Lifestyle change and cardiovascular disease. Principles and practice.

Changes in patients' lifestyles can be approached in a practical fashion by working through the relevant 'stages of change'. Helping patients to change their lifestyles does not have to be a very time-consuming process for the clinician, but it does require planning, and attention to those factors that are important at each stage of the process. Although this paper has a focus on lifestyle change for the reduction of CVD risk factors, the same principles can apply to lifestyle change and disease prevention for other disorders.