Lifestyle Medicine

Did you know that nearly all chronic diseases can be prevented or treated by replacing harmful daily habits with healthy lifestyle choices? Janelle Haider, MD, and the team at Treo Care in West Los Angeles, California, specialize in lifestyle medicine. They can help you identify your unhealthy habits and create a lifestyle plan that restores your health. If you’re ready to regain energy and prevent the diseases that account for most deaths, call the office or use the online booking feature to request an in-person or telehealth appointment today.

What is lifestyle medicine?

Lifestyle medicine prevents and treats chronic diseases by changing your daily habits. Your provider focuses on six key lifestyle goals:

1. Maintaining a healthy diet

Healthy foods contain more than essential nutrients. Plant-based foods also contain active ingredients (phytochemicals) that improve your health. For example, they may fight inflammation, prevent eye disease, and lower your risk for cancer.

However, unhealthy foods can cause disease. A diet packed with salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats is the primary cause of chronic diseases that lead to heart attacks and stroke.

2. Engaging in regular exercise

Physical activity helps you maintain a healthy weight, strengthens your bones, lowers your blood sugar and blood pressure, and improves your mental health and energy. 

3. Managing stress

Long-term stress causes serious health problems like headaches, heart attacks, insomnia, and weight gain. 

4. Getting restorative sleep

While you sleep, your body stores memories, repairs cells, removes toxic waste, and rebuilds energy. If you don’t get enough uninterrupted sleep, your body can’t complete these tasks, and your health declines. 

5. Building healthy relationships

People who build social connections are less likely to develop depression, high blood pressure, and obesity. 

6. Avoiding behaviors that damage your health

The most common damaging behaviors include smoking (one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease), using drugs, and drinking alcohol. 

What chronic diseases can lifestyle medicine prevent?

Chronic diseases develop gradually over many years of an unhealthy lifestyle. In the early stages, you can stop the disease in its tracks by changing your lifestyle habits.

Chronic diseases that respond to lifestyle medicine include:

• Diabetes
• Arthritis
• Obesity
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Chronic kidney disease 

Once you’re diagnosed with a chronic disease, it can’t be cured. But you can use lifestyle changes to stop the disease from worsening. 

What happens during my lifestyle medicine consultation?

Your Treo Care provider thoroughly evaluates your health and runs diagnostic testing to identify biomarkers for chronic disease (high blood sugar, high cholesterol, inflammation, etc.) and problems like nutrient deficiencies. They also learn about your current lifestyle habits. 

Then they create a plan focusing on the habits you need to change and give you the information and guidance needed to stick with the plan.

Call Treo Care or connect online to schedule your lifestyle medicine evaluation and start your life improvement plan today.