Lifestyle Medicine

What is Lifestyle Medicine?

Lifestyle Medicine is a specialty field that utilises therapeutic lifestyle interventions to treat chronic conditions, prevent lifestyle-related diseases, and optimise health and human flourishing.


Lifestyle Medicine Physicians work with patients to understand their context, beliefs, challenges and values to derive patient-specific lifestyle goals to prevent, treat and in some cases, reverse chronic disease.


It uses evidence-based therapies that support current treatment guidelines and importantly, it is a multi-disciplinary field, so Lifestyle Medicine practitioners work with allied health colleagues and other medical specialists to enable holistic care.


You can find out more about Lifestyle Medicine at: https://lifestylemedicine.org.au/ 

Which conditions does it treat?

Lifestyle Medicine is the first line treatment in all lifestyle-related chronic disease, preventative health and mental health, including:



  • Diabetes
  • Heart Disease
  • Cancer
  • Arthritis
  • Osteoporosis
  • Chronic Lung Disease
  • Chronic Kidney Disease
  • Metabolic Health
  • Preventative Health
  • Weight Management
  • Metabolic syndrome
  • Auto-immune Disease
  • IBS
  • Gut Health
  • Mental Health
  • Peri-menopause/menopause
  • PCOS
  • Women’s Preventative Health

Lifestyle Medicine in Practice

There are THREE key components of Lifestyle Medicine:

Six pillars of Lifestyle Medicine:


  • Nutrition Medicine
  • Exercise Medicine
  • Sleep Medicine
  • Social and Nature Prescribing
  • Mind-Body Medicine (Stress Reduction)
  • Addiction Medicine

Understanding the patient

(The circumstances in which they live, how this shapes their health, goals and values)

Health Coaching

Dr Emma King

Dr Emma King

MD, MLifestyleMed, BSc(Hons), FRACGP, FASLM

About Dr Emma King

I’m a General Practitioner (GP) & Lifestyle Medicine Physician.


I am a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of GPs (FRACGP), Fellow of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine (FASLM), hold a Doctor of Medicine (MD), a Master of Lifestyle Medicine and a First Class Honours degree in Science (Pathology).


I offer both Lifestyle Medicine appointments and standard GP appointments at Mount Barker and Balhannah Medical Clinic & Uraidla Family Practice.


As a dual Fellow, I enjoy general practice broadly. I am particularly passionate about the field of Lifestyle Medicine. I see this as an adjunct to conventional medicine whereby time is spent understanding the social, environmental and cultural context of the people I work with, applying health coaching techniques combined with evidence-based clinical medicine to provide information, options and support for patients to make their own health decisions. I see myself as a steward supporting patents to thrive in the long-term.