FP’s Quest to Improve Own Health Changed Her Practice

“Yoga teacher training is interesting,” she said. “There’s a 200-hour certification and a 500-hour certification. A lot of people take the 200-hour program just to learn more about yoga to get a deeper dive into what it’s all about, and that’s why I started doing it. I had no intention of being a yoga teacher because I didn’t think I had time for it.”

That changed when Polk’s neighbor opened a yoga studio in their neighborhood and invited Polk to lead a class. Before long, Polk was teaching at the Roanoke, Va., studio where she trained. She eventually earned a 500-hour teaching certificate.

Polk has led yoga classes at the AAFP’s Physician Health & Well-being Conference since its inception in 2018, as well as the National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students and the Family Medicine Experience. She’ll add a new Academy event to her schedule May 17-19 at the first Lifestyle Medicine Live Course, in Albuquerque.

Polk is co-chair of the lifestyle medicine course with Amy Mechley, M.D., chair of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine, and Brenda Rea, M.D., Dr.PH., P.T., R.D., program director of the Loma Linda University Health Education Consortium Family and Preventive Medicine Residency Program and Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist Fellowship.

 “Never ever in a million years would I have thought I would be the unofficial yoga instructor for the American Academy of Family Physicians,” she said. “That never crossed my mind.”

Lifestyle medicine, however, is frequently on Polk’s mind. A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the Carilion Family Practice Residency, Polk had been in practice for more than a decade when she started looking for a more effective way to help patients. She earned her board certification in lifestyle medicine in 2017, three years after she earned her first yoga teaching certificate.

“What I struggled with for many years in my practice was, how do we actually make people well?” she said. “We do a lot of things to treat their illnesses, but it feels like we hardly ever make them well. Since learning more about how to effectively address lifestyle drivers of chronic diseases, I’ve been able to see people actually improve their A1c, improve their blood pressure and get off their medicines. That is what I wanted to do when I went into medicine in the first place — to help people get better. Just prescribing medicines wasn’t doing it; that was important, but it’s not enough.”

Polk said incorporating lifestyle medicine as a structured part of her family medicine practice made her more confident and comfortable talking to people about making changes to improve their health. Lifestyle medicine emphasizes a plant-based diet, exercise, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connections.

“I take the time to dive into the behaviors that are driving their chronic medical conditions and then work with them to set specific goals and work toward improving their health,” she said. “I follow up in person, virtually and sometimes in MyChart. We stay in touch, so we have a close connection and work toward improving all the behaviors that affect their health.”

Polk joined the faculty at the Carilion Clinic Family Medicine Residency program in Roanoke last year after more than 20 years in Carilion Medical Group’s family medicine practice. She acknowledged that the job change has allowed her more time with patients, but she said the Lifestyle Medicine Live Course will teach attendees how they can incorporate lifestyle medicine regardless of their practice model.

“It’s very much about the principles of how we manage chronic diseases and improve chronic diseases with lifestyle medicine, as well as how do we do that in the setting of a clinic visit,” she said. “It can seem daunting to have to cover so much information and all the other things you have to do during a 15-minute visit. How do you also effectively counsel people on diet, exercise, sleep and stress? That’s what the lifestyle medicine conference is about. It’s about how do we do that in a way that is effective for people to take home with them to their practices.”

Speakers also will cover how to bill for such care, she said.

“Lifestyle medicine has the reputation of being for the people who can afford it,” said Polk, who now practices in medically underserved communities. “Many practices in lifestyle medicine are concierge-type practices. While that is valuable, I believe this is what everybody needs, and I’m working to figure out the best way to deliver it to patients who really need it and have difficulty affording it. We need to make it accessible.”

In her new role with the residency program, Polk has implemented and administered a lifestyle medicine curriculum.

“We are training our residents to do both, so they’ll be competent when they graduate to practice family medicine and lifestyle medicine at the same time,” she said.

Polk previously served as a family medicine clerkship director for Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and continues to serve the school as a clinical preceptor.

“It was an opportunity to get my foot into academic medicine,” she said, “and it was a lot of fun. I wrote the whole curriculum, and in the seven years that I did the job we added lifestyle medicine, culinary medicine and procedural workshops. I still teach the third-year medical students lifestyle medicine and culinary medicine.”

Up next, Polk will serve as faculty (and yoga instructor) for the Physician Health & Well-being Conference, which is scheduled for April 25-28 in Indian Wells, Calif. 

“The well-being conference is a great opportunity for physicians to come and take care of themselves, to learn how to have better skills regarding their own well-being and to look at the bigger picture of well-being issues,” she said.

Polk said her interest in lifestyle medicine developed because of concerns about her own well-being.

“I struggled, like a lot of people, with being burned out and feeling overworked and overwhelmed,” she said. “I started doing this because I wanted to take care of myself. I asked, ‘How do I get myself better?’ I realized just how much of a difference how you eat, sleep and exercise can make. I needed to learn how to share that with my patients because it’s pivotal. For me, it has made a huge difference in my personal satisfaction and joy in practicing medicine to be able to actually feel like I’m making a difference for people.”