Lifestyle Medicine

What is Lifestyle Medicine?

Lifestyle Medicine helps people adopt evidence-based lifestyle behaviors (such as healthy eating habits, regular exercise, managing stress, forming and maintaining healthy relationships with others, sleep hygiene, and avoidance of risky substances) to improve and maintain health as well as prevent disease.

The Lifestyle Medicine Program at Mass General Cancer Center provides personalized consultations and group visits for any patient with cancer or a history of cancer who wants to improve their physical fitness, nutrition, quality of life or cancer prognosis.

The foundations of our program:

• Exercise: Discuss ways to be active and resume exercise based on your current fitness level, personal goals, and cancer treatment
• Nutrition: Individualized, evidence-based sustainable advice to help you make healthy eating choices that fit your lifestyle
• Rehabilitation: Comprehensive evaluation to address any limitations and help you restore physical functioning and independence
• Sleep Improvement: Improve sleep health by creating an achievable plan that incorporates behaviors such as bedtime routine and relaxation strategies
• Stress Management: Develop strategies for reducing stress levels, integrating mindfulness into your life, and adopting other healthy lifestyle behaviors to improve your quality of life and mood
• Positive Behavior Changes: Making healthy lifestyle changes is more than the sum of these parts. Finding ways to put these principles together into a workable action plan to build resilience is the goal

We understand that when making lifestyle changes it can be hard to know where to start! Our experts will evaluate your personal needs and work with you on defining the steps needed to help you achieve your goals. We look forward to meeting you.

Who is the program right for?

Any Mass General Cancer Center patient can benefit from this program.

Clinic

The Lifestyle Medicine Clinic offers personalized one-on-one consultations with our lifestyle medicine team. These visits are currently being held virtually and you will be booked for an appointment regardless of Mass General Cancer Center location, and as appointments are available.

During these virtual visits, you'll meet one-on-one with members of our multidisciplinary team of cancer care providers who are also experts in lifestyle medicine:

• Oncology
  One-on-one medical consultation regarding medical history and personalized recommendations for physical activity and other lifestyle changes.
• Nutrition
  Individualized nutritional advice for making better eating choices, which can decrease some of the toxicities associated with certain cancer treatments and help you feel better.
• Behavioral Medicine
  Personal counseling session in which we will work in partnership to assess your personal behavioral needs and set realistic, achievable goals to make these new habits stick.

To make an appointment for the Lifestyle Medicine Clinic, please email the team at mghccsupportivecare@partners.org.

Group Visits

The Lifestyle Medicine Group Visits Program is a virtual 6-week clinical program focused on helping people who have concluded treatment for cancer learn about how to use healthy lifestyle behaviors to improve their health, wellness, and recovery. In the group visits, you will have the opportunity to learn from our multidisciplinary team of cancer care providers who are also experts in lifestyle medicine and receive peer support.

Learn more about group visits, view FAQs, schedule and more.

PAVING the Path to Wellness for Breast Cancer Survivors

Based on the principles of lifestyle medicine, PAVING the Path to Wellness is a 12-week program which provides education on the importance of physical activity, healthy eating, sleep, stress management, and the power of personal connections for individuals of all ages with a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Learn about the PAVING the Path to Wellness program.