EDmedblog. Health News and Information

In the game of life, more than half of all men are benchwarmers, says the American Heart Association (AHA). That means that more than 50 percent of men don’t get moving for a minimum of a half-hour a day, three days a week.

That’s a sin, Dr. Goldberg says. “Studies show that exercise may be more effective at heading off an early death than quitting smoking, losing weight, or stopping drinking,” he says. Here are some tips for getting in gear.

Prevent the big “C.” After studying 47,723 male doctors for six years, Harvard researchers found that men who got the most exercise had only half the risk for colon cancer as those who got the least. So, do your colon a favor by exercising for 30 minutes at least three times a week, recommends Dr. Goldberg.

Aim for gains. It doesn’t matter what your fitness level is when you start. It matters that you improve, says Dr. Goldberg. Researchers at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research studied the effects of increasing fitness levels on 10,000 men over a five-year period. Men who improved their fitness level enough to run a minute longer than their original treadmill time also had a lower death rate than those who stayed unfit. In fact, every one-minute increase in maximum treadmill time equaled an impressive 8 percent drop in risk of death.

“You should constantly challenge yourself to improve your fitness level,” says Dr. Goldberg. If your exercise of choice is walking or running, try to increase your speed or your distance every few months, he suggests.

Decline the decline. As you age, it’s likely that your physical performance will decrease over time, and the more that performance decreases, the more susceptible you can be to disease. You can slow that decline simply by exercising more, says Dr. Bortz. After about age 30, people who exercise start to see only a 0.5 percent decline in performance each year, he says. “Unfit folks of the same age see a 2 percent decline. That means the man who exercises will have surrendered only about 15 percent of his vital capacity by the time he’s 65; the non-exerciser, 70 percent.”

The AHA estimates that more than 30 percent of men ages 45 to 54, more than 40 percent of men ages 55 to 64, and more than 55 percent of men ages 65 to 74 have high blood pressure. Making matters worse, about 50 percent of men in this country have cholesterol levels higher than 200 milligrams per deciliter. And that’s just the numbers that have been reported. Many men are never diagnosed.

“There’s just no excuse,” says Ichiro Kawachi, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of health and social behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health. “These are conditions that are easily detected and treated.” Here are some things you can do yourself to minimize the damage.

Burn your arteries clean. Playing half-court hoops for 30 minutes a day can raise your levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol by as much as 6 milligrams per deciliter. A group of Spanish researchers has found that, on average, for every 100 calories you burn a day, your levels of artery-clearing HDL cholesterol rise by about 2 milligrams per deciliter.

Go low. Researchers from several U.S. cities put 459 folks on a low-fat diet chock-full of fruits, vegetables, grains, and low-fat dairy products. After eight weeks, those with high blood pressure saw their systolic pressure (the top number) drop an average of 11.4 points and their diastolic pressure (the bottom number) dip an average of 5.5 points. This may sound like a lot to swallow, but the famous Food Guide Pyramid recommends eating 2 to 3 servings of dairy products, 3 to 5 servings of vegetables, 2 to 4 servings of fruits, and 6 to 11 servings of grains every day.

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Blood Sugar and insulin

Testing your blood sugar level is vital, as diabetes is a major risk factor for heart disease and ischemic stroke. Even if you are not classified as a diabetic, a higher than normal blood sugar level means you have poor glucose tolerance, or your body does not regulate your blood sugar well. This is a forerunner to diabetes.

Having elevated blood insulin levels may indicate that you have insulin resistance; also called Syndrome X or metabolic syndrome. This is much more likely if you are overweight, especially in your abdominal area. Having your insulin levels checked is a good preview, to see if you are likely to have blood sugar problems in the future.

C-Reactive Protein

This is the most important test you need, as it is the biggest risk factor for coronary heart disease. Even if your cholesterol and triglyceride levels are low or normal, and you don’t have any of the traditional risk factors for heart disease, an elevated CRP level is cause for concern. Your level of CRP should be as low as possible. This is a test that your doctor will often miss. Desirable level: 0.0-5.0 mg/L

Homocysteine

This is another often overlooked test, but is essential to evaluate your true risk of heart disease. High levels of homocysteine in your bloodstream have an abrasive effect on your artery walls, making it more likely that fatty particles and other substances will cling to them. This initiates the development of atherosclerosis. You will have higher blood levels of homocysteine if you don’t consume enough vitamins B6, Â12 and folic acid. They are found in most fruits and vegetables as well as animal foods.

This test must be done in a fasting state. Desirable range: 6.0-14.0 umol/L.

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Though family history is a strong indicator of the diseases that may be in your future, it is far from the last word, Dr. Pyeritz says. “Two people can, have the same high-risk gene mutation, and one will get the disease and the other will not. It’s hard to know one way or another when we’re talking about one gene among 99,999 other genes that also have some influence,” he says.

But the greatest influence is exerted by the lifestyle choices-some small, some large-that you make every day: whether you smoke, how much you drink, what you eat, whether you exercise.

The following are some tips that experts offer for taking your health into your own hands.

Know your tree. “You should retrieve all the information you can about your family history and what diseases run in your gene line,” Dr. Mulvihill says. “When it comes to fighting disease, knowledge is power. When we know what we’re up against, we can keep on the watch for it and do all we can to prevent it. A good example of how helpful this can be is the skin cancer called melanoma.

“If you’ve inherited a mole pattern on your skin that contributes to melanoma, you’re not going to change that,” Dr. Mulvihill continues. “But before we started identifying people with this risk pattern, the death rate was much higher. Now that we know what to look for, some of these folks may still get the disease. But we catch it in stage one, so people don’t die from it.”

Keep a running tab. Knowing you’re at risk does you little good if you don’t bother watching for signs of disease. That’s why Dr. Ken Goldberg of the Male Health Institute recommends keeping tabs on yourself, including performing a monthly testicular self-exam, a skin exam for changes in moles or unusual markings, a quick check of your glands for swelling, a heart-rate check, and a scan for lumps around your chest. If you have high blood pressure or have had a high blood pres sure reading, you should also have your blood pressure checked monthly. And if you have a family history of or are at risk for diabetes, you should have your blood glucose measured monthly as well, says Dr. Goldberg. If your blood pressure and blood glucose are normal, you need have them checked only once a year, he adds.

Recognize your inherited habits. Bad habits often can run as strongly down the family lines as bad genes, says Dr. James Enstrom of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Take an inventory of your habits, Dr. Enstrom says. Do you smoke? Do you exercise? Do you sleep enough? How much do you drink? Do you eat too much? While these things are important for all of us, they’re particularly important for folks who have a history in their family of poor health, he says.

Don’t pull that trigger. Once you’ve tracked down your disease profile, learning the common environmental factors that trigger that disease and avoiding them is your best line of defense, Dr. Mulvihill says.

People who are at high genetic risk for colon cancer may be able to lower their risk for polyps by following a low-fat, high-fiber diet because they’re staying away from known triggers, Dr. Mulvihill says.

Likewise, diabetes is often a case of genetic tendency meeting an environmental trigger, says Dr. Mulvihill. Genes that predispose many people to adult-onset diabetes were probably survival genes for our ancestors to help them store energy during prolonged periods of near-starvation. Today, when these genes are combined with the typical sedentary Western lifestyle and high caloric intake, we end up with obesity, insulin resistance, and adult-onset diabetes. The answer again is to control what you can, Dr. Mulvihill says. And that’s how you live. It’s well-known that avoiding high-fat, high-sugar fare is a good way not only to keep off excess pounds but also to avoid adult-onset diabetes.

Finally, when it comes to beating your odds for heart attack,

I there’s still nothing better than giving your lifestyle a good spring cleaning, says Dr. Ichiro Kawachi of the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Things like not smoking cigarettes, eating less fat and junk food, eating more fruits and vegetables, exercising, and relieving stress are a whole lot more important than worrying about your genes,” Dr. Kawachi says.

Genes or no genes, the incidences of heart disease and stroke have decreased markedly during the past 30 years because people have been taking their health into their own hands, says Dr. Pyeritz.

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Social improvements

As we saw earlier, the sober truth is that the poor are much less healthy than the more advantaged socioeconomic groups and do not benefit nearly so much from medical advances. A book like this is no place to go into this in any great detail but suffice it to say that the resources that would be needed to make an impact on the health of poor families are so great that they could not come solely out of the ‘health’ kitty.

Modification of lifestyle

If no one smoked, death from all cancers would fall by a third; almost all long-term lung diseases would disappear; several diseases of the arteries would be eliminated; about one quarter of heart attacks would be prevented and there would be a small reduction in perinatal mortality. Some of these benefits can be obtained by switching to low-tar cigarettes. Preventive measures include better health education, further restrictions on tobacco advertising, the restriction of smoking in public places, and increased taxation of tobacco. All of these have been proved to work both alone and in combination.

Any diet that helps people slim, increases dietary-fibre intake and reduces calorie and fat intake will reduce the risk of cancer of the endometrium and gall bladder, may reduce the risk of breast and colon cancer, and may reduce the risk of cancer generally in a number of ways. There is little doubt from several studies that being overweight makes it more likely that you will get a cancer. The avoidance of obesity also reduces the risk of high blood pressure and diabetes, and can reduce the risk of having a heart attack. It reduces the likelihood of suffering from a hiatus hernia, other hernias, degenerative arthritis of the knees and many foot problems. Most people say that when they lose weight the quality of their lives improves dramatically because they feel better, look better and enjoy life more.

Alcohol produces effects not only on the drinker but on those whom he or she influences while drunk. Alcohol consumption is rising and although a little alcohol has been claimed to protect against heart disease most people who drink find it difficult to draw the line and end up having too much.

Too little physical activity results in obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and too much insulin. The benefits of regular, controlled physical activity are now beyond doubt. Perhaps the most valuable is the effect it has on weight loss. People who take regular exercise find it easier to lose weight and to keep it off. This occurs because the body’s metabolic rate continues to remain high even after the person stops taking the exercise. There are also suggestions that the sense of well-being that exercise produces means that people who would otherwise have eaten because they felt ‘low’ now have no urge to do so.

3 Protection against injury

Death rates on the roads are now below the levels of the 1930s despite the vast increase in traffic, but car accidents are still far too common. Worldwide the traffic death toll is calculated to be 250,000. Given that there are about forty times as many injuries as actual deaths it is easy t see how big a problem road-traffic accidents are.

But injuries don’t just take place on the roads. Accidental injury, which includes homicide and suicide, is the fourth commonest cause of death in the US and is the commonest cause of death under the age of 35 in the UK. In the US more people are killed as a result of accidental injury under the age of 40 than by all other causes put together. About one in three of the population of the US each year has a non-fatal injury bad enough to cause them to lose a day or more of normal activities and a fifth of these injuries put the person in bed for at least a day. In the developing countries also, injury is a very common cause of death.

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A New Year’s Eve party to welcome 1994 served as the wake-up call that Meredith Willson needed to get serious about slimming down.

“At the time, I weighed more than 300 pounds,” recalls the 43-”§ | year-old Athens, Tennessee, resident. “Someone that I hadn’t seen

in years came up to me and said, ‘What happened to the Meredith I used to know?’ It was a shock—and shock therapy is a good way to get inspired.”

The next day, Meredith set her sights on a rather lofty resolution: to lose 120 pounds in 12 months. It was ambitious, but Meredith was convinced that eliminating red meat and processed food from her diet would do the trick. “Cheese and butter were the toughest,” she says. “Instead of giving them up completely, I switched to fat-free cheese and butter substitutes.” She also began eating more fresh foods—fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Meredith read cookbooks that taught her how to make the most of fresh ingredients in her cooking. She also planted a garden chock full of organic produce, including tomatoes, squash, broccoli, asparagus, and eggplant. “The closer you get to the ground, the better off you’ll be, nutrient-wise,” she says. Then, using her homegrown produce plus healthful staples from the supermarket, she spent time each weekend preparing food from scratch. She even made her own pasta, tomato sauce, and baked sweet-potato chips.

Even Meredith couldn’t believe how well her switch from processed foods to fresh worked. “I lost 12 pounds every month— ka-bam, ka-bam, ka-bam,” she says. “I never even hit a plateau.”

In just over a year, Meredith managed to take off 150 pounds. And she has maintained that weight loss ever since.

WINNING ACTIONS

Take a fresh approach to eating. Fresh foods are naturally high in fiber and low in fat—the perfect weight-loss com-

bination. Plus, they have more intense flavors, so you won’t feel compelled to overeat. Among the best fresh foods for weight loss are potatoes, oranges, apples, and grapes. Researchers have identified these as high-satisfaction foods, which means that they keep you full longer.

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