Avoidance of Toxic Exposures - How Lifestyle Psychiatry Interventions Promote Positive Neuroplastic Change-View Presentation Slides

View Presentation Slides

Pdf Summary

The 2025 presentation by Steve Sugden, MD MPH MSS, from the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, explores how lifestyle psychiatry can foster positive neuroplastic changes, with emphasis on its role in addiction treatment. The presentation aligns with the American Psychiatric Association's efforts to disseminate educational content around mental health, strictly adhering to ACCME guidelines on disclosures and fair use of copyrighted material.<br /><br />The focus is on comprehending the neurobiological complexities that underpin substance use disorders (SUD) and unhealthy behaviors. It highlights the integration of addiction medicine and lifestyle psychiatry, underscoring that the combination enhances abstinence sustainability. The presentation also delves into the brain disease model of addiction and outlines the impact of dopamine on reward and dependency mechanisms within the brain.<br /><br />Central to this approach are lifestyle interventions, including regular physical activity, healthy eating, restorative sleep, stress management, improved connectedness, and avoidance of toxic exposures. These interventions aim to mitigate neuroinflammation, enhance neurotrophic factor release, promote synaptic plasticity, and encourage neurogenesis. Concrete benefits like improved mood, lifestyle-induced neuroplasticity, and overall contentment are discussed alongside empirical evidence of these interventions improving abstinence rates, easing withdrawal symptoms, and ameliorating anxiety and depression.<br /><br />The presentation details the learning theory model of addiction, describing the phases of addiction development from sampling to compulsive use, and introduces potential strategies for managing these phases via lifestyle adjustments. The ultimate goal is to address the public health crisis of addiction, as evidenced by alarming statistics on substance use and overdose deaths, by employing a holistic and integrative approach that incorporates both medical and lifestyle interventions to foster sustained recovery and mental well-being.

Keywords

lifestyle psychiatry

neuroplastic changes

addiction treatment

substance use disorders

brain disease model

neurobiological complexities

lifestyle interventions

neurogenesis

public health crisis

integrative approach