The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the American Osteopathic Information Association (AOiA) have recently entered a partnership to help osteopathic physicians integrate lifestyle medicine into their practice of medicine. As part of the partnership, the organizations are offering two upcoming collaborative webinars. On Oct. 27, attendees can learn about transforming health through technology and osteopathic principles, and on Dec. 8, attendees can learn about exercise and movement as medicine.
This partnership represents more than a collaborative agreement—it signals a pivotal moment for osteopathic physicians to become leaders in comprehensive, preventive and root-cause medicine.
As healthcare costs approach $4.9 trillion annually in the United States—exceeding Japan’s entire economy—while many Americans experience poor health outcomes, it’s clear that our current symptom-management paradigm is failing. Japan achieves seven years longer in life expectancy while spending 60% less per capita on healthcare. This, and many other stark comparisons with OECD nations, underscores the urgent need for a fundamental shift in how we approach patient care.
For osteopathic medicine, this shift isn’t revolutionary, it’s a return to our roots.
Where osteopathic principles meet lifestyle medicine pillars
The alignment between osteopathic medicine’s four core tenets and lifestyle medicine’s six pillars is foundational. Both recognize the body as an interconnected system where dysfunction in one area affects the whole. Both emphasize the body’s innate capacity for healing when provided with optimal conditions.
The six pillars of lifestyle medicine include optimal nutrition, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, connectedness and avoidance of risky substances.
Lifestyle medicine physician Colin Zhu, DO, describes this synergy: “What’s powerful about the osteopathic principles and the lifestyle medicine pillars is the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of each. If one pillar or principle falls, then optimal health and well-being cannot be fully achieved. They’re speaking the same language.”
Consider a patient presenting with low back pain—a complaint accounting for millions of office visits annually. Traditional osteopathic assessment examines structural relationships from foot to head, evaluating fascial restrictions and visceral involvement. Osteopathic treatment addresses these findings through manipulative treatment alongside assessment of posture, gait, sleep patterns, lifestyle factors and other contributing conditions. But what if that same patient has elevated cholesterol and vascular compromise contributing to delayed tissue healing and persistent inflammation?
“We know that having high cholesterol or vascular disease can contribute to or worsen low back pain and delay healing,” explains Dr. Zhu. “So, if you don’t address it, their overall functionality won’t improve as well as it could. That’s where both approaches come together—treating the whole system, not just the symptoms.”
This integration transforms our capacity to address root causes. Heidi Prather, DO, founder and medical director of the Hospital for Special Surgery Lifestyle Medicine Program for Musculoskeletal Health, notes: “Chronic disease impairs the response to usual symptomatic treatment of musculoskeletal conditions. Addressing chronic disease in a way that supports the body’s innate capacity for healing via lifestyle medicine improves pain, can potentially halt the rapid progression of some musculoskeletal conditions and enhances whole-person health.”
Evidence-based results in clinical practice
The efficacy of integrated osteopathic-lifestyle medicine isn’t theoretical, it’s measurable. Dr. Prather’s program, enrolling 1,200-1,300 patients annually, demonstrates consistent improvements across multiple health parameters: reduced HbA1c, improved lipid profiles, optimized vitamin D levels, decreased inflammatory markers and an average three-point improvement in pain scores on a 0-10 scale.
These outcomes reflect lifestyle medicine’s evidence base: interventions that have achieved guideline-level recommendations for managing and reversing Type 2 diabetes, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, hypertension and obesity through plant-predominant nutrition, exercise prescription, stress management and sleep optimization.
Regan Stiegmann, DO, MPH, chief medical officer of LPM LAB, a lifestyle medicine app, emphasizes the military medicine perspective: “Lifestyle medicine and osteopathic medicine are fundamentally aligned in advancing evidence-based, whole-person care that is highly relevant to both military and civilian healthcare settings. Together, these disciplines offer an integrated, scientifically grounded framework to address the root causes of disease and enhance force readiness, population health outcomes and healthcare system sustainability.”
Practical implementation strategies
Successfully integrating lifestyle medicine into osteopathic practice requires systematic approaches that respect time constraints while maximizing patient impact. Dr. Zhu advocates for efficiency: “I distill my counseling sessions to under 10 minutes by guiding patients to visualize a simple but powerful concept: Every choice either feeds disease or feeds health.”
Dr. Prather notes that her team has developed comprehensive systems that help them track patients’ health and address issues quickly.
“We have created a systematic, programmatic approach with discrete data in templated notes in the electronic medical record that enables us to collect all data regarding the six pillars of health, metabolic and anthropometric measures,” she says. “We follow the progress of all measures while the patient engages in the program.”
Any DO interested in implementing lifestyle medicine can begin with three foundational strategies:
- Be lifestyle medicine: Model the six pillars in your own life. Patients respond to authentic leadership and lived experience.
- Frame the long game: Help patients understand that sustainable health isn’t about convenience or quick fixes, but about consistent choices that compound over time.
- Focus on small wins: Encourage patients to strive to be 1% better than yesterday. Small changes accumulate into significant dividends over a lifetime.
Addressing healthcare disparities and access
The integrated osteopathic medicine-lifestyle medicine (OM-LM) approach offers promise for addressing healthcare disparities. By emphasizing prevention and root-cause intervention, this model reduces dependence on expensive specialist referrals and invasive procedures that may be less accessible to underserved populations who require cost-effective and accessible solutions that promote long-term health.
Moreover, lifestyle medicine interventions often have lower barriers to implementation once patients are properly educated and supported. Dr. Prather notes: “We bridge the fact that the knee swelling they experience may be related to their uncontrolled diabetes and the pizza they ate last night. Working on lifestyle factors can help manage diabetes and an osteoarthritic painful knee.”
This educational approach empowers patients to become active participants in their healing process, aligning with both osteopathic philosophy and practical healthcare economics.
Technology integration advantage
Modern technology platforms can extend the reach and impact of integrated care. Dr. Stiegmann highlights digital solutions: “Physicians can provide patients with useful digital tools such as LPM LAB’s digital platform, which is the first lifestyle medicine/lifestyle performance medicine digital health application built for the United States Air Force. This app, which is now available to nonmilitary organizations as well, is essentially like a human performance team and coach in your pocket.”
This platform serves as force health multiplier, enabling continuous patient engagement between care visits. It also provides AI-driven coaching, tracking and accountability that supports end-users’ ability to achieve sustainable daily lifestyle behavior changes that are oriented around the pillars of lifestyle medicine and evidence-based health metrics.
A vision for the future
Where do we see integrated osteopathic-lifestyle medicine in five to 10 years? Dr. Zhu envisions “a truly synergistic blend, where both professions work in tandem to drive more effective and lasting change in patient health. As integration deepens, I believe we’ll see a new standard of care that addresses root causes and empowers both practitioners and patients to optimally achieve health in person and virtually through digital health tools aimed at prevention and health promotion.”
This vision requires expanded public and professional awareness; enhanced education around practice philosophy and technology development and use; and broader implementation efforts across practice settings.
Call to action
Dr. Stiegmann issues this challenge to the osteopathic community: “Get back to the root of why you went into medicine in the first place—to heal human beings. Lifestyle medicine truly captures how we as healthcare leaders can teach our patients to become the CEOs of their own health regarding preventing, treating and even reversing some of the most common chronic diseases we see today.”
For practicing physicians, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine offers a broad catalog of self-paced continuing medical education, plus comprehensive tools for program implementation, coding and patient education.
The chronic disease epidemic demands more than symptomatic management. It requires practitioners who can address root causes while honoring the complexity of human health. The ACLM-AOiA partnership provides osteopathic physicians with evidence-based tools, technology and professional support to meet this challenge.
Take the first step
Ready to begin your lifestyle medicine journey? Register for the upcoming CME webinars in collaboration between AOiA & ACLM on Oct. 27 and Dec. 8. These sessions provide practical implementation strategies and evidence-based approaches specifically designed for osteopathic physicians.
The evidence is compelling. The tools are available. The partnership is established. The question isn’t whether osteopathic physicians should integrate lifestyle medicine—it’s whether we’re ready to level up and reclaim our leadership role in transforming American healthcare.
As we face an uncertain healthcare future marked by rising costs and declining outcomes, osteopathic physicians have an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate the value of our distinctive, whole-person approach reinforced by evidence-based lifestyle interventions. The time to act is now.
To learn more about the ACLM-AOiA partnership and lifestyle medicine resources for osteopathic physicians, visit www.lifestylemedicine.org and www.aoiassn.org.
Editor’s note: This article represents the collaborative expertise of multiple practicing osteopathic physicians who are leaders in lifestyle medicine integration. This article was partially prepared by generative artificial intelligence. Generated text was reviewed, edited and finalized by human authors. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent the views of The DO or the AOA.