Diet and
Lifestyle advice based on good evidence
Eat whole grain foods (bread,
or rice, or pasta) on four occasions a week.
This will reduce the chance of having almost
any cancer by 40%. Given that cancer gets
about 1 in 3 of us in a lifetime, that's
big advice.
Don't smoke. If you do
smoke, stop. Nicotine patches, gum or inhaler
won't help much, and acupuncture won't help
at all. Try to reduce your smoking, as there
is a profound dose-response (the more you
smoke, the more likely you are to have cancer,
or heart or respiratory disease). So cut
down to below five cigarettes a day and
leave long portions of the day without a
cigarette.
Eat at least five portions
of vegetables and fruit a day, and especially
tomatoes (including ketchup), red grapes
and the like, as well as salad all year.
This protects against a whole variety of
different nasty things: it reduces the risk
of stroke dramatically; it reduces the risk
of diabetes considerably; and it will reduce
the risk of heart disease and cancer.
Use Benecol or Flora Pro-Activ
instead of butter or margarine. (If you
do use margarine, try and use Soya margarine).
They really do reduce cholesterol, and reducing
cholesterol will reduce the risk of heart
attack and stroke even in those whose cholesterol
is not particularly high.
Drink alcohol regularly.
The type of alcohol probably doesn't matter
too much, but the equivalent of a couple
of glasses of wine a day or a couple of
beers is a good thing. The odd day without
alcohol won't hurt either. Think of it as
medicine.
Eat fish. Eating fish once
a week won't stop you having a heart attack
in itself, but it reduces the likelihood
of you dying from it by half.
Take a multivitamin tablet
every day, but be sure that it is one with
at least 200 micrograms of folate. The evidence
is that this can substantially reduce chances
of heart disease in some individuals, and
it has been shown to reduce colon cancer
by over 85%. It may also reduce the likelihood
of developing dementia. Folate is essential
in any woman contemplating pregnancy because
it will reduce the chance of some birth
defects.
If you are pregnant or
have high blood pressure, coffee is best
minimised. For the rest of us drinking four
cups of coffee a day is likely to reduce
our chances of getting colon cancer and
Parkinson's disease.
Get breathless more often.
You don't have to go to a gym or be an Olympic
marathon runner. Simply walking a mile a
day, or taking reasonable exercise three
times a week (enough to make you sweat or
glow) will substantially reduce the risk
of heart disease. If you walk, don't dawdle.
Make it a brisk pace. One of the benefits
of regular exercise is that it strengthens
bones and keeps them strong. Breaking a
hip when elderly is a very serious thing.
Check your height and weight
on a chart to see if you are overweight
for your height. Your body mass index is
the weight in kilograms divided by the height
in metres squared: for preference it should
be below 25. (Click
here for a body mass index chart)
If you are overweight,
lose it. This has many benefits. There is
no good evidence on simple ways to lose
weight that work. Crash diets don't work.
Take it one step at a time, do the things
that are possible now, and combine some
calorie limitation with increased exercise.
The good news is that in a few years time
we may have some appetite suppressants to
make it easier.
This advice is from an NHS website called Bandolier, which assesses treatments and so on based on actual evidence of benefit.
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