Study: Lack of sleep affects the heart 0:43
(CNN Spanish) --
In this first episode of our new podcast "In consultation with Dr. Huerta", we will help you meet that New Year's goal that many set: lead a healthier life.
Dr. Huerta focuses on six aspects that are important not only to lose weight, if that is part of your goal, but also to ensure a fuller and healthier life.
The office is open, welcome!
You can listen to this episode on Spotify or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hello, welcome to this new episode of "In Consultation with Dr. Elmer Huerta", your favorite health podcast on CNN en Español. Dr. Huerta greets you, I hope you are well.
Before moving on to today's episode, I want to remind you that in this podcast you will regularly have information to start and maintain a healthy life, learning about the latest trends in the field of physical and mental health, so that you can make the best decisions. to live a fuller and healthier life, and always with information based on science and evidence.
Today we are going to talk about a question that many people ask themselves at the beginning of a new year: how is my health doing?
Are there some things I need to worry about?
What should I do to have a healthier life in this new year?
What lifestyle changes should I make that aren't so difficult and radical that I give up in the first week or month?
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A healthier new year
Well, let's get to work, let's see what simple things we can start doing immediately so that when we reach the end of this new year, these new customs have been definitively incorporated into our daily lifestyle and we can feel good in the future.
I anticipate that good health will depend on paying attention to six important elements:
What do you eat and how much do you eat?
how physically active you are,
What quality of sleep do you have each night,
What substances -alcohol, tobacco or other substances- you consume,
If you already have a silent disease that has not been discovered because you have not had an annual review
And finally, what is the state of your mental health.
Today we will briefly develop each of these points, making the caveat that, due to the length of this podcast and the complexity of these issues, we do not claim to be exhaustive in their development.
Our goal is that, by the end of today's episode, you will be able to reflect on each of those six points, seek additional information on those topics and, above all, begin to make the changes necessary to start and maintain a style of healthy life and avoid at all costs two unpleasant situations: disability and premature death.
And that's because we must remember that, depending on the country you live in, the life expectancy of a person is around 78 years for men and just over 80 years for women.
This means that half of the men pass the age of 78 and half of the women pass the age of 80, so that the other half of each group die before that age, suffering premature death, that is, they die before their time.
I ask you then: in which group would you like to be?
In the group of people who suffer disabilities or die young, or in the group of people who have a health that allows them to live as old, as young as possible?
Knowing that there are no guarantees of anything in life, I can assure you that if you pay attention to the six aspects of a healthy lifestyle that we are going to develop today, and make the necessary changes to adopt them, you will have a much greater chance of having a longer life. healthy.
Now yes, let's see the six points for good health.
What kind of food are you consuming and what is the amount of that food?
Knowing that a healthy diet is one that consists of consuming fresh dishes, prepared every day, that contain an abundant amount of fruits and vegetables daily and an adequate balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, the first big question you should ask yourself is how are you eating? ?
Do you leave home early without eating breakfast or do you eat anything quickly before going out?
Or do you eat something you buy at a fast food restaurant?
Where you eat lunch?
Do you dedicate a special time to lunch or do you sacrifice that time for work or another activity?
Do you have dinner every night and what do you consume?
Do you know how to balance your food?
It is recommended that people dedicate time and planning to the type and amount of food they are going to consume.
Each meal time - breakfast, lunch and dinner - must have an adequate balance of carbohydrates or carbohydrates, proteins, fats and fruits and vegetables, which can be obtained from local products, depending on the country in which you live.
Examples of healthy carbohydrates are:
the oats,
the corn,
the wheat,
whole bread
and cornmeal tortillas or arepas.
Examples of healthy proteins are those obtained from vegetables such as:
the quinoa,
the amaranth
and soy,
Or animals like:
eggs,
milk,
cheese,
yogurt,
fish
and other types of meat.
Different types of kidney beans, lentils, and chickpeas are a good source of good quality carbohydrates and also contain protein.
For their part, some healthy fats include olive oil, canola oil and those found in oily fish such as salmon.
But, here a very important point in relation to healthy eating.
Just as it is essential to pay attention to the composition and balance of the foods you eat on a daily basis, it is extraordinarily important to pay attention to the amount of food you eat.
In other words, not because the food you eat is balanced and is prepared daily at home, you can consume very abundant dishes.
In other words, in addition to the quality of the food, you should also pay attention to the amount of food you eat, and one custom we could adopt is the so-called
hara hachi bu
of the Okinawan Japanese, who only eat until they are full in a 80%
Interestingly, the Okinawan population has one of the lowest rates of heart disease, cancer, and stroke, giving them quite a long life expectancy.
How are you doing with the exercise?
The second point to have a good health this new year is the one that refers to physical activity.
Are you one of the people who do not do any type of programmed exercises?
Are you one of those completely sedentary people who limit yourself to the movements that your daily routines demand?
Do you use the elevator even to go up to the second, third or fourth floor?
Are you always looking to park your car as close as you can to work or the place you are going to?
Are you the type of person who has a treadmill that you use to hang your laundry, or the type of person who has a gym membership but never uses?
Regarding physical activity, let's remember that the human body is designed to be active, but modern life, with sedentary jobs and many comforts, has made us become sedentary beings, a condition to which unfortunately many people have become accustomed and resigned, meaning that, according to the World Health Organization, more than 80% of adolescents and 27% of adults do not comply with the recommended levels of physical activity.
The good news is that to reap the benefits of physical activity, you don't need to become an athlete or a marathon runner.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 minutes of daily walks or other physical activity Monday through Friday is sufficient to achieve benefits.
You should not forget that, in addition to aerobic exercises (walking, swimming, soccer, etc.), it is very important to also do anaerobic exercises such as weights and muscle exercises that help prevent muscle atrophy that occurs with age.
The fundamental consequence of a healthy diet and daily physical activity will be that you achieve a healthy weight, avoiding being overweight or fat and obesity, conditions closely related to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other health problems.
It is very sad to see that, due to a poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle, the rates of overweight and obesity have become a global epidemic.
In this regard, the WHO estimates that the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased in all age groups, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status in the world.
For example, says the WHO, that from 1999 to 2018, the prevalence of obesity in the United States increased from 30.5% to 42.4%, being 40% in adults 20 to 39 years old, 45% in adults 40 to 59 years and 43% in people older than 60 years.
Can you fall asleep?
Now let's see the third element in a healthy lifestyle: respecting the hours of sleep.
Again it is important to make a personal evaluation of how you sleep.
Are you one of the people who consider that sleep is something you have to do and that it is a kind of obligation to do it, or are you one of the people who prepares their hours of sleep knowing how important it is?
Are you one of those people who stay up late at night watching TV, reading on your cell phone, tablet or computer and wake up the next day more tired than you went to bed?
Are you one of the people who steal hours of sleep from your nights thinking that you will recover them over the weekend?
It is important to understand that the time when sleep was considered to be a state of unconsciousness intended only for the rest of the body is long gone.
It is now known that very important functions of the body, including memory and the integrity of the immune system, depend on good sleep.
In this regard, according to the United States CDC, people who learn to respect their sleep hours:
get sick less often
maintain a better healthy weight,
reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease,
have less stress levels and a better mood,
think more clearly and do better in school and at work
they get along better with people and generally make better decisions.
Getting a good night's sleep also prevents drowsy drivers from causing thousands of car accidents each year.
Some basic tips for healthy sleep are:
Determine how many hours of sleep you need each night and stick to it at all costs,
Program the quality of your sleep
Create a good sleeping environment.
Make sure your room is dark, and if there are street lights near the window, put up light-blocking curtains or wear an eye mask.
Keep your bedroom quiet, and consider keeping TVs, computers, and smartphones out of your bedroom.
Establish a bedtime routine by going to bed at the same time every night, avoiding eating, watching TV, or playing video games at bedtime.
What you eat determines how healthy you are
The fourth tip has to do with the substances you consume and can be harmful to your health, including alcohol and tobacco.
Alcohol is one of those substances that, in small amounts, one drink a day for women and two for men, may have some health benefit, but in larger amounts, it can cause multiple health problems.
From problems like breast, mouth and esophageal cancer, to cirrhosis and liver cancer, alcohol abuse is linked to multiple physical and mental health problems.
In addition, alcohol abuse is related to multiple negative events in society, such as domestic violence, assaults, suicides, homicides, and work and traffic accidents.
Think about what your alcohol consumption is and propose not to exceed one or two drinks per meeting.
For its part, smoking is directly related to the development of heart disease and various types of cancer.
In this regard, people who smoke cigarettes are more likely to die from heart disease, such as heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure, than from cancer.
On the other hand, cancers related to cigarettes are, in addition to lung cancer -which is the best known- cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, breast, kidney, bladder and neck of the uterus, among others.
If you need help quitting, talk to your doctor.
There are various treatments that can help you get rid of nicotine addiction.
One medical review per year
The fifth piece of advice is to discover diseases in time, having the good habit of having an annual check-up with the doctor, without having any symptoms yet.
In this regard, it is important to know that three of the main chronic diseases -cancer, heart disease and diabetes- do not give symptoms when they are starting, that is, they are silent and treacherous.
According to the CDC, chronic diseases cause 70% of deaths in the United States.
That's why it's very important to see your doctor once a year for a general checkup, which includes checking your weight, blood pressure, and having a cancer screening test according to age and sex.
Diseases such as blood pressure, prediabetes, diabetes, breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, and skin cancer can be found before they cause symptoms.
Early detection of chronic diseases allows cure or better control of the disease.
Mental health, as important as physical
Annual reviews can also touch on important prevention issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and mental health, which brings us precisely to the sixth and final topic of today's episode: our mental health.
Mental health is unfairly considered the ugly duckling of health and well-being, since it is not paid much attention and its conditions are even considered a shameful topic.
Nothing could be further from the truth, a person who does not have optimal mental health is a person who will not be able to achieve the fullness of his life.
Anxiety, depression, stress, obsessive compulsive disorders, phobias are conditions that affect our performance, our personal relationships and make us people who do not enjoy life.
In this regard, it is important that we are attentive to the variations in our state of mind and, if we spend more than two weeks with deep sadness, nervousness or feeling that we are not the same, we should not feel ashamed to seek professional help.
That's especially true for men, many of whom think depression or anxiety are signs of weakness and can be overcome with willpower without professional help.
In the same way that a body health problem requires a specialist doctor in some organ, the mental health doctor is the psychiatrist and there is no need to be afraid or ashamed to consult him.
Just like - as we said before - cancer, heart disease or diabetes can be controlled or cured by detecting them early, our mental health problems can also be very well controlled when discovered and treated early.
For that, it is very important to consult a mental health professional in time.
In summary then, in this new year, we must pay attention to the quality and quantity of our diet, our level of physical activity, the quality of our sleep, substance abuse and our mental health, remembering that because there are silent diseases, we may at this time have an undiagnosed disease and should therefore schedule an annual review with the doctor.
Well, that's all for today, happy new year and I'll see you in the next episode, bye.
Do you have questions for Dr. Huerta?
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes.
You can find me at @DrHuerta.
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Thanks for your attention.
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