What is the difference between a lifestyle medicine doctor and a dietician

My patients are sometimes confused when I explain to them that I am a lifestyle medicine practitioner. They think that I am a doctor who’s also a nutritionist or a dietician. Now this is not the case. I have a significant amount of nutritional knowledge and I have postgraduate training in dietetics specific to lifestyle-related conditions. I’m not a dietician. Dieticians have training in very complicated nutritional situations. For instance, a patient who’s been in ICU for three or four weeks who hasn’t been able to eat and needs nutrition intravenously now, I have no idea how that works. But I know exactly what the interventions are that are required if I’ve got a patient who’s got high blood pressure, type two diabetes, gout, and arthritis, that is where I can make recommendations and say, these are the nutritional steps that you need to take in order to manage your medical conditions. The benefit of seeing somebody like me is that I can look at the whole picture and I can make a diagnosis.

Legally, I can prescribe medications and supplements if they are necessary, and I can make the lifestyle recommendations that are specific to your medical problem and that are scientifically proven to help you to manage or reverse your condition.

A dietician, for instance, can only give dietary advice because that is their field of expertise.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I often refer to dieticians because they are able to see the patients more frequently. And often medical insurance will happily pay for those sessions with the dietician. So from an economic perspective, it makes good sense. But oftentimes I am able to give my patients the advice that they need around nutrition because I have postgraduate specialized training in nutrition, which other doctors don’t.