Information for Medical Practitioners
Our mission is to complement the great care you are providing for your patients. Through Lifestyle Medicine intervention programs, we will educate, coach, and help them to achieve their wellness goals so they can live their best lives.
As medical practitioners, we know the significance of lifestyle factors in disease prevention. Significant studies over the past 50 years have shown that:
1
Healthy lifestyle choices can prevent up to 80% of mortality* and 80% of morbidity from chronic disease,**
2
and healthy lifestyle adherence provided not only more life but better quality of life.***
And yet, statistics show that we are still not achieving our goals with the ever-increasing burden of chronic disease.
Lifestyle Medicine dates to Hippocrates as a strong advocate for a healthy diet and physical exercise to prevent disease. However, it has only recently been officially recognised in the medical field.
Lifestyle Medicine models of care are widely used in the UK and USA, including the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Loma Linda University Hospital. They are now starting to gain traction in Australia.
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
It’s the use of evidence-based therapeutic interventions, including:
Whole food plant-based diet
Regular physical activity
Restorative sleep
Stress Management
Avoidance of risky substances
Positive social connections
as a primary modality, delivered by clinicians trained and certified in this speciality, to prevent, treat and when used intensively, can remit chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, cancer and obesity - American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
Lifestyle Medicine recognises the enormous impact that daily habits and actions can have on short and long-term health and quality of life. It recognises the importance and difficulties of behavioural change and the need to develop new goals and habits.
Adventist Healthcare has established the new and innovative ELIA Lifestyle Medicine Centre at the Sydney Adventist Hospital, which has long maintained a well-being and health-promotion focus for inpatients since it opened in 1903.
Also fondly known as the San, the Sydney Adventist Hospital was originally known as the ‘home of health’ - where people learnt how to stay well.
ELIA Wellness, a health promotion charity and sister organisation to the hospital, has established this much-needed centre for outpatients, targeting chronic and lifestyle-related diseases.
Our Mission
Most chronically ill patients need additional care, motivation and coaching with their physical, emotional, social and spiritual health, and this is where we can help.
We will provide you and your patients with the Lifestyle Medicine resources needed to help them heal.
A referral to the ELIA Lifestyle Medicine Centre will extend your excellent care and help transform the lives of your patients with the support and lifestyle medicine coaching we can provide.
“It challenges many longstanding notions about the role of doctor and patient in maintaining the health of individuals and families and recognises that a patient must be an active participant in, rather than a passive recipient of treatment.”
The ELIA Lifestyle Medicine Centre at Sydney Adventist Hospital will compliment the great care clinicians are providing their patients.
References:
* Danaei, etal (2009). The Preventable Causes of Death in the United States: Comparative Risk Assessment of Dietary, Lifestyle, and Metabolic Risk Factors. PLoS Medicine, [online] 6(4), p.e1000058. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000058.)
** Ford, E. S., et al (2009). Healthy living is the best revenge: findings from the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition-Potsdam study. Archives of internal medicine, 169(15), 1355–1362. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2009.237
*** Li, Y., et al. (2020). Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: prospective cohort study. BMJ, [online] 368. doi:10.1136/bmj.l6669.