporations, women’s associations, bookstores, health food stores, and fitness centers, among many other locations. Simply have your LEA emphasize Lifestyle Wellness care protocols and preventative care as the keys to good health.
A Lifestyle Wellness screening could offer a noninvasive, pain-free nutrition status and metabolic health analysis at no charge. This painless analysis of the mass and fluid compartments of the body would record measurements and analyze results that will be interpreted and used by you, the doctor. With a separate appointment, you can offer a cost-free consultation in your office to provide education and support on nutritional status, lifestyle awareness, weight management, or athletic performance issues.
Corporations and Business Owners Want Lifestyle Wellness Screening Events
Hosting a Lifestyle Wellness screening event conducted by your LEA can benefit business owners in your community by helping their customers or employees in many ways. First, the business owners are able to offer a value-added service to their customers or employees at no cost to them. Second, they can attract new customers to their businesses through these wellness-screening events. Third, they can be seen as business owners who care about their employees or customers and who promote health through education and Lifestyle Wellness awareness.
A Chiropractic Call to Action
Adding Lifestyle Wellness to your practice makes good sense. Government agencies, medical school representatives, insurance providers, medical licensing and certification boards, and community-based organizations all agree.
Donna E. Shalala, former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and current president of the University of Miami who also selves as co-chair of the Bipartisan Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative, said, “We concluded that an effective way to address those challenges was to encourage medical schools to help integrate nutrition and physical activity mto mainstream medical training and practice.”
If lifestyle medicine is the new specialty going forward for the medical profession, and it’s being created because of the overwhelming research on the need for lifestyle modification for patients, how can chiropractors not stand up and take charge of the situation? As chiropractors, we can offer our own version of Lifestyle Wellness because, after all, we ai e the wellness care profession!
Reference:
(1) JEpidemiol Community Health 2014;68:856-862
(2) www.cdc.gov/mediafeleases/2011/p0818 livingJonger.html
Donald L. Hayes, D.C. is a clinician educator and author in the field of alkalizing nutrition and has delivered post graduate nutritional seminars to thousands of doctors and staff Dr. Hayes is owner and President of Greensfirst, the chiropractic profession's number one alkalizing wholefood fruit and vegetable nutritional supplement. He can be reached at 866-410-1818 or at www.greensfirst.com
