Summary
Lifestyle medicine gives fire fighters practical ways to take greater control of their long-term health. Dr. Marcie Hamrick explains how small, sustainable changes in nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, substance use, and social connection can help reduce the risk of chronic disease. Rather than trying to overhaul everything at once, the goal is to identify what matters to you, start with manageable changes, and use the support and tools available to help those changes stick.
Key Takeaways
Small changes count. A daily walk, better food choices, or improved sleep habits can make a meaningful difference over time. Start with what matters to you. Healthy changes are more likely to stick when they’re connected to personal goals—like staying strong on the job or enjoying a long, healthy retirement. Lifestyle is another tool. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress management can work alongside medication—not necessarily replace it. Don’t go it alone. Crew, family, healthcare providers, coaches, and other resources can provide accountability and support. You have more control than you may think. Fire fighters face unique health risks, but everyday choices can help influence long-term health outcomes.
Transcription
[00:00:02] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Yeah. I think what is great about lifestyle medicine is that it meets people where they are.
It holds curiosity about what is important to people, what motivates them, what their long-term goals are, what health means to them, and starts from that place.
[00:00:25] Jen Pennington (Host):
Hey, Seattle fire fighters. Welcome back to Listen Up L27, the podcast that focuses on the physical and mental health of fire fighters.
We talk a lot about the risks of the job, but not always about what we can control.
Today we’re joined by Dr. Marcie Hamrick from Station 2 Clinic to break down lifestyle medicine, what it actually means, and why it matters for fire fighters. Dr. Hamrick, you’ve recently become board certified in lifestyle medicine. For those hearing that for the first time, what is lifestyle medicine? And may I also congratulate you on getting that certification. I don’t know how you do that in all your free time.
[00:01:07] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Right. So, yeah, I thought I was done taking exams for the most part, but I chose this, which was just doing continuing medical education and then taking a big standardized exam.
So thank you.
It is something that I am proud of. You know, lifestyle medicine—it’s always the part of medicine that I’ve been most excited about.
I did continuing medical education in lifestyle medicine a couple years ago, and the classes were things like cooking and fitness training and sleep and nutrition and meditation and all the yummy things that I love about medicine. And I was like, these are my people. So I started studying for the exam and just passed it in December.
So to answer your question about what lifestyle medicine is, it’s a recognized medical specialty that’s focused on preventing, treating, and sometimes even reversing chronic disease by addressing the root causes, not just managing the symptoms with medication like traditional medicine often does.
So it’s about using everyday behaviors rather than medications for preventing and treating chronic diseases like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
It’s sort of based on six pillars. There are six pillars that lifestyle medicine focuses on.
The first is nutrition.
So thinking about fueling your body with real, whole foods so you’re not constantly fighting inflammation and energy crashes.
Movement. So training not just for performance in the short term, but more for durability and longevity.
Sleep is the third one. Even small improvements in recovery can have a really big impact on heart health, cancer risk, and mental and brain health.
The fourth is stress management.
So learning how to come down after calls for fire fighters instead of staying in that fight-or-flight nervous system stimulation, which we know is not healthy in the long term.
Tools like breathing, meditation, and decompression routines.
The fifth is about avoiding risky substances like tobacco, excess alcohol, or relying on sleep medications.
Those substances can sometimes be helpful in the short term but then have negative effects on long-term health.
And then finally, the sixth pillar is around connection and community.
We know that strong relationships—including crew cohesion at work and family support—are actually protective against depression, suicide, burnout, and even heart disease and cancer.
[00:04:10] Jen Pennington (Host):
And I think, you know, as I hear you say this, and I can hear your passion for it, one of the things that you must have been thinking about as you’re going through this is how you’re going to bring this to the fire fighter culture. So how are you going to do that, Marcie?
[00:04:29] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Well, I do think that it addresses problems that are common to fire fighters. We know that fire fighters have unique risks in terms of their higher risk of heart disease, their higher risk of cancer, and the sleep disruption and stress that’s just inherent to their job.
And then there’s their risk of mental health challenges.
And I love that lifestyle medicine says about those risks, “Hey, you have more control over that than you think.”
So I think because fire fighters are concerned about those unique risks, lifestyle medicine really has something important to offer.
[00:05:12] Jen Pennington (Host):
As I hear you speak about it, how do you start applying some of these principles? If you’re talking to fire fighters and you’re trying to say, you know, reduce some of their risks or inflammation in the body or things like that, how do you get them started?
[00:05:26] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Yeah, I think what is great about lifestyle medicine is that it meets people where they are.
It holds curiosity about what is important to people, what motivates them, what their long-term goals are, what health means to them, and starts from that place.
And instead of the healthcare provider saying, “Hey, you need to change your diet or exercise more or sleep more,” or whatever, those priorities actually come from the patient or the fire fighter saying, “Hey, this is what feels important to me right now and what I may feel like I’m ready to take on at this time.”
Which is maybe different than what the healthcare provider is prioritizing.
The other thing in lifestyle medicine is prioritizing the idea of small changes over time.
So it’s not about overhauling your life all of a sudden. It’s about choosing one small change.
Maybe that’s taking a 20-minute walk each day or adding one serving of vegetables per day, but doing that consistently over time. Because a lot of us—fire fighters and human beings—decide to make a change and do it 1,000% or 150%, but that doesn’t last very long.
And that’s not the kind of change that we know actually impacts our long-term health. It’s the slow and steady, smaller changes that impact whether you’re going to have a heart attack at 60 or 85.
[00:07:22] Jen Pennington (Host):
And do you think that there are one or two things that, you know, may be small but could actually move the needle a little bit as you begin this journey?
[00:07:32] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Absolutely. There are a lot of things that can move the needle. And that’s kind of the exciting thing about it. I think people dismiss it. I mean, even traditional medicine dismisses those small changes.
You know, when we’re taught to treat high blood pressure, the first line is, “Oh yeah, make sure they’re eating healthy and exercising. But here’s the medications that we use.”
Whereas lifestyle medicine says, “Hey, we can actually impact this in a significant way through adding vegetables with a high potassium content.” We know that higher potassium lowers blood pressure. Or taking a 20- to 30-minute brisk walk each day helps lower blood pressure as well.
We know that those things really have an impact. And studies have shown that people can effectively treat these problems with these small changes over time.
[00:08:27] Jen Pennington (Host):
You know, this kind of reminds me that if you’re trying to change something that might be part of the fire service culture, maybe there’s a competition to do some of these things.
[00:08:41] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
I do think that often motivates. Competitiveness, I think, is a strong motivator among fire fighters. But I also think an important part of that is the sense of community.
And studies have clearly shown that when people are making changes with accountability and/or support, those changes are so much more successful than if they go at it alone.
And it is something that I see in fire fighters. They will, you know, do lots of things as a crew, in community, but when it comes to their health, they’re sort of hush-hush about it and they isolate themselves because they’re like, “I can do this.”
“I’m going to change my life and get rid of my blood pressure problem by making changes.” But they don’t ask anyone for help.
And again, we know that getting help is a key part of successfully making changes. So I love that competitive nature is sort of what attracts people to that, but really what they’re getting is something that’s so important to making change successfully.
[00:09:54] Jen Pennington (Host):
Part of this is looking at the culture in the fire service too. And it’s like being able to make it feel not woo-woo, right?
Maybe I’m not saying it is, but I’m saying that even the term “lifestyle medicine” might actually have a feeling of that. And so to say, no, this is just how you need to live.
[00:10:25] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
I think of them as tools. I mean, I think, you know, eating a certain way or exercising or sleeping or managing stress—all of these are just tools in our tool bag.
And medications, which are more true of traditional medicine, those are tools too. But let’s use all of the tools that are available to us.
[00:10:50] Jen Pennington (Host):
What’s your takeaway from this? What do you want people to ask you about the next time they see you? It’s like, you know, “I heard you talk a little bit about this. What do you think?”
[00:11:01] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
For me, I think it’s having curiosity about the possibility of change.
I think a lot of people, because they have tried to change so many times and have felt that they have failed, have in some ways given up.
But I think connecting the things that are important to you—like a healthy retirement, traveling, seeing your grandkids grow up—and knowing that there’s a connection between those important things in your life and the decisions that you make day to day, and how you address your blood pressure, your cholesterol, or whatever health issues might arise, or even preventing those problems.
These tools can be accused of being woo-woo, but woo-woo or not, we know that they are effective. And I sometimes feel like a broken record talking to people about it.
But it’s because I know that fire fighters don’t love taking medications. They like doing things on their own. They’re super autonomous and self-efficacious, like, “I can effing do this,” and I want to give them the tools to make that happen. And I want to offer that support.
A lot of people, again, feel like, “I don’t need that help.” But I think there’s help in lots of different formats. It could be crew, it could be family, it could be online tools, it could be virtual apps that provide physical therapists or coaches or nutritionists or whatever.
Or there’s us at Station 2 Clinic. We love having the time, at the time of your fire fighter evaluations, to be able to spend that time getting to know you and where you’re at and what’s important, and what change may feel approachable at any time, and help provide some accountability if that’s what you would want.
[00:13:14] Jen Pennington (Host):
I do like the idea very, very much that if you’re not one to want to take medication, then you have something else that you can do that’s really helpful for you, even if you still have to be on medication for something.
So I really like that idea.
[00:13:33] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Yeah. Lifestyle medicine is actually not anti-medication. It’s just acknowledging that lifestyle changes can sometimes be as effective, if not more so, than medication for some of the common problems that we see that can shorten lifespan.
[00:13:53] Jen Pennington (Host):
I want to thank you for being here today. Is there anything else that you’d like to add that I haven’t covered?
[00:13:59] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
No, I don’t think so.
[00:14:04] Jen Pennington (Host):
Well, thank you, Marcie. If you haven’t gone to get your AFFME, go get your AFFME, and we’ll see you down at Station 2. And we’ll have some resources on the website with more about lifestyle medicine. So thanks for being here.
[00:14:18] Dr. Marcie Hamrick:
Thank you. Thanks, Jen.
[00:14:20] Jen Pennington (Host):
Thanks for joining us. Listen Up L27 is a Seattle Fire Fighters HealthCare Trust production. Our music is “Haggadate Line” by Blue Dot Sessions. This podcast is produced by The Rhizome Collaborative.
I’m your host, Jen Pennington, and until next time, thank you. Stay safe and stay healthy.
