Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.  Lifestyle medicine certified clinicians are trained to apply evidence-based, whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle change to treat and, when used intensively, often reverse such conditions. Applying the six pillars of lifestyle medicine—a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, positive social connections, and avoidance of risky substances—also provides effective prevention for these conditions.

The rise in chronic disease trends and related health care spending in the United States and in many other countries is unsustainable. Type 2 diabetes alone is a looming global pandemic with incalculable consequences.

This being said, there is good news.

While 80% or more of all health care spending in the U.S. is tied to the treatment of conditions rooted in unhealthy lifestyle choices, lifestyle medicine offers hope as a solution. Diseases and conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, obesity and multiple types of cancer are among the most common and costly of all health conditions—but they are also preventable. Lifestyle medicine addresses root causes by focusing on the lifestyle choices that give rise to these diseases in the first place. When implemented, lifestyle medicine can treat and reverse these conditions. 

Lifestyle Medicine is the Solution

  •  Evidence overwhelmingly supports lifestyle medicine’s efficacy in treating, halting the progression, at times even reversing, as well as preventing chronic and select autoimmune conditions
  • Lifestyle medicine empowers patients to take far greater control of their health destinies, reducing the need for costly therapies 
  • Lifestyle medicine is essential to achieving the Quintuple Aim: optimized patient experience, superior health outcomes, enhanced clinician wellbeing, health equity advancement, and improved population health– delivering financial and healthcare sustainability
  • Lifestyle medicine is needed to reverse the alarming trend of chronic disease afflicting over 60% of American adults and now far too many children
  • It’s the solution to addressing the restoration of both human and planetary health: the foods that protect health and fight disease are what will also enable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and preservation of natural resources

 Ways ACLM is working in the field

  •  Facilitating lifestyle medicine integration within health systems
  • Offering evidence-based CME/CE to educate and equip clinicians to prescribe lifestyle medicine as chronic disease first-line treatment
  • Championing “food as medicine” since 2004: whole food, plant predominant Rx for disease treatment, including ACLM’s commitment in support of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health; learn more at FoodAsMed.org
  • Advocating and supporting lifestyle medicine curricula and testing throughout all medical and healthcare education
  • Advocating at the national level for reimbursement and quality measures tied to outcomes, incentivizing and rewarding disease remission, and medication de-escalation
  • Igniting clinician and patient understanding that the power to reverse chronic disease is, in fact, attainable
  • Addressing lifestyle-related chronic disease health disparities through ACLM’s Health Equity Achieved through Lifestyle Medicine (HEAL) Initiative, the HEAL Scholarship Program, and the National Training Initiative, infusing lifestyle medicine into our nation’s FQHCs
Our Vision
A world wherein lifestyle medicine is the foundation of health and all health care
Our Mission
Advancing evidence-based lifestyle medicine to treat, reverse, and prevent non-communicable, chronic disease
More than a professional association, ACLM is a galvanizing force for change.
ACLM is comprised of members who are passionate about the urgent need to transform health and health care. Our organization addresses the need for quality, evidence-based education and certification in the clinical practice of lifestyle medicine.
Through the development and promotion of educational events, tools, resources and campaigns designed to further the cause of lifestyle medicine, ACLM supports its members in their practices and in their collective desire to domestically and globally promote lifestyle medicine as the first treatment option for chronic disease, as opposed to a first option of treating symptoms and consequences with expensive, ever-increasing quantities of pills and procedures. ACLM members are united in their desire to identifying and eradicating the root cause of chronic disease.

ACLM members are physicians, medical professionals in training, physician assistants, nurses, registered dietitians, physical therapists, pharmacists, health coaches, health care executives, health insurance actuaries and workplace wellness professionals.

Become an ACLM Member, Today!