Lifestyle medicine (LM) expands the scope of preventive medicine by focusing on the promotion of healthy lifestyles while preventing, treating, and reversing the vast majority of chronic diseases caused by behaviors and environmental factors. LM focuses on six pillars-a plant-predominant eating pattern; physical movement; restorative sleep; management of stress; avoidance of risky substances; and positive social connections. Advances in LM competencies, education, certification, resources, and practice models are accelerating with a particular need and focus on underserved and most seriously impacted patients and communities. A comprehensive and integrated strategy addressing "whole person health" is emerging as a compelling framework for providers and health systems which combines a foundational commitment to prevention with a systematic approach to the actual and root causes of premature disease, disability, and death.

Declining life expectancy and increasing all-cause mortality in the United States have been associated with unhealthy behaviors, socioecological factors, and preventable disease. A growing body of basic science, clinical research, and population health evidence points to the benefits of healthy behaviors, environments and policies to maintain health and prevent, treat, and reverse the root causes of common chronic diseases. Similarly, innovations in research methodologies, standards of evidence, emergence of unique study cohorts, and breakthroughs in data analytics and modeling create new possibilities for producing biomedical knowledge and clinical translation. To understand these advances and inform future directions research, The Lifestyle Medicine Research Summit was convened at the University of Pittsburgh on December 4–5, 2019. The Summit's goal was to review current status and define research priorities in the six core areas of lifestyle medicine: plant-predominant nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress, addictive behaviors, and positive psychology/social connection. Forty invited subject matter experts (1) reviewed existing knowledge and gaps relating lifestyle behaviors to common chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, many cancers, inflammatory- and immune-related disorders and other conditions; and (2) discussed the potential for applying cutting-edge molecular, cellular, epigenetic and emerging science knowledge and computational methodologies, research designs, and study cohorts to accelerate clinical applications across all six domains of lifestyle medicine. Notably, federal health agencies, such as the Department of Defense and Veterans Administration have begun to adopt “whole-person health and performance” models that address these lifestyle and environmental root causes of chronic disease and associated morbidity, mortality, and cost. Recommendations strongly support leveraging emerging research methodologies, systems biology, and computational modeling in order to accelerate effective clinical and population solutions to improve health and reduce societal costs. New and alternative hierarchies of evidence are also be needed in order to assess the quality of evidence and develop evidence-based guidelines on lifestyle medicine. Children and underserved populations were identified as prioritized groups to study. The COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacts people with chronic diseases that are amenable to effective lifestyle medicine interventions, makes the Summit's findings and recommendations for future research particularly timely and relevant.

In his third edition of the book Lifestyle Medicine, James Rippe, MD, has continued his leadership in the lifestyle medicine arena by coordinating a detailed summary of the scientific evidence behind the rapidly growing field of lifestyle medicine. This comprehensive 1435-page volume is divided into 126 chapters, all organized into 20 sections, each separately coordinated and edited. In total, over 250 authors contributed their subject expertise, ensuring a scientific breadth and perspective that is completely unmatched in the discipline of lifestyle medicine. Although the book is most remarkable for its comprehensive depth, this third edition has also been organized in a practical way that includes key points as each chapter begins, and clinical applications at the end of each chapter. The clinical application sections include recommended actions as well as tools and resources for implementing those actions, adding usefulness for practicing lifestyle medicine physicians and health care professionals. In this third edition, there are 2 new sections not present in the second edition. The Practice of Lifestyle Medicine section, authored by leading practitioners of lifestyle medicine, adds, among others, practical summaries of lifestyle medicine definitions, core competencies, clinical practices, and intensive therapeutic lifestyle change programs. The Substance Abuse and Addiction section recognizes that whether its addiction to nicotine, opioids, or other substances, successful treatment is critical in the practice of lifestyle medicine, and in fact the principles are core to all health behavior change. Lifestyle medicine pillars are addressed in the sections on nutritional aspects of lifestyle medicine, physical activity, and a stand-alone section on behavioral medicine. There are also separate practical sections on lifestyle medicine–related topics such as obesity and weight management, exercise psychology, injury prevention, and cardiovascular rehabilitation. Organor system-related sections include the role of lifestyle medicine in cardiovascular disease, endocrinology, cancer, infectious disease, pulmonary medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology. Other sections focus on the application of lifestyle medicine to specific populations, including sections on women’s health, pediatrics, and geriatrics. Finally, there are practical sections on health promotion as well as public policy and environmental supports for lifestyle medicine. Lifestyle Medicine, third edition, more so than either of the previous editions, incorporates and summarizes various discussions and debates found globally throughout the lifestyle medicine movement. Specifically, in the field of nutrition, the value of whole food plant-based approaches are reviewed in multiple sections, but the science behind other dietary methodologies are also evaluated and summarized. Although some lifestyle medicine practitioners might not agree with all the documented conclusions, or ask for a stronger review of certain lifestyle medicine areas such as 869394 AJLXXX10.1177/1559827619869394American Journal of Lifestyle MedicineAmerican Journal of Lifestyle Medicine book-review2019

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is forming a Lifestyle Medicine Provider Network (LMPN). The goal of this network is 2-fold: (1) to provide significant benefits to patients by focusing on the adoption of intensive evidence-based lifestyle medicine (LM) therapies to treat and reverse chronic disease and (2) to benefit LM providers by supporting their practice operations and optimizing contracting and reimbursement opportunities. The 2 phases of the network development will include (1) network formation and practice standardization and (2) deployment for group contracting. LMPN will be organized as a special project of the ACLM, with leadership provided through the ACLM LMPN Task Force. As part of this first phase, ACLM will devote the necessary resources to establish the network and promote LM training, certification, and sharing of best practices across the network. The second phase will necessitate the establishment of a separate corporate entity, enabling the acquisition of the required capital and expertise to fully realize the potential of LMPN deployment. Strategic direction will be provided by a LMPN Board of Advisors, consisting of select network members as well as select members of ACLM's Board of Directors. The first priority of the LMPN will be to recruit interested and qualifying LM practitioners and standardize the LM approach and process of care delivery, starting with high-value services, such as chronic care management. The focus on maximizing existing provider program incentives avails the LMPN the fastest and most efficient path to demonstrating value to its members and to its client base.

Lifestyle medicine group sessions present a promising approach to clinical care. Based on decades of work in shared medical appointments and group visits for diabetes and other chronic conditions, a lifestyle medicine group session has the potential to provide a fresh and rewarding way of interacting with patients that fuels the practitioner and feeds patients' needs to spend time with the lifestyle medicine practitioner, connect with him or her, connect with others, learn the latest recommendations regarding healthy habits, practice these behaviors, and discuss their obstacles, motivations, and strategies for healthy living. The lifestyle medicine group session discussed in this article is a combination of group coaching, education, and group support.

Lifestyle medicine group sessions present a promising approach to clinical care. Based on decades of work in shared medical appointments and group visits for diabetes and other chronic conditions, a lifestyle medicine group session has the potential to provide a fresh and rewarding way of interacting with patients that fuels the practitioner and feeds patients’ needs to spend time with the lifestyle medicine practitioner, connect with him or her, connect with others, learn the latest recommendations regarding healthy habits, practice these behaviors, and discuss their obstacles, motivations, and strategies for healthy living. The lifestyle medicine group session discussed in this article is a combination of group coaching, education, and group support.

"Lifestyle Medicine" is revolutionizing health systems worldwide. This new field of medicine aims to reduce health costs, prevent diseases, and optimize therapeutic responses. In result, there is overall better quality of life for people. This new medical discipline includes everything related to lifestyles and the environment which has a strong evidence base, such as a healthy plant-based diets, exercise, stress management, cessation of tobacco and alcohol, adequate rest, healthy social relationships, emotional and spiritual health among others. Lifestyle Medicine modalities are used for preventing, and treating prevalent chronic diseases1,2. For many years, it has been known that there is a direct connection between chronic diseases and the lifestyles people choose. We now know that 80% of health expenditures are due to the management of chronic diseases. The good news is that close to 80% of chronic diseases are treatable and often reversible with lifestyle changes. The Latin American Association of Lifestyle Medicine along with the leading international organizations in Lifestyle Medicine are “working to deal with the causes ", that is, the true roots of diseases3 . An innovative and high-impact concept in terms of public health is the "Reversal of Chronic Diseases with Lifestyle Medicine", an inverse process to the pathophysiology of chronic diseases, with increasing scientific evidence available in recent years. DOI:https://doi.org/10.25176/RFMH.v17.n1.742

The Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) is a premier lifestyle intervention targeting chronic disease that has been offered for more than 25 years. The intervention has been used in clinical, corporate, and community settings, and the short-term and long-term clinical benefits of the intervention, as well as its cost-effectiveness, have been documented in more than 25 peer-reviewed publications. Being an easily administered intervention, CHIP has been presented not only by health professionals but also by non-health-trained volunteers. The benefits of the program have been extensively studied under these 2 delivery channels, consistently demonstrating positive outcomes. This article provides a brief history of CHIP and describes the content and structure of the intervention. The published evaluations and outcomes of the intervention are presented and discussed and future directions are highlighted.

In the US, approximately 5.8 million people suffer from Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). It is the most frequent cause for hospital readmissions such that 21.2% of Medicare patients diagnosed with CHF were readmitted to hospital within 30 days of discharge. Tele-monitoring daily self-management regimens may reduce hospital readmission. My Heart is a telehealth system, which we have designed for CHF patients to bridge the current gap in the Congestive Heart Failure care continuum when the patient moves to the home environment. The system uses wireless health devices and a mobile application to collect patients' data, moreover, it sends messages to patients to encourage self-care as per Fogg's behavior model. On the clinician's end, we designed a rule-based expert system and a dashboard to process and display patients' vitals, symptoms, and health risk. My Heart is currently being used at Loma Linda University (LLU) Medical Center and we report here our initial findings.

Intensive therapeutic lifestyle change (ITLC) programs have been shown to consistently achieve improved biologic markers for cardiac heart disease risk in short periods of time. We propose a standard definition of ITLC and discuss the specifics that are critical to their success. We include a discussion of our experiences with delivering ITLC programs in large health care systems and use that to illustrate opportunities for ITLC implementation in the future. Finally, we discuss the current drivers of change in the US health care reform movement and comment on their predictable effects on the current health care landscape.

Purpose: The short-term effectiveness of the nutrition-centred Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) lifestyle intervention for improving selected chronic disease risk factors was examined in the Canadian setting. Methods: A total of 1003 people (aged 56.3 +/- 12.1 years, 68% female) were self-selected to participate in one of 27 CHIP interventions hosted in community settings by Seventh-day Adventist churches throughout Canada, between 2005 and 2011. The program centred on the promotion of a whole-food, plant-based eating pattern, and daily physical activity was also encouraged. Biometric measures, including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure (BP), blood lipid profile, and fasting blood sugar (FBS), were determined at program entry and 30 days into the intervention. Results: Over 30 days, significant overall reductions (P<0.001) were recorded in the participants' BMI (-3.1%), systolic BP (-7.3%), diastolic BP (-4.3%), total cholesterol ([TC] -11.3%), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol ([LDL-C] -12.9%), triglycerides ([TG] -8.2%), and FBS (-7.0%). Participants with the highest classifications of TC, LDL-C, TG, and FBS at program entry experienced approximately 20% reductions in these measures in 30 days. Conclusions: The CHIP intervention, which centres on a whole-food, plant-based eating pattern, can lead to rapid and meaningful reductions in chronic disease risk factors in the Canadian context.

MyHeart is a telehealth system designed to bridge the current gap in the Congestive Heart Failure care continuum that occurs when the patient transitions from the hospital to the home environment. The system uses wireless health devices and a mobile application on the patient's end, a rule-based expert system, and a dashboard on the clinician's end to facilitate the exchange of information pertaining to vitals, symptoms, and health risk. The system also sends messages to patients that aim to encourage self-care as per Fogg's behavior model. An experiment to evaluate MyHeart is currently underway at Loma Linda University Medical Center and encouraging initial findings are reported.