Does a Bear Poop in the Woods?
Does a Bear Poop in the Woods? Of course Bears poop in the woods; it’s natural and it’s simple. So, are there simple there some natural and simple lifestyles to improve health and live longer? Or is that too simple to ask? We look for the best and simplest ways to cook, to save the trees, to reduce water, and certainly how to stay healthy. You didn’t think Harvard would be left out did you? Not to fear…..researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health used the data from the well-known Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) to reveal “The 5 Simple Lifestyle Steps to a Longer Life”.* This comes out to 120,000 participants with 34 years of data for women and 28 years of data for men, it’s huge. (Please note: I have been a participant in the Health Professions F/U Study for the past 28 years) The researchers revealed the following Lifestyle Steps to a Longer Life: 1. Healthy Diet with fruits, veggies, grains and legumes (Basically a Whole Food Plant Based Diet), 2. Exercise —-30 minutes a day , 3. Healthy Body Weight (normal BMI), 4. No Smoking (Never is better), 5. Moderate Alcohol Intake. It appears that moving to healthy lifestyles makes a huge difference, increasing life expectancy while improving your health. Eating healthy and exercise….wow, what a novel idea!!! Actually the information has been around for years but there are so many other opportunities in today’s society that block us from facing the reality.
Does a healthy lifestyle make a difference? The supporting research data is overwhelming…for example a 2012 mega-analysis of 15 international studies that included over 500,000 participants found that over half of premature deaths were due to unhealthy lifestyle factors such as poor diet, inactivity, obesity, excessive alcohol intake, and smoking. Does a bear poop in the woods? This is where we all should say, “Well, duh!” In fact, any movement toward any of these 5 simple steps, all of which is also ‘natural’, has proven that the healthier habits one has, the longer their lifespan!
So why do we, here in the United States, spend more money on medications and treatments than 31 other countries and we still have one of the lowest life expediencies of all developed nations. Our life expectancy is 79; there are 31 countries that have longer life expediencies and all spend less money!!! What’s wrong with this picture? A lot. We spend more money on healthcare and have the poorest outcome of the top 31 countries in the world. Really? Yes, really.
Maybe those of us in healthcare have been looking at it all wrong, we continue to put out fires instead of preventing them in the first place. We are puppets of the public domain and if we think that Big Beef, Poultry, Pork, or Darling Dairy are going to change from being hell-bent on making money at the cost of human life to be leading the charge for Climate Change……, well, we better slap ourselves silly and re-think this. As Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Many experts have suggested that changing public health policies through legislation is the way to make large scale changes; for example; tobacco and trans-fat laws. It took Dr. Dean Ornish 16 years to get Medicare to approve his program to prevent heart disease. Viewing our present government leadership does not give us much hope; each of us need to seek these 5 simple lifestyle changes now. We cannot wait for the laws to change, there’s not enough time. Eat Health and Stay Happy, Vegan Doc 5/18/19
*NOTE: The article was published in “Circulation” Journal, 2018, titled, “Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expediencies in the US Population”
