Dr Catherine Conlon: 6 steps to a long and happy life
High blood pressure can lead to damaged arteries, heart, brain and kidneys. It causes heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, kidney disease, and dementia.
You wake up tired after eight hours sleep. You snap your children’s heads off for no reason. Your focus disappears after lunch. It’s easy to blame your workload. Or your finances.
Have you ever thought to blame your food?
Foods that drain your energy include many that are ‘low fat’ but high in sugar, ready meals loaded with saturated fat, ultra processed snacks and packaged pastries, cheap chocolate, processed meat, white bread and fried takeaways.
Think about how you felt after you had that extra-large pepperoni pizza with garlic bread and Coke Zero last weekend.
The opposite happens when we fuel our body with real food. Berries, extra virgin olive oil, eggs, sardines, fresh salmon, leafy greens, wholegrains, rainbow-coloured vegetables, dark chocolate, fermented foods and raw nuts.
But feeling below par all the time is not destiny. Neither are heart attacks, strokes or many cancers.
Former director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Tom Frieden, in , outlines how we cannot prevent every tragedy, but we can delay or avoid most of them.
“Up to four out of five early deaths from heart disease and stroke, and two in five cancers, stem from risks we already know how to mitigate,” he says,
Think about that. The majority of cases of heart disease and stroke and 40% of cancer is preventable if we are prepared to follow the evidence.
Now leading the global health organisation Resolve To Save Lives, Dr Frieden outlines the six most important steps to a long and healthy life – what he calls ‘No Bullshit Medicine’.
In the book, he outlines clearly the six steps that work.
High blood pressure damages arteries, heart, brain and kidneys. It causes heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, kidney disease, and dementia.
Frieden outlines how most people with high blood pressure feel fine – until they don’t.
“If it’s high (more than 120/80), work with your doctor to bring it down. Cut sodium and increase potassium.” If that doesn’t work, take medication and use reminders to make sure you take them every day.
High cholesterol clogs arteries and lays the foundations for heart attacks and strokes. Because it can’t be felt, it needs to be measured.
Steps to lower it include less saturated fat in the diet, more fibre, and regular exercise. For many people, especially with heart disease or diabetes, statins make a difference, cutting risk of heart attack by up to a third or more and saving lives.
If movement was a pill, it would be considered a miracle drug, reducing the risk of cancer, heart disease, depression, and dementia.
New research has found that people with sore joints who exercised for two hours a week have less pain, visit their GP less and take less sick leave.
Nuffield Health and Frontier Economics partnered with Manchester Metropolitan University to analyse a structured exercise programme that was offered by a private gym group to 40,000 joint pain sufferers across the UK. After 12 weeks, participants reported marked improvements in pain reduction (35%); fewer visits to their GP (29%); reductions in sick days from work by almost half; and needed less help from their families.
If movement were a pill, it would be the most powerful drug on the planet, yet it remains under-prescribed.
“A brisk walk for 30 minutes, four days a week, and ideally outdoors, works wonders. If you’re older, add balance exercises to prevent falls. The key is consistency, not intensity,” Frieden writes.
“If you smoke, quit. Nothing you do matters more,” is Frieden’s blunt advice. He outlines how tobacco kills half its users, causing heart disease, stroke, cancer, and lung disease.
The good news? “When you quit, your body begins to heal immediately. Within weeks, your risk of heart attack drops. Within years, your risk of cancer falls dramatically.” It is never too late to quit. Other key toxins are alcohol (any amount) and soot (PM 2.5) that can take years off a healthy life.
The next one is key.
Food choices affect blood pressure, inflammation, the microbiome and more. Foods to enjoy are those that are rich in potassium and full of fibre, including all the real foods I outlined earlier.
Frieden advises switching to potassium-enriched low sodium salt in your cooking (unless you have kidney disease, in which case talk with your doctor first). Avoid added sugars: “Your body knows the difference between real food and processed products.”
Last, but not least, prioritise sleep. During sleep, essential body repairs take place, memory is consolidated, and immunity is sharpened. Too little or poor-quality sleep increases risk of diabetes, heart disease, depression, and dementia. Most of us need seven to nine hours consistently every night.
Sleep quality is improved with a cool, dark bedroom, no food for two hours beforehand, and no screens in the hour before sleep.
“These six steps aren’t complicated,” Frieden writes. “They don’t require expensive equipment or trendy supplements. They work because they address the leading causes of death and disability.”
These steps are not foolproof. They don’t guarantee years of health and happiness. But they will stack the odds in your favour – increasing the chance of more healthy years with the people you love, and more energy to do the things that give you joy.
- Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork.
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