Medical students’ perceptions of lifestyle medicine in the UAE: a qualitative study

Lifestyle medicine is central to noncommunicable disease prevention and physician wellbeing, yet little is known about how early medical students in Middle Eastern settings interpret and apply these principles in relation to their self-care and anticipated professional roles. This study explored how first-year medical students in the United Arab Emirates engaged with the six pillars of lifestyle medicine through structured reflective writing. We conducted a qualitative document analysis of 150 reflective essays written by first-year medical students in a Professionalism and Communication course. Students responded to prompts linking the six lifestyle medicine pillars to self-care and academic success. Data were anonymized and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Following human-led coding, ChatGPT was used to generate supplementary thematic suggestions that were critically examined against the original data; final coding, interpretation, and theme development remained researcher-led. Across all six pillars, students described a process of “situated self-regulation in transition”: noticing maladaptive habits, experimenting with small changes, and retaining strategies they perceived as compatible with their self-care, academic demands, and anticipated professional roles. Narratives highlighted more intentional nutrition, movement, and restorative sleep; evolving stress-management strategies emphasising self-compassion; critical reappraisal of high-dose caffeine, sugar and other “risky” performance tools; and deliberate use of social connection, boundaries, and digital detox practices as buffers against distress and enablers of behaviour change. Embedding lifestyle medicine within a low-stakes, reflective first-year curriculum provided students with an evidence-informed framework for reflecting on self-care, self-regulation, and the relationship between personal health practices and their anticipated professional roles. The six pillars functioned less as discrete behaviours and more as interconnected routines assembled to manage stress and study demands in this sociocultural context. Longitudinal, multi-institutional, mixed-methods studies are needed to examine impacts on later mental health, burnout, and clinical practice.