After decades of research there is now a growing awareness of the power of simple lifestyle changes to prevent and reverse the progression of the most common chronic diseases, often without drugs or surgery. Lifestyle medicine is an evidence-based approach shown to prevent and treat disease. It treats the underlying cause of disease rather than its symptoms that are too often addressed with ever-increasing quantities of pills and procedures. Because it treats causes and not just symptoms, only through lifestyle medicine can we alter the course of spiralling health care costs.

While 80% or more of all health care spending 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 prevent, treat, and even reverse these conditions.

According to the World Health Organization, 80% of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes and 40% of cancer could be prevented, primarily with improvements in diet and lifestyle. A 2018 large-scale study of more than 100,000 patients by the Harvard School of Public Health found that those adopting just five healthy lifestyle habits had an 82 percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, a 65 percent lower chance of dying from cancer, and a 74 percent lower risk of dying from all causes during follow-up. These same lifestyle habits had a major impact on all the chronic diseases.