OPINION: Robert* was just 55 years old, too young it would seem to have suffered a serious heart attack. He told me how he was diagnosed with extremely high blood pressure and high cholesterol pressure a year ago. Robert opted to avoid the nasty medicines and chose lifestyle changes. Now, I was about to operate on his ailing heart.
The problem was that years ago, the only advice Robert got given to treat his blood pressure was to have a good diet and do some exercise. He missed out on medications that are lifesaving. He went for the attractive pill-free route when the less attractive but more efficacious medications may have stopped him meeting me for open heart surgery.
So-called lifestyle diseases such as diabetes are taking over the world at the same time as conventional and proven medical treatment is being increasingly shunned. After all, the logical treatment of lifestyle disease must be lifestyle medicine. More than 70 per cent of us will die from non-communicable diseases, heart disease or cancer, as a product of our genes and the modern lifestyle of excess; excessive food, alcohol, stress and sitting.
In an effort to stem growing epidemics of everything from diabetes to cancer, as well living our "best lives", lifestyle medicine is booming. Everyone from your outspoken cardiologists and Instagram influencers are reaching for diet, exercise and some form of spiritual treatment, shunning medications. Some even advocate this approach in the face of cancer or heart disease which pose a genuine threat to survival.
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Pills are out and diets are in for growing numbers of people looking to manage and prevent illnesses, or just glow from within.
We're now in a time where actual medicines are seen as untrustworthy and not natural enough to defile our bodies with. Lifestyle approaches though, seem to be increasingly regarded as superior, and tap into a person's autonomy over their bodies rather than following the prescription of a physician.
Lifestyle medicine though, isn't really medicine.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Dr Nikki Stamp is operating on patients who declined to take lifesaving medicines.
What I see with growing frequency is lifestyle medicine being recommended by fringe physicians or online pseudo-experts. This information given is not always high quality. Some dish out ultra-specific and flawed advice as to which foods to eat and avoid, and what specific exercises to do which are falsely guaranteed to bring longevity or cure disease. We've been so brainwashed by lifestyle gurus that many of us think even fruit is bad. These sales pitches are false hope and cashing in on vulnerable people, nothing more.
The trend to value diet, exercise and lifestyle change as superior to medicine only risks providing useless information. It also devalues the safety and proven track record that comes with modern medicines that ultimately save lives. With more people shunning lifesaving medicines such as chemotherapy for cancer and statins in heart disease, this could cost lives.
When we say that people can feed or fight disease by what they choose to do, we place huge amounts of personal responsibility on to that person for their health. And while the choices we make each day play into our health, it's a simplistic approach.
Personal responsibility quickly evolves into blame; if you couldn't lose weight or cure your illness with food and exercise alone, did you really want it enough? Did you work hard enough? It promotes the idea that you get the health you deserve when the reality is that health and disease occur in a complex biopsychosocial environment. Nobody deserves life threatening illness, ever.
Lifestyle changes are important, that's not deniable. Are they substitutes for good quality medical care? Absolutely not.
If I thought for a second that asking someone to diet would keep them away from my operating table, I would prescribe them that in a heartbeat. It won't though. The lives that we lead can make us healthier, but don't guarantee health. Lifestyle medicine is not medicine, not even close. Lifestyle medicine is just one tool in the battle against disease and belongs with tablets and operations, not in competition.
Dr Nikki Stamp is a cardiothoracic surgeon. Details have been changed to protect patient privacy.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/112543201/feel-free-to-take-lifestyle-medicine--but-if-you-do-ill-see-you-on-my-operating-table
2019-05-07 12:54:00Z
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