Welcome to The Workup, a First Opinion column from Vishal Khetpal.
As a physician, I recommend lifestyle modifications to patients every day: as a first approach for optimizing cholesterol levels, or to control blood pressure. Yet in a rushed office visit, that advice often feels too abstract, encouraging patients to follow the American Heart Association’s physical activity guidelines, or handing out a flyer on the DASH diet.
The actual “how” of lifestyle medicine — meeting patients where they are, outside of the exam room — is crowded out of the patient visit, relegated by design in how doctors are paid, or ignored altogether.
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