What Healthy People Do

We vastly underestimate the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. People who follow the relatively simple rules of good health (no smoking, 30 minutes of daily activity, a Mediterraneann diet, no obesity, and perhaps a little wine) prevent disease, live 7 to 14 years longer than average, and, importantly, both reduce and delay end-of-life disability.

Here are some facts from forbes.com about the benefits of healthy life:

• "Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England followed 20,000 middle-aged men and women in England for 11 years and found that nonsmokers with the healthiest eating and exercise habits at the outset had a 14-year-life-expectancy edge over the people with the worst habits.
  
  
• A 2001 Loma Linda University finding that Seventh-Day Adventists who kept good habits lived to an average age of 88, versus 78 for those who behaved less well. ... Seventh-Day Adventists [have] a life expectancy four to seven years longer than that of average Americans, probably because their faith preaches a vegetarian diet and exercise. ...
  
  
• Researchers at the Pacific Health Research Institute in Hawaii who followed 5,820 Japanese American men for 40 years found those who avoided risk factors such as obesity, heavy drinking, smoking and high blood pressure in middle age had a 69% chance of living to be 85, versus just 22% for men with six or more risk factors."

Remember, the older you get, the healthier you have been.

- Dr. Bob
 
Stay well.

The American diabetes epidemic continues to grow. More people  are at risk, and perhaps more risk than they think.

So what is your risk of developing diabetes and what happens to your risk if you lose 20 or 30 pounds?

Now you can calculate your risk of developing diabetes in the next 10 years at qdscore.org. The results are based on a study of 2,500,000 Brits followed for 8 years (a very reliable 16,000,000 person years of follow-up). Don't you love the clarity and simplicity of their graphic?

The study uses BMI so you can go to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute's Web site to find your BMI. And then you can redo the calculation process assuming that you lose 20 or 30 pounds.

I find this an extremely valuable educational tool with my patients.

Show a 55-year old man with a BMI of 35 that he has a 20 percent chance of diabetes in 10 years and then show him that by losing 30 pounds he can lower his risk to 10 percent and by losing another 20 pounds he lowers his risk to 7 percent. Very powerful stuff.

The modern diabetes epidemic is the failure of prevention. Knowledge and tools like qdscore.org is the first step toward personal understanding of our risks. And that first step is necessary to start the process of change.

Stay well. Dr. Bob

Sure we are living longer — but should that be our primary objective? I think not. Our goal should be live in better health and with more meaning while we are alive. How do we do that?

"Better health" is quite simple and builds on the advice that your mother told you when you were a child.

She told you, "Eat your fruits and vegetables." To that, we should all add "all five of them and some whole grains and nuts every day and some fish a couple of times a week; cook with olive oil, and enjoy some red wine with dinner (but not breakfast)." Every day, your mother sent you outside to play, which is not a bad way to think about exercise. And she took you to get your "shots," which is a great example of preventive medical care, a large bucket that includes cancer screening, treatment of cholesterols and blood pressure. And she told you to get enough sleep and enjoy life. In reality, when all is said and done, she was right and there is not a whole lot more that you need do to stay healthy.

Meaning. We spent the middle 30 years of our life working for success; now is the time to work for meaning, to give back to the world. As boomers we have always changed our world — usually, but not always — for the better. We certainly face a world of problems, locally and globally. What a wonderful opportunity to make a difference.

Enough preaching about my philosophy, but I felt it important to put all of us on the same page.

Live well while you are alive. Dr. Bob

This blog post was originally publisehd at my former blog, "Healthy for Life."

Here is a fabulous study based on a huge amount of data with a disturbing result given today’s obesity epidemic: being obese in late adolescence increases mortality in adulthood as much as smoking.

In this study, the researchers followed 45,920 Swedish military recruits, average age 18.7 years for 38 years. Over 1,700,000 person years, 2,987 men died. After 38 years of study, the data showed that the mortality rates in

• normal weight (BMI 18.5 to 25) was 1.7 per 1,000 per year
• overweight (BMI 25 to 30) was 1.33 per 1,000 per year
• obese (BMI > 30) was 2.14 per 1000 per year

This study started in 1950; three decades before the obesity epidemic began. This message is sobering given the huge increase in adolescent obesity and consistent with the projections of Olshansky that the obesity epidemic might, for the first time in a century, decrease the next generation's life expectancy.

Obesity in America is a serious epidemic that began in the early 1980s. As this study highlights, the serious effects of this epidemic will be with us for many, many years to come.