Private clinics that aim to help us before chronic diseases set in are emerging – for those who can afford them.
Working as a GP can sometimes feel like fighting a losing battle, says Christchurch doctor Olivia Currie. Seeing younger patients who are prediabetic or have high blood pressure, and knowing their health is likely to worsen, making them more reliant on medication, can leave GPs wondering what else they could possibly do.
“In the past decade, I’ve had type 2 diabetic patients in their mid-to-late teens and seen strokes and heart attacks in 20-year-olds,” says Currie.
Wanting to help flatten the curve of chronic disease in New Zealand, she shifted her focus and is now a lifestyle medicine doctor working with a team of health professionals specialising in diet, mental health, exercise and medication assessment at Christchurch’s Real Healthy Me clinic.
Lifestyle medicine is a relatively new field that works to treat the whole person by changing behaviours to prevent chronic diseases or even reverse them. At Real Healthy Me, clients of all ages get an evidence-based personalised plan to help tackle any health concerns. Some might need to add more nutritious foods to their daily diet, sleep better or move more.
Everyone starts with a 60- 90-minute initial consultation, which costs $305. Lower-priced follow-up appointments are with a doctor or health coach.
“I see people who have tried everything and are sick of being sick,” says Currie. “Because of the complexity of their health issues, it does take time initially and they need a lot of motivation to stay on track, but when they put in the effort, they get results.”
More health practitioners are turning to lifestyle medicine as it gains traction in New Zealand. In 2021, former emergency medicine doctor Ula Heywood set up Auckland preventive health clinic Autonomy.
“My vision was this amazing new way of doing healthcare where you catch people before they get sick and teach them how to be healthy and really thrive,” she explains. “It’s a transformative health experience for the patients.”
Autonomy is staffed with a mix of medical professionals and health coaches. Clients start with extensive testing to establish their current baseline health. This includes blood tests, assessment of grip strength, stability, strength and cognitive function, a full body composition scan and an analysis of each person’s disease risk and health habits. A basic consultation costs $500 and a 90-day health transformation programme is $4250.
Clients at Autonomy aren’t only the “optimisers” – healthy individuals who want to be even better – but people who are struggling with poor health and damaging habits.
“The sad thing is they’re getting younger and younger,” says Heywood. “The commonest things people come here with are weight problems, really poor energy, getting sick all the time, unable to sleep, stressed, anxious, depressed. They’re often really disenchanted with the way the medical system is set up. If you don’t fit neatly into a box of diagnosis and a course of treatment, it can be really hard. We have tissues in every room because people weep so often.”
A personalised plan is designed and clients work with a health coach to make and maintain lifestyle changes. “Some people will think they’re quite healthy but when you look deeper, they’re already insulin-resistant, they’ve already got high blood pressure and cholesterol and a lot of lifestyle habits that are normalised in our society, like scrolling on their phone in bed, staying up late, being very stressed, drinking every night, eating processed foods.”
Heywood says she would never want to work any other way now but concedes this is healthcare only for those privileged enough to afford it.
“We’re not comfortable serving only the wealthy because we’ve come from a system where everyone needs this. But you have to start at the top, with the influencers. I’ve treated CEOs of companies who see the value in it so they put their executives through, then that filters down to the managers and suddenly we’re doing group coaching sessions for the team.”
In future, the hope is that by building AI and digital platforms, Autonomy will be able to extend its reach at a much lower cost. “You can’t build this within the current healthcare system,” says Heywood. “You have to go outside of it.”
