In the 15 months or so since I started blogging and talking about health, I have tried to find a way to describe the overall approach I think we should take to maximise health and happiness. The more I’ve read, and the more I’ve interacted with people, especially those with different ideas to my own, the clearer this approach has become in my mind.
Nowhere in the following text will you find me recommending that you go to the gym and destroy yourself for two hours a day.
For those of you that know me, I think you may find that fact a little surprising (hi mum). This article is designed purely to make sure that you are alive, kicking, and spending your children’s inheritance for as long as possible. For that reason I think it’s worth, right at the start, differentiating between exercise for health and exercise for performance. Obviously you can spend years training for performance whilst improving health and vice versa, and that is the balance that many people find, but it is not always the case.
Related to the post below, a second study was floating around the interweb last week, which is worth looking at. It caused a stir in a number of health and fitness circles as a “hallelujah” moment, and came tagged with headlines such as:
“Exercise ‘can be as good as pills’”
and
“Exercise As Effective As Drugs For Treating Heart Disease, Diabetes”
Last week, Horizon aired a documentary entitled “Should I Eat Meat? – The Big Health Dilemma”. In the programme, Dr. Michael Mosley (health journalist and broadcaster, and author of The Fast Diet), asks whether eating meat is bad for our health. And he’s not messing around – Dr. Mosley speaks to some of the top names in the field along the way.
Despite a slight anti-meat message, it was a surprisingly balanced documentary with a fairly sensible conclusion. However, some of the issues are poorly explained or represented; the studies were not evaluated properly; some important information is omitted; and, Dr Mosley’s “high meat diet” self-experiment was badly executed, and therefore entirely misleading.
Last week, two studies turned up in the news that I felt related well to one another.
The first study showed that just walking can reduce your risk of breast cancer. They took 73,615 women as part of the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II and followed them to see how many got cancer, and whether it was related to any of their lifestyle factors.
Their work aimed to build on the studies which suggest that being physically active will decrease your risk of breast cancer by around 25%. At the start of the study, women were asked how much of their time they spent doing various physical activities, such as walking. I did find it interesting that while they were asked about “aerobics” and “dancing”, there was no mention of any sort of strength training. However, the study started in 1992, back when the fitness world was in full lycra mode… The questionnaire also asked about the amount of leisure time spent sitting per week (ie watching TV).
Very recently I took a hiatus from working as a junior doctor in the UK to move into academia and work towards a PhD in Oslo, Norway. As I contemplated what the NHS (National Health Service) might look like when I return in four years time, I was struck by what you will almost certainly feel is a ridiculous premonition…
….The zombie apocalypse is coming. I’m sure of it.
