Dr Michael Mosley has revealed the five best ways to tackle a serious health problem which can pave the way to an array of problems – inflammation. The doctor warned that inflammation can trigger many serious chronic conditions including heart disease, strokes, diabetes, dementia and pain in the body.
The health guru explained that inflammation occurs when the body tries to defend itself in an immune response. However, there’s also a chronic inflammation that comes with ageing and persists “for decades”.
Speaking on his BBC Radio 4 podcast, the doctor said: “And that’s where it’s harmful so that, for example, inflammation can damage the blood vessels, increasing your chance of cardiovascular disease.
“It reduces the ability of insulin to reduce blood glucose, so you get insulin resistance and then eventually diabetes.”
The doctor also invited Janet Lord, a professor of immune cell biology from the Institute for Inflammation and Ageing at Birmingham University, to his Just One Thing broadcast. Fortunately, the guest expert recommended five simple hacks that could tackle the culprit.
1. Don’t sit for long periods of time
If you have a desk job, this might be easier said than done, but the professor warned that “sitting is the new smoking”.
She said: “You can be physically active, do your 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week. But if you spend, for example, each day, eight to 10 hours sitting, you pretty well wipe a lot of that good work out.
“And so my top tip is don’t sit if you can help it for more than an hour at a time.”
The professor suggested putting either a timer on their watch to remind them to stand up or do activities like watching tele standing up.
2. Reduce your calorie intake
Professor Lord explained that if you eat around 20 to 30 percent less calories than recommended, you will live longer. She said: “So this work has been done in fruit flies, in worms, in mice and even in macaques. So they live longer. But interestingly and I think importantly, they have less age-related disease, and the same is true of the Okinawans [people with one of the highest life expectancies in the world].”
Therefore, the professor recommended reducing your calorie intake either through your diet or through a period of fasting.
3. Exercise
Contrary to popular opinion that you should slow down in old age, Professor Lord explained it’s crucial to exercise throughout life.
The expert even put this theory to a test by looking at the inflammation levels of 200 older adults, who wore a monitor to measure their steps.
The professor added: “The ones that were doing 10,000 or more [steps] had no age-related inflammation. So it looks like 10,000 steps is what you should aim for.”
4. Reduce stress
While your body can cope with stress better when you’re younger, as people age, they don’t deal with stress that well and it suppresses their immune system, Professor Lord warned.
She added: “We’ve done studies in physical stresses like a hip fracture. And in both of those situations the bereaved older adults who then perhaps might pass away a year or 18 months after they’ve lost their partner, and we say they die of a broken heart. Well, I think they die of a broken immune system because they tend to die of infections.”
With that in mind, the expert advised trying to reduce stress in your life as much as possible.
5. Follow the Mediterranean diet
Famed for its beneficial health properties, the Mediterranean diet is classically packed with fruit, vegetables, oily fish and olive oil.
The professor recommended taking this one step further and following “Mediterranean Plus”, which adds berries and nuts to the popular dietary regimen. She added: “There have been large, really good studies, almost 1000 people in them where they had half of them doing the Mediterranean, half of them doing this Mediterranean, plus berries and nuts.
“And the ones who were doing the Mediterranean Plus, their cognitive decline was slowed by 7.5 years.”
[ad_2]Post source: Express
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