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References and resources for this lifestyle medicine framework

Publication date: 05 April 2024

Lifestyle medicine organisations

  • The British Society of Lifestyle Medicine: Founded in 2016 with the definition “Lifestyle medicine is evidence-based healthcare that supports behaviour change through person-centred techniques to improve mental wellbeing, healthy relationships, physical activity, healthy eating, sleep and minimisation of harmful substances or behaviours.”
  • The World Lifestyle Medicine Organisation: The World Lifestyle Medicine Organisation (WLMO) is a coalition of worldwide non-profit, legally constituted national and regional lifestyle medicine societies which promote evidence-informed approaches to prevention, management and reversal of non-communicable diseases.
  • The American College of Lifestyle Medicine: Founded in 2003 with the definition: “Lifestyle medicine is the use of a whole food, plant-predominant dietary lifestyle, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connection as a primary therapeutic modality for treatment and reversal of chronic disease.”
  • The Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine: improving the health and wellbeing of all Australians and New Zealanders through lifestyle as medicine.
  • The Lifestyle Medicine Global Alliance: Lifestyle medicine is defined as the use of nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and social connection as the primary therapy for treatment and reversal of disease.
  • The European Lifestyle Medicine Council: States that Lifestyle Medicine requires an understanding and acknowledgement of the physical, emotional, environmental and social determinants of disease. Hence the lifestyle medicine practitioner will engage with patients and operate within a boundary of evidence-informed medicine.
  • The European Lifestyle Medicine Organisation: Defines lifestyle medicine as “a branch of evidence-based medicine in which comprehensive lifestyle changes (including nutrition, physical activity, stress management, social support and environmental exposures) are used to prevent, treat and reverse the progression of chronic diseases by addressing their underlying causes.”
  • The Institute of Lifestyle Medicine: A collaboration between Harvard Medical school and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in 2007. Their mission is “reducing lifestyle-related death and disease in society through clinician-directed interventions with patients”. States that lifestyle medicine is “a medical approach that uses evidence-based behavioural interventions to treat and manage chronic diseases related to lifestyle.”

Lifestyle medicine journals

Lifestyle medicine textbooks

Where references are to published books (hard copy or digital), an ISBN number (usually starting with 978) has been appended to the description. This enables you to use any preferred search method to find the publication in question. Note that each individual version of a book is given a separate ISBN, so digital editions may carry a different ISBN to the one quoted here.

  • Fallows E, Harvey C, Pinder R, Essentials of Lifestyle Medicine (2025)
  • Andrew Binns, Garry Egger and Stephan Rössner, Lifestyle Medicine: Managing Disease of Lifestyle in the 21st century; ISBN: 978-0070998124
  • Textbook of Lifestyle Medicine, Labros S Sidossis, Steganos N Kales, Wiley: ISBN: 978-1119704423
  • Lifestyle Medicine: A Manual for Clinical Practice, Jeffrey I Mechanick, Robert F Kushner: ISBN: 978-3319246857
  • Lifestyle Medicine, J. Rippe, 3rd edition, ISBN: 978-0865422940
  • Basics of Behaviour Change in Primary Care, Patricia J Robinson, ISBN: 978-3030320492
  • Motivational Interviewing in Health Care; helping Patients Change Behaviour, Rollnick S et al.: ISBN: 978-1462550371
  • Human Nutrition, Catherine Geissler, Hilary Power: ISBN: 978-0198768029
  • Textbook of Nutrition in Health and Disease, Kaveri Chakrabarty, A. S. Chakrabarty, 2019: ISBN: 978-9811509643
  • Foundations of Sleep Health, F Javier Nieto, Donna Petersen, 2021
  • Introduction to Epigenetics, Renato Paro, Ueli Grossniklaus, Raffaella Santoro, Anton Wutz, 2021: ISBN: 978-3030686697
  • Chronic Inflammation: Mechanisms and Regulation, Masayuki Miyasaka, Kiyoshi Takatsu, 2016: ISBN: 978-4431567691
  • Microbiome in Human Health and Disease, Pallaval Veera Bramhachari, 2021: ISBN: 978-9811631580

Popular science books

Socio-economic determinants of health

  • Michael Marmot. The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World, ISBN: 978-1408857977
  • Nigel Crisp, Health is Made at Home; Hospitals are for Repairs. Building a Healthy and Health-creating Society (2020)  ISBN: 978-1838031305
  • Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, 2010, ISBN: 978-0241954294, Penguin
  • And The Inner Level. How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone's Wellbeing ISBN:978-0141975399, 2019, Penguin
  • James Maskell, The Community Cure: Transforming Health Outcomes Together ISBN: 978-1544506661, 2019, Lion crest publishing
  • Kathryn Strother Ratcliff, The Social Determinants of Health: Looking Upstream ISBN: 978-1509504312, 2017, Polity 

Nutrition and health

  • Henry Dimbleby, Ravenous, ISBN: 978-1800816510
  • Dr Christoffer Van Tullekan, Ultra-processed People, ISBN: 978-1529900057
  • Professor Tim Spector, The Diet Myth and Spoon Fed, ISBN: 978-1529112733
  • Professor Roy Taylor, Life Without Diabetes, ISBN: 978-1780724096
  • David Lustig MD, Metabolical ISBN 978-1529350074

Mental health and lifestyle

  • Professor Felice Jacka, Brain Changer, ISBN: 978-1529326642
  • Professor Edward Bullmore, The Inflamed Mind, ISBN: 978-1780723501
  • Yohann Hari, Lost Connections and Stolen Focus, ISBN: 978-1408878729
  • James Davies, Sedated, ISBN: 978-9124208066
  • James Davie, Cracked, ISBN: 978-1848316546
  • Professor Joanna Moncrieff, the Myth of the Chemical Cure, ISBN: 978-0230574328

Sleep

  • Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep, ISBN:978-0141983769

Cellular mechanisms

  • David A Sinclair, Lifespan, ISBN: 978-1501191978
  • Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, The Telomere Effect, ISBN: 978-1780229034

Over-prescribing and too much medicine

  • Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, ISBN: 978-1582345796
  • Dr H. Gilbert Welch, Over-diagnosed, making people sick in the pursuit of health, ISBN: 978-0807021996
  • Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis – The Expropriation of Health, ISBN:  978-0714529936
  • Seamus O’Mahoney, Can Medicine Be Cured, ISBN: 978-1788544542
  • Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Medicine is Broken and How We Can Fix It, ISBN: 978-0007498086
  • Victor Montori, Why We Revolt, ISBN: 978-1893005624
  • Professor Eric Topol, The Patient Will See You Now, ISBN: 978-0465040025

Key evidence-based guidelines

Lifestyle medicine key papers

Epidemiology and intervention trials

Behaviour change

Person-centred care

Current practice

COVID-19 and lifestyle 

Too much medicine and polypharmacy

Cellular level mechanisms of lifestyle change

Condition-specific resources and patient-facing resources

Mental wellbeing

Healthy eating

Physical activity

Sleep

Cancer

Chronic pain

Type 2 diabetes remission

Patient-centred care

Behaviour change

Books

  • R. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, ISBN: 978-0141999937
  • Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask more and Change the way you lead forever, ISBN: 978-0978440749
  • Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit, why we do what we do and how to change, ISBN: 978-1847946249

Group consultations

  • ELC Programme
  • James Maskell, The Community Cure: transforming health outcomes together, ISBN: 978-1544506661
  • Ed Noffsinger, Running Group Visits in your Practice, ISBN: 978-1441914132
  • Edward B Noffsinger, The ABCs of Group Visits, ISBN: 978-1461435259

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