BSLM Newsletter: August 2018

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the August Newsletter.

A very warm BSLM ‘family’ welcome to our many new members and thank you everyone for your contributions to the advancement of lifestyle medicine in the UK and beyond. 

Since the last newsletter there has been a momentous event. Many congratulations to the intrepid pioneers who have certified as BSLM and International Board Physicians, Professionals and Practitioners. It required more than thirty hours of online learning, ten hours of in person learning, a case study and either a four hour or three hour summative exam. It does BSLM great credit that 38 members successfully navigated the inaugural global certification program and are now fully fledged lifestyle medicine officianados. 

Our International Board proctor officially announced our event as the ‘best ever’. It was hosted at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. The next exam date is 10th August 2019 at the same venue and I hope many more members will wish to be certified LM ‘experts’. 

So from a warm and active Danish holiday where bikes come in all different styles and sizes — wishing all our members a ‘hygge’ September.

Rob Lawson
BSLM Chairman

BSLM Conference Presentations
Now Available!

Obituary Dr Julian Tudor Hart FRCGP, FRCP
Born: 1927, Died: 1 July 2018

by Dr Malcolm Rigler

Meeting the late Dr Julian Tudor Hart, a father of lifestyle medicine, a few years ago at his home in Gilwern near Abergavenny was a delight. I had been working as a GP Locum at his former practice in Wales and was keen to meet him being fully aware of his great influence on General practice. 

It has been said that “Good medicine can often be good fun. With Dr Tudor –Hart, it was certainly the case that “a good medical practitioner can be good company and good fun to be with”.

When we met, Dr Hart was well into his 80s but nevertheless he was full of ideas about the future of general practice and all the time making frequent reference to the so called “non- medical determinants of health” or “lifestyle issues”. 

Dr Hart had been greatly influenced in his early years as a doctor by the epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll with whom he worked for a time in the late 1950s. He carried this interest in epidemiology and Public Health over into his work as a GP alongside his day to day face to face consultations with his patients at Glyncorrwg where he worked for 30 years.

At Glyncorrwg he had the support of his second wife, Mary Thomas, and together they studied the distribution and incidence of disease and disability in his local community realising early on that the lifestyle of his patients often led to dis-ease, disability and organ failure.

Although few GPs have had the energy and the resources to be able to pursue any serious epidemiological projects Dr Hart readily agreed with me and others in the field of Epidemiology which in this day and age we must work with partners such as the Public Library Service to develop not so much “disease focused epidemiological studies” but “person-centred epidemiology”.

Thus we can map who, in each CCG area, has literacy problems and why, who with incontinence problems has access to washing machines and drying facilities and who has not and why and so on. 

It was his hope that this new approach to epidemiology would be GP led.
Clearly it is now up to us to explore the ways and means to fulfil his ambitions for the future of the practice of epidemiology working with other “health professionals such as librarians” who share our interest in addressing the Inequalities in health and keen to work on projects that promote “Health and Well Being”2. 

Dr Malcolm Rigler, GP, FRSPH
Member CILIP Health Group 
Health Ambassador
Member BSLM 
Email: m.rigler@nhs.net 

References:

1. Good Medicine can often be good fun” private communication from 
   Sir Kenneth Calman when Chief Medical Officer of Health, London 
    
2. The Librarian – “a Health Professional too” David Stewart 

   New Vice President to 'honour the past and look to the future' - CILIP.
   8 Nov 2017 - DIRECTOR of Health Libraries North David Stewart will become CILIP Vice President 

Music, The Food of Love - and Longevity

by Dr Sue Kenneally

The soundtrack to our life. It says a lot about us, and to many is a critical source of pleasure, relaxation, motivation, religious devotion, romance and plenty besides, depending on what we need from it at any given moment. Music can cover it all. And whether we are tone deaf and dimly aware of background ‘noise’, seriously appreciate listening to some of the greats or enjoy playing ourselves as a hobby or career, most of us have strong opinions about what constitutes ‘good’ music, and those people who happen to agree with us can easily and rapidly become friends through the bonding that music can bring.

What about music and health? Could it be that what we listen to can actually change our long-term health? The evidence suggests that it just might, which is welcome news in our heavily medication dependent world; an intervention that comes with no risk, has no adverse side effects and is freely available to all can surely be only a good thing. 

Music has been shown to benefit people with one of our biggest killers, coronary heart disease, mainly by reducing anxiety. Anxiety is a significant problem in people with heart disease; knowing that you have a problem with your heart is likely to make you anxious, and in turn that heightened state of anxiety increases your risk of further damage to the heart or even dying from your condition. Listening to music, particularly if you get to choose what to listen to, can also reduce the blood pressure and heart rate. It isn’t clear just how much difference the effects on blood pressure and heart rate makes in reality, but the effects of music on anxiety levels are clear.

Evidence suggests that cancer patients should be tuning in; listening to music regularly may have less anxiety, pain and fatigue, and an improved quality of life. People with dementia may also benefit from regular music based therapeutic interventions. They are likely to have fewer depressive symptoms and behavioural problems, and better emotional wellbeing and quality of life following music therapy.

Listening to music in the pre-operative period can reduce anxiety which is important in terms of anaesthesia. Apart from increased blood pressure and heart rate, anxiety can result in a ‘fight or flight’ response whereby blood gets diverted to skeletal muscles and consequently a higher dose of anaesthetic can be required; staying calm can essentially reduce the dose of anaesthetic given. Similarly, it can reduce anxiety in patients on ITU, and possibly also improve their sleep quality and therefore aid their recovery.

Good news for the millions of us with insomnia too – it seems that listening to our favourite tunes is an effective way of gently sending us off to the land of nod, with none of the addiction or hangover effects seen with the pharmacological alternatives. Adequate sleep is fundamentally important to long-term health so anything healthful that improves it is most welcome. Music therapy also helps children with autism to concentrate and learn better, improves depression and may improve wellbeing in those with schizophrenia.
So whatever sounds make your heart sing, listen to them regularly. I listen to music constantly when I’m doing work that doesn’t involve direct patient contact, including right now, and my colleagues frequently remark that it is a pleasure to enter my consulting room because of the lovely calming ambience – I listen to chilled out music in work to help keep my own heart rate and blood pressure where they need to be, very different from the soundtrack to my average 5k run, for example. Listening to music may not just make your heart sing, it may actually keep it beating longer. Enjoy.

Member Spotlight:
Dr Ify Monye

Lifestyle Medicine has been the buzzword in my world and household for many years now. It was therefore no surprise when in June of 2017, my daughter called me with excitement to tell me that she just stumbled upon the advert for the first-ever UK Lifestyle Medicine meeting.  I immediately signed up for it, became a founding member of BSLM and was so delighted to finally discover my “tribe” in the medical profession in the UK. I have been honoured and privileged to serve as the Regional Director for South-Central England ever since.

I think that I have had an interesting journey in my career as a medical doctor. After completing my GP training in London and working briefly in the UK, I travelled to Africa with a passion to establish training centres of excellence for Family Medicine. From a very early age, I realised that the WHO definition of health is what we should aim for in practising as health professionals. I was very keen on the total man being healthy rather than just having the mere absence of disease. I was always drawn to prevention and treatment of disease conditions using affordable, accessible and acceptable means, which can be found intrinsically from within our being, as well as locally around us, in what we eat, drink, how we move, our world view, relaxation, sleep and many other lifestyle related factors. I watched helplessly as lifestyle choices of many people stole the life in their years and shortened their years in life. I held a firm belief that changing behavioural lifestyle patterns to positively influence health was where the future of Medicine was headed. 

So in 2004, I began to search for anyone in the medical field who would think differently from the usual conventional way we were all used to. At the time, it was a near-impossible task until I stumbled upon the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and became a member in 2009. I have since received training in Lifestyle Medicine from the Joslin Diabetic Centre and Harvard Institute of Lifestyle Medicine. I subsequently did my coaching training with the WellCoaches USA in 2014.

Feeling very confident with these trainings, I wondered just where to begin in my quest to share this newly-found knowledge or indeed where to put this into practice. To help me take on this task, I attended the University of Oxford Women Transforming Leadership (WTL) Course and this set me up to take on what has been a really exciting intercontinental career in Lifestyle Medicine. I subsequently established the Brookfield Centre for Lifestyle Medicine, Abuja, Nigeria: an organisation with extensive international collaborations and a mission to contribute to the campaign to grow Lifestyle Medicine in Africa and indeed the world, through establishing Lifestyle Medicine clinical settings, research and advocacy.I had earlier set up the Lifestyle Medicine Clinic at the National Hospital, Abuja,Nigeria.

I have recently returned to the UK and joined the NHS to work as a Portfolio GP in Berkshire. I want to deepen my LM career by passionately pursuing the practice of Lifestyle Medicine as a GP in the UK, as well as in Africa, while taking on various leadership roles in both continents to advocate for Lifestyle Medicine education and Lifestyle Medicine practices in our lives as  practitioners, in our patients, communities and especially in schools.  Integrating Lifestyle Medicine principles into NHS practice somehow appeared to be a conundrum to me but lately I have been exploring the possibility of using shared medical appointments/group consultations to achieve this. 

I am the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of “Lifestyle Choices”, a magazine dedicated to educating and raising awareness about Lifestyle Medicine. I represent the European Lifestyle Medicine Organisation as the Ambassador to Nigeria and Africa with a clear mandate to contribute in creating awareness and providing Lifestyle Medicine education to the continent, one country at a time. As the Founding President of the Lifestyle Medicine Practitioners’ Association of Nigeria, it has been a challenging but exciting journey searching for and discovering the Lifestyle Medicine “tribe” in Nigeria. We have also reached out to doctors and health professionals in other African countries and are now set to formally join the Lifestyle Medicine Global Alliance with our brand-new Africa Lifestyle Medicine Association. As a team, we have all found this a very exciting journey, reaching new heights together.

I am glad to say that I have in the last 4-5 months, lost 10kg of my body weight by simply following Lifestyle Medicine principles of adequate sleep, physical activity (I love to dance and also take brisk walks for at least an hour almost every day), my veggies are my delight (seriously!), and I attend a weekly group support for weight management. Meditation is my go-to every morning.

My dream is to see the entire world embrace the principles of Lifestyle Medicine in all its ramifications, in every specialty of Medicine and allied professions, backed with a strong political will, as we advance our knowledge and understanding with more research and further collaborations.
 

Event Review
Health Awareness Day - Leicester 2017

by Karishma Chandarana & Shrinal Kotecha - Foundation Doctors

Located in the heart of the country, Leicester is a vibrant city known for its ethnic and cultural diversity. With 49% of the total population from a non-White background, Leicester has the highest percentage of Asian/Asian British residents in England and Wales. There is an insufficiency in medical education amongst this socioeconomic group, with over 34% of the population being born outside of the United Kingdom(1). In order to ease accessibility and promote health and wellbeing amongst the ‘hard-to-reach’, we organised a ‘Health Awareness Day’ at a local community centre.

The day incorporated an information fair, free training in essential lifesaving skills alongside short teaching sessions.

With several stalls held by a wide variety of local health organisations, we were able to provide face-to-face interactions with services, charities and support groups within in the area.

Furthermore, ‘Heartwize’, a community engagement project initiated in 2016 by University of Leicester and Leicester hospitals(2), delivered training sessions in emergency life support and automated external defibrillator use.

Due to the increasing prevalence of heart disease, diabetes and harmful lifestyle habits, tutorials led by healthcare professionals aimed to explore these areas in more depth. Additionally, attempts were made to address the stigma of mental health by encouraging discussion within this area; a rare opportunity amongst ethnic communities(3). Those with the linguistic abilities were also able to tailor the talks accordingly.

With over 150 attendees, a 100% stated that they would attend again. It was seen to be ‘pitched at an appropriate level’, ‘informative and educational’ as well as ‘inspiring’. Amongst the feedback, guests requested for ‘personalised health checks’, ‘more talks’ and ‘interactive questionnaires’. Overall, the day scored an average of 3.6 out of 4 stars - a fantastic achievement for our first event. Moving forward, we aspire to hold an annual ‘Health Awareness Day’ on a larger scale, tailoring to the needs of Leicester’s community.

References

1. Leicester City Council, Diversity and Migration, Community insights including facts from census 2011 (Dec 2012)
2. Available from: https://le.ac.uk/about/csr/heartwize
3. Knifton L, Understanding and addressing the stigmaof mental illness with ethnic minority communities, Health Sociology Review (Sept 2012), 21(3): 287-298

Community Events

There are many great community events coming up in the next year. Here are just a few from the BSLM events page:

8 September 2018
National Lifestyle Medicine Conference
Leeds
Event Details +
Multidisciplinary conference bringing together GPs , CCG leads, dieticians, nutritional therapists and health coaches together. Guest Speakers include Dr Zoe Williams, Dr David Unwin and Dr Pratima Singh and many…

16 September 2018
Five a Day by the Doctors
London
Event Details +
Join us at our Wellness Festival on the 16th September 2018 where you will find us 5 experienced doctors giving you tips, tricks and life hacks through short workshops delivered in a fun, interactive and educational way...

21 October 2018
Lifestyle Medicine 2018
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Event Details +
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine produces an annual CME accredited conference—the nation’s premier medical education event exclusively focused on lifestyle in medicine and lifestyle as medicine…

10 November 2018
1st European Lifestyle Medicine Conference
Geneva, Switzerland
Event Details +
The European Lifestyle Medicine Organization (ELMO) is a scientific, medical organization based in Geneva (Switzerland) dedicated to research, prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and lifestyle related diseases...
 

Submit events that you'd like to see included on the BSLM events page

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