Lee Health’s Dr. DeLayna Horsford is a big believer in lifestyle medicine. “It’s not something that says you have an illness, I have this pill, I need you to take it every day twice a day and come and see me in three months. It’s more so you do this thing that’s affecting your health in a particular way, and we need to adjust that habit.”
Dr. Horsford starts off her appointments by reminding her patients that heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. “Heart disease is very much preventable and very much brought on by our lifestyle, so the things we eat, the amount of exercise we do, our stress level, etc.”
Lifestyle medicine encompasses who you are and the choices you make as a human being. By improving your diet, reducing stress, and getting more exercise and consistent sleep, you can improve your health without the need for pharmaceuticals. “We know that all these things impact your health, so if we are able to change some lifestyle patterns, it affects your health, and so we’re using that lifestyle component as the medicine to prevent or improve your health conditions,” said Dr. Horsford.
It’s about finding alternatives and ways to cut back on behavior detrimental to your health. She tries to encourage her patients to focus on small incremental changes over time. “You don’t have to go from 0 to 100, you make small changes that are doable, or else the changes just won’t happen. You have to make sure that whatever changes made fit your life,” said Dr. Horsford. You can learn more by searching for lifestyle medicine Lee Health on your favorite search engine.
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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Lee Health - Caring People. Inspiring Care.
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