Looking To The Healthy Future

An new test using retinal scans has shown great promise in spotting warning signs that a patient may be developing Alzheimers Disease. 

People with thinning retinas were found to often have dangerous levels of the two rogue enzymes associated with the plaques amyloid beta and tau, that are part of the frightening disease (which remains incurable).

But fear not, adopting 4 simple good habits also helps in the fight against this disease. Adoption of each one cuts the chances of developing the illness by 10 per cent.

•     STOP Smoking.
•     Keep A Healthy Weight.
•     Exercise Regularly.
•     Have A Good Diet.

The additional markers are having low levels of bad cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure. These also give a boost of up to 10 per cent as well. The researchers at the University of Bordeaux suggested that a good diet should include at least three portions of fruit and vegetables a day, fish twice a week.

Body Not So Healthy? Vasily Alekseyev
Olympic Heavy Weight Champion.

While the Exercise Clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has found that muscle power rather than muscle strength is the key to a long life.  I had to look at the difference, which is apparently:

• Muscular strength is the ability to exert maximal force in one single contraction, such as lifting a heavy weight that you could lift only once before needing a short break e.g Olympic Weight Lifting.
• Muscular power refers to a great force production over a short period of time, such as in fast leg kicks and explosive jumping or pumping iron, in a set without break e.g. 50 times.

So pumping some iron, or running up the stairs are enough to give you up to 13 times the survival factor, than those with weaker power. In fact the study found that even a slightly better than average power ratio was enough to reap the benefits.

An example of bad diet, is the British sausage, where a report recently issued, suggested that for every 50 grams sausage (1 sausage link) you eat, your chance of developing heart disease rises by 18 per cent. So if one sausage weighs a little more than 50g (60g), then if you consumed a mere six sausages you'd presumably be making it a certainty that you would develop heart disease .... 6 x 18 =108%

 

Now obviously, as most of you will have eaten considerably more than 6 sausages so far and not immediately collapsed clutching your chests, this report is yet another example of poor uses of statistics ... we are plagued with these meaningless reports, which lead to news headlines like this 'too much bacon increases cancer risk by 50 per cent'. 

 

Of course the reports should read that 'over lifetime, if someone eats 6 or more sausages a day (or week) etc, or 2 rashers of bacon a day, then one has an increased risk of a heart attack or cancer being the agent of your eventual demise'. 

 

But even then, the increased risk has to be quantified e.g. 18 per cent above what? So for example, if the risk is of a particular type of heart disease or cancer, then what were the odds of getting those illnesses if you didn't eat sausages or bacon. For example, if the native risk of developing a particular type of heart disease or cancer was five per cent, then after eating a sausage a week it rose by an 18 per cent increase, it simply takes your risk to 5.9 per cent in your lifetime ... suddenly the whole story falls into perspective.

 

News media should be banned from producing headlines with statistics that don't give the correct information to show the true figures ..... so don't abandon everything every time you see a rogue news headline .... look at what they haven't explained..