Bridging the Gap: Why Spiritual Awareness Strengthens Nutrition Care & Lifestyle Medicine.

There’s ongoing confusion about how spiritual care fits into dietetics and lifestyle medicine. Faith-based practitioners often wrestle with integrating their beliefs into patient care, while those without a religious background may hesitate to consider spirituality at all. And, even for faith-based providers, if a client does not mention something religious, they often don’t attempt to address spiritual needs either. ?However, do all people have spiritual needs?

But here’s the reality: spirituality—what gives life meaning—already shapes patient decisions in ways we can’t ignore. Religion can be an important way for people to grow spiritually and engage in life most fully.

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Finding Common Ground in Patient-Centered Care Healthcare professionals agree that quality care should be meaningful and satisfying for both providers and patients. Yet, religious and non-religious practitioners may define “meaningful” differently. Research suggests that spirituality and religion, while related, are distinct, although one leads to the other.

Speaking to nurses, nursing researcher Kytoko described that “religion and spirituality “can overlap, relate to each other, or exist separately.[i]” Spirituality has been defined as a “dynamic principle or an aspect of the personal being or material nature[ii]” or “the unique array of ways that a person deals with the uncontrollable.”[iii] Beauty exists all around us, and everyone at one time or another experiences, the uncontrollable.

Religion, on the other hand, may be “the way spirituality can be lived, but not every spiritual person is religious,”[iv] at least not yet. Religion is also defined as “a set of beliefs, practices, and language that characterizes a community that is searching for transcendent meaning in a particular way, based upon belief in God.”[v] Religious community members understand life, truth, and religious practices in a particularly common way.

A spiritual understanding and experience of life often can be the entry point for many to awaken personally to life and relationships that draw them into deeper questioning and openness, often to a religious point of view later. Spirituality for many makes them more open to an awareness of beauty and love where God or a Higher Power can reach them.

Why This Matters for Dietitians & Lifestyle Medicine Practitioners: A patient’s sense of meaning, hope, and faith directly impacts their motivation, resilience, and health behaviors. Understanding these influences allows us to listen better, create space for reflection, and offer care that aligns with their deepest values.

Spirituality has been summarized according to Kaufmann (2025)[vi] as:

·????? The essence or life principle of the person

·????? A sacred journey

·????? The experience of the radical truth of things

·????? ?What gives meaning, purpose and a sense of connection with mystery, a Higher Power, God, or the Universe

·????? A belief that relates a person to the world

·????? A universal phenomenon that all of us possess a spiritual dimension that demonstrates the existence of love, faith, hope, trust, awe, and inspiration

How We Show Up Matters Integrating spirituality into nutrition care isn’t always about having religious content to what we share with patients—it’s about recognizing the role it already plays in patients’ lives. We foster a more authentic, patient-centered approach by listening well and creating space for their experiences where they voice deeper needs. Maybe listening to how the person relates to nature, to other people, is creative, or finds meaning and purpose is the open door for more effective patient centered, spiritually-enlightened nutrition counseling or lifestyle medical care. We respond to what the client shares.

How often do you see spirituality influencing patient care? What challenges or insights have you had? Drop your thoughts below! ??

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[i] Kytoko JJ, Knight SJ, “Body, mind, Spirit: Towards the integration of religiosity and spirituality in cancer quality of life research,” Psychooncology 8, 439-450 1999.

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[ii] Emblen, 1992, Religion and spirituality defined according to current use in nursing literature, Journal Professional Nursing 8, 41-47

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[iii] Hilsman GJ, Spiritual Care in common Terms (Jessica Kingsley Publishing, 2017) p.47.

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[iv] Emblen 1992

[v] Kytoko 1999

[vi] Kaufmann, Mary, The Renewed Practitioner: How Spiritual Care Transforms Nutrition, Dietetics & Lifestyle Medicine, RenewMed Media, Denver 2025