Condensed Guide to Healthy Living
There are two caveats here: First, you can't trust people over 65 since they often resist new things. Second, I have been retired now for 15 years at the time of this writing so my professional competency in my own fields of expertise can be suspect. Before retirement my areas of expertise were Physiological Control Mechanisms, the Physiology of Aging, Physiological Aspects of Drugs and Drug Abuse, and Preventive medicine. The only area I have kept up with since retirement would be Preventive Medicine for a selfish reason---I wish to stay healthy for as long as possible.
The goal here is to prioritize the information available so that we don't miss the forest for the sake of the trees and can focus on proven, scientifically established information. Anecdotal medicine is not science. Interestingly, our modern day obsession with anecdotal medicine of all varieties has been an over-all good thing for general population health. It also is one of the few new booming industries. Rarely are any of these practitioners peddling anything that will harm anyone's health. People who flock to alternative medicine practices tend to eat well, exercise in various ways, and involve themselves with all kinds of mental health workshops. So nothing here is written to stop anyone from pursuing alternative medicine. The people who need pay more attention to what is written here are those who just go along with little concern about their health status. if they get sick or are in pain they go to the doctor. Otherwise they go merrily along their way of inattention to their health.
What do Americans die from each year? In 2010 the stats are as follows:
Heart disease: 597, 689 (31%)
Cancer: 574.743 (31%)
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080 (7.5%)
Stroke (cerebral vascular diseases): 129,476 (7.0%)
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,476 (7.0%)
Alzheimer's disease: 83,494: (4.5%)
Diabetes: 69,071 (3.7%)
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476 (2.7%)
Influenza and pneumonia: 50,097 (2.7%)
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364 (1.1%)
Murder: 14,612 (.8%) The murder rate peaked in 1993 at 24,530 and has fallen ever since.
The murder rate is intriguing. Total firearm deaths in 2010 was 31,672. Two thirds of gun deaths in the U.S. are suicide. It all gets a little tricky so make your own conclusions. The URL is: http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/
Generalizations:
We are all going to die so nothing which follows is going to change that. Quality of living counts since it would be nice if our last decades were not hampered by the consequences on the quality of life by heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, and cancer. The days when you had your heart track, stroke, or cancer diagnosis and died in a timely fashion are kind of gone. You can linger on for decades now. The object should be to postpone these kind of events as long as possible so you can live on with a better quality of life.
We all know genetics often plays a huge role in health like it does in so many other areas. My parents were an excellent example of good genetics for health. Neither one ever exercised to any degree, ate whatever they wanted, as much as they wanted, whenever they wanted. One lived to be 89 and the other 98. When I objected once to how much of some unhealthy food my mother was eating she remarked, "If I knew I was going to live this long I would have listened to you long ago." Good point.
Those who refuse to plan for the future often pay a stiff price in terms of the kind of future with which they end up having. There are hundreds of things we can do with our life today which have the potential to give us a longer HEALTHY life. I think most people are willing to make some adjustments to their current lives in order to increase the likelihood of a healthier life down the road. The purpose here is not be be all inclusive about all the adjustments possible, but to prioritize the adjustments so we can implement the ones that are most likely to have the greatest impact on better health down the road.
So here we go:
1. Body Weight:
It has long been shown by endless studies that animals and humans tend to live the longest if they are somewhat underfed. I doubt many of us are interested in being underfed to live a few more years. Too many calories is probably the #1 killer of Americans. We don't see overweight listed on a death certificate simply because being overweight often leads to all sorts of cardiovascular, renal, liver, respiratory, diabetic, mental, and joint disorders along with other less common problems. It has always interested me that when stranded on the sea or elsewhere with no food, the first ones to perish from lack of food are those who are overweight. Our bodies seem to work most efficiently when we are not overweight.
The number of fat cells in our body do not change substantially at all during our lives. What can change is the amount of fat per cell. The body has a 'thermostat' which is set to maintain a certain amount of fat per cell. The best way to maintain weight is never to let your weight rise very much. Once the body fat thermostat is reset at a higher level the effort required to reset it downward can be substantial.
Thus, if you gain 3 lbs, lose 3 lbs right away to bring your weight back down. It takes a bit of time for the body fat thermostat to reset. Genetics plays a huge role here. Some people cannot gain weight no matter how hard they try. And some, if paid to become overweight, when the study is over they have no problem returning to their regular weight. Different people have different physiology when it comes to weight gain. It is rarely simply a matter of will power. It is, for most people, a matter of physiology, not will power, which determines the tendency to gain weight. Or, put it this way, for some people weight gain will never be a problem, for other people weight control will never take a humongous effort, and for other people it will, and for other people their physiology is such that weight gain will be inevitable in the absence of major medical intervention.
2. Blood Pressure: Once body weight is under control, blood pressure is a logical next variable to get under control. Basically, you cannot harm a normal heart with short term stress. If you could, track races would be more exciting. BUT, a small additional stress, placed on the heart for months, years, decades, can lead to an eventual heart condition. This additional stress can be structural (narrowed blood vessels) or emotional (nervous system hyperactivity). It is best not to live your life under constant emotional stress. Some can handle this (genetics) and others cannot to varying degrees. Diet plays a big role in bld pressure control via cholesterol, triglycerides, saturated fats, and salt intake (kidney stress). The goal is low total cholesterol levels, low LDL cholesterol, high HDL cholesterol, and low triglyceride levels. Most foods are labeled so one can control the intake of cholesterol, triglycerides, saturated fat, and salt. Statins are available now so there is no good reason why anyone should suffer high cholesterol levels. There are certain butters available (not cheap)---Benecol and Take Control---which can lower cholesterol on the average of 17%. They block the absorption of cholesterol from the intestine and need be taken with meals which are high in cholesterol.
3. We should be sure our diet contains a good amount of fruits, vegetables, fish, and fiber. Reasonable inclusion of some nuts, dark chocolate, and a glass of red wine each day have some positive proven benefits. Don't fall for every pitch of some magic food or beverage that is going to be a big health boost because it contains some necessary body element like Magnesium or potassium, zinc, etc. Less than 10% of Americans suffer from any kind of nutritional deficiency. Less than 1% have a folate deficiency, about 10% are deficient in vit B6, a few people suffer from iodine deficiency and iron deficiency is not rare. The one vitamin whose stated requirement level may well be set too low is Vitamin D. Again, the biggest problem for most people is not deficiency but a daily intake of too many calories.
4. Exercise is beneficial pretty much across the board, albeit again the impact on good health varies on a genetic basis. The key is to find an exercise you like and do it on a regular basis. Can exercise be overdone? Of course. In fact, almost without exception too much of anything can be harmful or kill you including oxygen, glucose, etc. Exercise usually is beneficial for muscle tone, the circulatory system, the respiratory system, our mental state, proper body weight, and a lot of other more minor impacts. As we age the best exercise is one that has some duration to it, not intense bouts of total fatigue, and certainly not one which puts a lot of pressure on joints like the knees, hips, shoulders, back, etc. There is little medical benefit to being a heavily muscled person when one is older. Joints need mild stress when older, not burdened with additional weight to carry around. For starters, never miss a chance to walk a bit further---don't park nearest to the entrance, go for walks, etc.
Digestive system control:
The digestive tract is essentially a tube which begins with the mouth and ends with the anus. For the most part, nothing affects your body physiology until it passes through the wall of the digestive tract and gets into the blood stream. For the digestive system to function well, motility and digestive secretions (enzymes) must work well. Motility problems are often related to improper Central Nervous System control. This means certain areas of the brain are not functioning in a way that properly controls digestive motility. The cause can be emotional, genetics, or glandular. Most people who have underlying emotional states which affect digestive motility are not about to seek out mental health professionals. If any of our other organs malfunction we quickly seek out medical help, but almost all of us are quite reluctant to admit any central nervous system problems as a basis for our health symptoms.
Allergies are a whole world unto themselves. Some foods we can't eat because they can't be digested or absorbed properly or they stimulate or inhibit motility. Too much stomach acid may be produced and a lot of people take medicine for that.
There are several common sense rules for eating. Don't eat red meat every day or in huge quantities. Avoid foods which clearly cause major alterations in digestive motility (diarrhea or constipation). Don't eat out too much---you basically lose control over the amount of saturated fats, fiber, triglycerides, cholesterol, and salt that you ingest. There is no huge reason that you can't sometimes eat food that is basically not healthy. Just be sure not to make it a daily habit.
Avoiding cancer is pretty much a crap shoot with some exceptions. Everyone knows if we smoke we are much more likely to die of lung cancer. But what about all those things that are potentially carcinogenic? Like it or not we need rely on the government to protect us from known carcinogenic substances. This is true simply because only the government is going to (or should) fund scientific studies to determine what is carcinogenic. In the absence of this we get all kinds of charlatans and self proclaimed 'experts' who publish all sorts of nonsense about medical matters. Many of them are would-be doctors who simply lack the academic abilities to gain admission to a medical school. Others are just well-meaning gullible do-gooders willing to believe anything they read. And as I said before, that's okay, they help get others concerned about health matters and that is half the battle. And in today's economic climate, alternative medicine ventures are a way to make a living.
Unfortunately, it is not all that rare for someone to continue with anecdotal medicine when modern scientific medicine could have treated their problem in time to correct the problem. It boils down to this: if we keep our weight down, keep our blood pressure down, exercise properly, eat a balanced diet keeping the intake of certain substances in food down, and find ways to keep our digestive system running smoothly, then we have gone a long way towards living a healthy life. Of course there are hundreds of less important factors we could add, but at some point the return on the investment becomes insignificance, and for most people, not worth the effort.
Rather than commit ourselves to just believing everything we read on the internet or in magazines or on television or from some anecdotal practitioner, there are short monthly letters published by some really top notch medical centers. The best ones are Mayo Clinic Health Letter, Harvard Health Letter, University of California at Berkeley Wellness Letter, Harvard Men's Health Watch, Harvard Women's Health Watch (I think this exists), John Hopkins Health After 50, and there are others.
I personally find the Mayo Clinic Health letter the best, along with Harvard Health Letter, the Wellness Letter and John Hopkins Health after 50. Mayo Clinic even attempts to make some analysis concerning alternative medicine. They do their best to evaluate the limited evidence which exists on these methods. We need remember that not all anecdotal medicine is wrong, there just is no scientifically proven tests on them. All kinds of groups claim a lot of things but it means little if the tests employed are not scientific. The group being tested has to be a correct sample, the methods correct, the analysis correct, etc.
The above monthly magazines cost about $24/year and are readable for the average person. Glancing through these monthly short letters will do as much to keep us on track with our own health as any other path we might take. The headlines for each article tell us if the subject might apply to our own situation.
Another very useful thing everyone can do to keep abreast of healthy living is to use Google for symptoms or known conditions we might have ourselves. Google, of course, will come up with hundreds, if not thousands of articles and who knows which of them are scientific or just someone trying to sell something or a service?
For me it is simple. Mayo Clinic is one of the really up-to-date medical centers which shares information with the public. Let's say you think you might have Lyme disease. You simply google it and you will never get very far down the google list before you will see an article on the subject from Mayo Clinic. That is an excellent place to start.
The point is this, and it is not a minor point. None of us need be without quality medical information about our own health matters. We should use this internet access. Just be selective as to which articles you select to read.
Should we ever rely on anecdotal medicine? Yes we should. There are many medical situations for which modern medicine has no proven solution. Especially when it comes to digestive system disorders, allergies, emotional disorders, and so on, where your symptoms may not be relieved by modern medical knowledge. It would be silly not to try some anecdotal approaches. Since rarely do any of these anecdotal treatments cause real harm, we have nothing to lose trying them if modern medicine fails. It is like playing the lottery, sure the odds are against us, but we just might hit the jackpot and our health problem solved. Of course sometimes a nebulous medical problem just goes away and we will never know for sure why. That's just the way it is and is often the origin of many anecdotal medicine treatments.
The future:
It surprises most all of us to learn that 85% of the cells that comprise our body are not human cells. These microbial creatures are so small however, that they comprise only about 3% of our body weight. We tend to think it a life long battle to keep microbes out of our body, but that is the wrong goal. The goal is to keep out just certain microbes and in many cases just a certain number of particular microbes.
What I am suggesting here is pure speculation, but it seems possible that many of the nebulous medical problems that plague us may really be an imbalance of this microbial flora which bathes our own cells. This really is a medical frontier in it's infancy, and a difficult one to scientifically test. Past history of scientific advances tells us that progress will be made here too, albeit how soon is hard to tell. There are some alternative medicine practitioners who mess with the microbial flora in our bodies but not having the scientific knowledge to do it carefully, and not having animal models in the testing stage, this is a dangerous game they are playing. Just taking certain antibiotics over a period of time can be risky since we may be ridding our bodies of good microbes along with the bad. Of course sometimes we have no choice, it is either run the risk or our condition can't be cured. But for those who study this sort of thing this is a whole new frontier.
Finally, each of us need come to some sort of resolution as to what kind of life we are willing to tolerate. This mostly applies to old age but not always. Living a long healthy life is clearly a universal goal for all of us, but there is such a thing as living too long also. We all have known those who have gone through a most difficult dying process. Modern medical advances are wonderful and all that, but these advances can also keep people alive way past what the person might be willing to tolerate.
What any of us might be willing to suffer in order to stay alive is going to differ considerably. But for sure, as time goes on, the control over our dying process is going to finally be determined by the person dying, not the government, and not someone else's religious beliefs. Fear of death is often enhanced by fear of the suffering that might be involved. Some people are kept alive for long periods of time under circumstances, which if done to a prisoner of war, would be considered torture. Add to this the fact one of the reasons medical insurance is rising so rapidly is that modern medicine can keep people alive for months and years, even decades, whereas in earlier times they would just have died quickly. Thus, individual control over one's dying process and cost are two major problems modern humanity faces.
Everything covered above is really just the basics. How much further anyone wants to take healthy living will vary. If eating something containing substance X will cause .1% of people to develop some particular kind of cancer, then people will differ as to whether they wish to run the risk of ingesting that substance. Of course we do this all the time. Here are some of the risks we already confronted: Note: the risk below that is most amazing is the flu stat. The percentage of people who still resist getting a flu vaccine is simply amazing. While the risk of dying from flu is not real high, this is deceptive. First of all the risk rises greatly with age (90% of deaths occur in people 65 or older) and secondly, the misery many suffer from a sever bout with the flu or the length of time it takes to totally recover should make any logical person take a flu shot absent MAJOR reactions to the shot. We all know people who can't return to work for months because of a bad bout with the flu. And yes, in this case, many scientific studies have been conducted relative to the safety of the flu shot.
A good source of info: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm
Take a look at the following chart, which we’ve put together from a variety of sources. It shows the total number of deaths annually due to various disease-related and accidental causes, as well as an average individual’s lifetime risk for a given health worry. On the scariest day of the year, maybe this will help put it all in perspective.
Risk
|
Annual Deaths
|
Lifetime risk
|
Heart disease
|
652,486
|
1 in 5
|
Cancer
|
553,888
|
1 in 7
|
Stroke
|
150,074
|
1 in 24
|
99,000
|
1 in 38
|
|
Flu
|
59,664
|
1 in 63
|
Car accidents
|
44,757
|
1 in 84
|
Suicide
|
31,484
|
1 in 119
|
Accidental poisoning
|
19,456
|
1 in 193
|
MRSA (resistant bacteria)
|
19,000
|
1 in 197
|
Falls
|
17,229
|
1 in 218
|
Drowning
|
3,306
|
1 in 1,134
|
Bike accident
|
762
|
1 in 4,919
|
Air/space accident
|
742
|
1 in 5,051
|
Excessive cold
|
620
|
1 in 6,045
|
Sun/heat exposure
|
273
|
1 in 13,729
|
62
|
1 in 60,453
|
|
Lightning
|
47
|
1 in 79, 746
|
Train crash
|
24
|
1 in 156,169
|
Fireworks
|
11
|
1 in 340,733
|
In the last analysis the best we can do is get informed information, get a sense of the odds, set priorities, and then with patience and steadfastness of purpose, stick to our own devised program for healthy living.
