Chronic conditions, lifestyle medicine, and recreational therapy

Lifestyle medicine is a relatively new and emerging discipline within the practice of medicine dedicated to using lifestyle changes in the prevention, management, and reversal of chronic diseases. Information on lifestyle medicine has not appeared in the literature of recreational therapy. Recreational therapists need to understand lifestyle medicine because recreational therapy practice is closely tied to lifestyle medicine. This article is about chronic conditions and the recently established discipline of lifestyle medicine as they relate to the delivery of recreational therapy services. It is concluded that the recreational therapy profession should make itself known to those in the lifestyle medicine community and take a rightful place in the movement to prevent, manage, and reverse chronic diseases by assisting clients to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors.