Transcription:
Lifestyle Medicine

Melanie Cole (Host): In school, healthcare providers are taught how to treat illness, but they are not necessarily taught to effectively help patients and themselves to prevent and reverse chronic disease through lifestyle. Today, we’re talking about lifestyle medicine with Dr. David Drozek. He’s an Osteopathic Medicine physician with a specialty in lifestyle medicine at Memorial Health System. Dr. Drozek, I’m so glad to have you with us today. What an interesting topic and such a fascinating field that you are in. Start by telling us the current state of disease today and how it’s related to unhealthy behaviors.

David Drozek, D.O., FACLM (Guest): We have a raging epidemic of chronic lifestyle related diseases that are bankrupting our healthcare system and greatly impacting our workforce and productivity. It’s bringing a lot of misery to many of our families and there’s no way we can continue along this path. We can’t afford it economically or socially.

Host: So, when you docs go to school, are medical professionals – because back when I was in school, there wasn’t much talk about nutrition or even really, exercise and the profound effect that it has on the body. Are medical professionals these days getting the education to treat the person and not just to look at the disease?

Dr. Drozek: That’s beginning to change fortunately, because of a lot of the work that the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is doing. Many of our providers are getting the education and many of us are on faculty at universities such as I’m here at Ohio University being able to integrate this education into the curriculum. So our medical students that will be graduating will be better equipped to deal with these problems.

Host: Well that’s great. It’s about time. So, tell us for the listeners that don’t know, what is Lifestyle Medicine and can it really – do you work with the whole person, can it treat any type of condition? How is it typically practiced?

Dr. Drozek: Well Lifestyle Medicine does deal with the whole person. We use as our modalities, a healthy plant based diet, physical activity, stress management and control of unhealthy substances like sugared beverages, alcohol, tobacco, things along that line. And we focus on treating specifically the diseases we classify as chronic lifestyle related diseases. Those include things like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and it’s risk factors like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, overweight and obesity, sedentary lifestyle. And it also has positive effects on depression, anxiety and autoimmune diseases. It’s helpful in preventing and even treating many of our most common cancers.

Host: So, tell us a little bit about the thought model behind Lifestyle Medicine and how that really does work for chronic diseases and even some cancers. So, what’s the thought behind it?

Dr. Drozek: Oh it’s difficult to say in a few minutes other than if you look at the change of our illnesses over the last couple of generations here in the US as well as globally; we see this tremendous rise of things like diabetes and cardiovascular disease that were pretty minimal and actually rare diseases 100 years ago. And this parallels our change in lifestyle, eating foods that are high in saturated fat, added sugars, cholesterol, things along that line, becoming more and more sedentary. So, diet, physical activity, stress, our lifestyles have become very, very stressful in many ways. And all of these things are coming together to cause the underlying cause of inflammation for many of these diseases.

Host: We’re going to talk a little bit more about inflammation Dr. Drozek, but people hear the term integrative medicine, they hear complimentary, they hear alternative. What’s the difference between Lifestyle Medicine and some of those other terms like integrative and alternative?

Dr. Drozek: Well Lifestyle Medicine does overlap with all of those but it’s unique in it’s own in that we deal with those modalities that I mentioned, and we stick to the clinical evidence. We are trying to make sure that everything that we do has sound clinical evidence that there’s nothing that’s speculative about it. So, our patients won’t see us as fringe practitioners but see that we’re strongly embedded in the science and that what we do has been proven to be helpful for them.

Host: So, what are some of the challenges then as you’re helping people and they maybe misconstrue what Lifestyle Medicine really is? What are some of the challenges that you face in getting people to adhere to some of those behavioral and lifestyle changes, plant based diet, sedentary lifestyle? Tell us what you’ve seen.

Dr. Drozek: Well behavior modification is key to this which again, is something that most physicians aren’t taught very well unless they go into a specialty like psychiatry. But it needs to be integrated more and more into what we teach our medical students. The most difficult thing I think that I’ve encountered is dietary change. People are willing to exercise more, for a time but to ask them to change their dietary habits, touches on their emotions. Everything that we’ve done that’s in our memory bank is usually associated with food and oftentimes it’s not the healthiest foods. So, I get a lot of emotional pushback from people when I start to talk to them about their dietary habits.

Host: Yeah, I can see that and as I’ve run into that myself. So, tell us a little bit about the education of a Lifestyle Medicine physician, how that differs from other types of physicians. What are you all learning and incorporating then into your practice?

Dr. Drozek: Well fortunately, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine along with the American College of Preventive Medicine has been leading the way and educating physicians on this. They have put together a series of modules online. They’ve defined the core competencies that are required for Lifestyle Medicine physicians and they’ve been instrumental in the formation of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine which is are currently in the evaluation phase by the American Board of Medical Specialties, so we are hoping that a few years down the road from now, it will be a fully recognized board. We have to have several years of offering the board exam successfully before we can fulfill all those obligations for it to be listed as a full medical specialty.

Host: One thing that people question and when they are wondering about this type of medicine, is can you still get lab tests? Are there still things like x-rays and MRIs? Is it still the type of medicine where you are looking for disease state and then in that case, where do things like inflammation come into that picture?

Dr. Drozek: Well in my own practice, generally the patients are coming with well-defined disease. Occasionally, I will get somebody that’s just looking at the preventive nature of it. But usually, they’ve had a diagnosis of diabetes or high cholesterol or high blood pressure and they want something other than taking the medications or maybe they are taking medications and don’t like the side effects or can’t afford them. And they want another option.

So, they already have lab values oftentimes or somebody might even have an x-ray that demonstrating like a clogged coronary artery or something along that line. I generally don’t reorder those tests very often because their primary care physicians are usually following them. And I try not to change medications much either. I try to let the primary care docs do it. However, in our community, most of the docs that refer patients to me know that their patients very quickly within a couple of weeks if they fully engage with what I’m recommending will need reduction in their blood pressure medicines and their diabetes medicines. So, it’s a very powerful effect that they get.

But occasionally I will order some lab tests if there is not another provider ordering them or I feel like we need to follow up on the patient for something in particular.

Host: Well thank you for that answer. So, Dr. Drozek, tell us about the Athens Primary Clinic. What are the facilities like?

Dr. Drozek: Oh, we have a brand new building right alongside the Hocking River, alongside the very scenic bike path. It’s a beautiful setting. Great facility. We have primary care physicians; we have physicians offering osteopathic manipulative therapy and we hope to be even amplifying a lot of those services with our new affiliation with the Memorial Health System.

Host: That’s great news. So wrap it up for us. Your best advice about Lifestyle Medicine and what advice you would give people in order to start living a healthier lifestyle.

Dr. Drozek: Well number one is a diet that it predominantly plant based. Save those processed foods and animal based products for special occasions, no more than once or twice a week. Eat them all together on the same day. Don’t stretch them out day by day because of the inflammation that they cause. You want several days free of inflammation so your body can utilize it’s self-healing mechanisms. Physical activity, at least 30 minutes a day of moderate activity. Stress management techniques can be many but do something to break your mental cycle that is causing stress. Something that will be enjoyable and take your mind away and of course get rid of those unhealthy habits. If you need some help, certainly find somebody that can help you with those.

Host: It’s great information. Thank you so much Dr. Drozek for joining us today and sharing the really burgeoning field of Lifestyle Medicine with us. Thank you again.

That wraps up this episode of Memorial Health Radio with Memorial Health System. Head on over to our website at www.mhsystem.org for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast informative, as I did because what an interesting form of medicine that we can all look to, please share it with your friends and family. Share with people that you know that have chronic disease states so that we can all learn from the experts at Memorial Health System together. And don’t forget to check out all the other fascinating podcasts in our library. There’s a bunch of them. Until next time, I’m Melanie Cole.