Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
September 2010
Americans don't believe what they read, or so one would suppose. Eighty percent of us don't exercise regularly although countless magazine and newspaper articles by respected health scientists have stated repeatedly that just a few hours a week of moderate physical activity lowers blood pressure, reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes by more than half and can actually reverse coronary artery damage. Even the severely obese joke about the need to lose weight — eventually. Friends tease me about my Mediterranean-type diet and quip: "C'mon, you have to die of something!"
Their comment is correct but it misses the point. Paying attention to proper nutrition and exercise has a much more important payoff than simply living longer. The real benefit is a long healthspan, not just a longer lifespan. The remarkable advances of medicine in only the past couple of generations should have lengthened healthspan and lifespan simultaneously but instead there is a widening gap between the two. Life expectancy has reached nearly 80 years in the United States but we spend about 10 percent of those years suffering from the lifestyle-limiting effects of stroke, failing hearts, diabetes, dementia and arthritis. A report from the Centers for Disease Control notes that of persons over the age of 65, 80 percent have one of these chronic diseases and more than 50 percent have two.
Beyond the obvious debilitating consequences of stroke, heart disease and diabetes there lurk silent effects of their early stages. Even mild elevations of blood pressure, beginning years before a catastrophic brain hemorrhage or other form of stroke occurs, slow down the thinking process and damage memory.
The same is true of mild elevations of blood sugar, the so-called prediabetic levels, which can persist for years before the full-blown disease appears. Almost all the complications of diabetes such as kidney failure, blindness and amputations result from blood vessel damage but this begins well before the actual diagnosis. Frequent mild elevations of blood sugar impair brain function but it's easy to ascribe this to aging.
It's never too late to lengthen your healthspan. The key to preventing those brain-clouding elevations of blood sugar is a diet high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains and low in refined flour and sugar. Regular exercise keeps high blood pressure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes at bay. It ain't rocket science!
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.