- Clinical Technology
- Adult Immunization
- Hepatology
- Pediatric Immunization
- Screening
- Psychiatry
- Allergy
- Women's Health
- Cardiology
- Pediatrics
- Dermatology
- Endocrinology
- Pain Management
- Gastroenterology
- Infectious Disease
- Obesity Medicine
- Rheumatology
- Nephrology
- Neurology
- Pulmonology
Lifestyle Medicine for Type 2 Diabetes: Is Mainstream Medicine Ready to be All In?
Richard Rosenfeld, MD, MPH, MBA, lead author of new guidelines on sustained lifestyle change as central to treating, even reversing T2D, answers the question.
"I'm not sure that mainstream medicine has embraced the concept that lifestyle interventions can be a a a managing strategy for remission of type two diabetes or at least de-escalation of medications."
A new clinical practice guideline from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) moves treatment recommendations for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2D) into a realm that will be familiar to primary care clinicians and others who treat the metabolic disease but a realm of disease management that may typically be secondary to use of medication. Lifestyle interventions for treatment and remission of type 2 diabetes and prediabetes in adults: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, for the first time, places broad-based lifestyle interventions at the center of care for adults prediabetes, T2D, and gestational diabetes.1,2
The guideline offers clinicians a structured, evidence-based framework for not just integrating lifestyle-based treatment into routine diabetes management, but for using the multifactorial approach as the primary "prescription." Unlike prior guidelines that acknowledge the importance of lifestyle change but don't offer practical direction, this document delivers actionable strategies for implementing and sustaining behavioral change, according to the ACLM.1,2
Guideline lead author Richard Rosenfeld, MD, MPH, MBA, talked with Patient Care© recently about the evolution of the guideline and the focus on remission of disease. He acknowledged that some of the guideline's 14 "key action statements" might be more difficult to operationalize in primary care than others. He discusses that in more detail above; a transcript of his comments follow here, edited lightly for clarity and flow.
Patient Care: The ACLM guideline, Lifestyle Interventions for Treatment and Remission of Type 2 Diabetes and Prediabetes in Adults, has 14 key action statements. Thinking about primary care clinicians, which of these will be straightforward and which more difficult to implement?
Richard Rosenfeld, MD, MPH, MBA: I think the gestalt here is that we start by perhaps stating the obvious. We do what other guidelines don’t. We start off by saying: listen—at the most fundamental level, you need to understand why these lifestyle interventions are important, and advocate for them. Encourage your patients to embrace them as an empowering way to manage their diabetes or prediabetes. And we provide tools for that—even just the process of thinking about it.
Then it gets into assessing baseline lifestyle habits and establishing what the priorities are for the person with diabetes or prediabetes, in terms of their goals and their readiness to change. It’s really the kind of stuff that people often take for granted and don’t even think about.
We then get into the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, with attention to coaching, behavior change, sustaining change, and de-escalating medications. I think two things are going to be particularly hard.
In the so-called "fish discover water last" scheme of thinking, I’m not sure that mainstream medicine has fully embraced the concept that lifestyle interventions can be a management strategy for remission of type 2 diabetes—or at least for de-escalation of medications—and for preventing gestational diabetes or prediabetes from progressing to full-blown type 2 diabetes. It’s not taught in school. Residency programs don’t emphasize this. So it’s a bit of a sea change in thinking.
The other thing I think will be tough is achieving person-centered and sustained behavior change. Getting people to make changes and assessing readiness to change is relatively straightforward if you do it right. But keeping them on the path—that’s tough. Sustaining change is hard. We know that from decades of work in weight loss: people sign up for a gym membership on January 1, and stop going by February 1.
So these strategies for coaching, for peer support, family support, professional support, cognitive behavioral therapy—other strategies to promote and sustain change—are going to be tough, but essential.
For an at-a-glance preview of the 14 lifestyle interventions recommended in the guideline, see Guideline Topline: 14 Key Lifestyle Interventions to Treat, Prevent Type 2 Diabetes.
Richard Rosenfeld, MD, MPH, MBA, is the distinguished professor of otolaryngology, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and senior advisor for quality and guidelines for the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. Rosenfeld is board certified in otolaryngology – head and neck surgery and in lifestyle medicine.
