Fountain of Youth - Exercise

Fascinating article from Men's Health, not talking about the fountain of youth per se, but about the feeling among researchers that people were born to run. Titled, "Yes, You Were Born to Run" it speaks about the evolutionary adaptations that people have that provides proof we were meant to be running - a strong nuchal ligament to keep our head straight and focused when hunting prey (evidently pigs can't do that), a large number of long leg tendons which provide bounce so we can run (chimpanzees have short and few leg tendons which are fine for climbing trees), and the ability to perspire when running continuously (which provides the advantage of hunting speedy prey like a kudu which although faster than a human is unable to sweat and therefore needs to stop and therefore can be run down). More from the article:

• According to a controversial body of research, is that our passion for running is natural. A small group of biologists, doctors, and anthropologists say our bodies look and function as they do because our survival once depended on endurance running, whether for long-distance hunts like the one Liebenberg witnessed or for racing the competition across the African savanna to scavenge a kill.
• In his book Why We Run, the biologist and runner Bernd Heinrich, Ph.D., argues that something exists in all of us that still needs to be out chasing antelopes, or at least dreaming of antelopes. Without that instinct, "we become what a lapdog is to a wolf. And we are inherently more like wolves than lapdogs, because the communal chase is part of our biological makeup."
• Anyone who has put in some miles knows how good running can feel, once it stops feeling bad. But beyond the way it feels, medical evidence also suggests that humans are built for endurance exercise. In response to a good training program, for instance, the left ventricular chamber of the heart can increase as much as 20 percent in volume. The chamber walls thicken, too. So the heart fills up faster and pumps more blood to the rest of the body. The coronary arteries also change, dilating more rapidly to meet the body's demand for oxygen. Endurance exercise won't make anyone live forever. But it seems to make the cardiovascular system function the way the owner's manual intended.
• In the skeletal muscles, increased blood pressure causes new capillaries to emerge. The mitochondrial engines of the cells ramp up to consume energy more efficiently, helped along by an increase in the production of various antioxidants. These changes in the heart and extremities together typically boost the maximum amount of oxygen the body can consume each minute by 10 to 20 percent. For men who used to become short of breath slouching to the fridge for a beer, VO2 max can increase even more. Lapdogs start to function like wolves.
• More surprisingly, the brain responds as if it was built for endurance exercise, too. researchers have discovered lately that exercise affects the function of 33 different genes in the hippocampus, which plays a key role in mood, memory, and learning. By stimulating growth factors, exercise also produces new brain cells, new and enhanced connections between existing cells, new blood vessels for energy supply, and increased production of enzymes for putting glucose and other nutrients to work.
• People who exercise regularly perform better on some cognitive tests: Run more, think better, hunt smarter, eat better. Exercise also seems to buffer the brain against neurological damage, reducing the effects of stress and delaying the onset of Alzheimer's and other diseases. Most significant, exercise helps prevent and alleviate depression, which afflicts one in six Americans and costs $83 billion a year.

Not advocating everyone start running, you might need to check with your doctor first before doing any vigorous exercise, but what is clear is that people were built to move. In our American 21st century society where everything is built on convenience and relatively little work -- cars allow us to travel distances without walking / running, grocery stores and restaurants provide us food without us actually laboring in the fields to grow, harvest, and then prepare food, entertainment is becoming more sedentary with internet, video games, television, movies, instead of us actually participating in activity, and finally that for many of us work isn't as laborious as the past -- perhaps it isn't surprising as a nation we are getting fatter and less healthy than a generation before even though we understand more about health and illness.

It appears we were born to run or be active. Our society makes our bodies more like lapdogs rather than the wolves that our anecestors evolved to be to survive. The fountain of youth is very much staying active whether dancing, swimming, walking, running, biking, or whatever. It affects our bodies and our minds. Unlike any machine that exists, our body is dynamic and adapts to the challenges ahead, regardless of your age or whatever happened (or didn't happen) in the past. So even lapdogs have the potential to slowly become wolves again with increased activity. So start getting active!

Book Review - Medical Myths That Can Kill You: And the 101 Truths That Will Save, Extend, and Improve Your Life

As a practicing family doctor and author of Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely: Making Intelligent Choices in America's Healthcare System, I am a strong believer in empowering and educating patients so that they can make the right decisions to get the most out of life. As the only doctor in my family I don't think it is fair that only the people I know or care for are privy to the truth about staying healthy, so I looked forward to reading Medical Myths That Can Kill You: And the 101 Truths That Will Save, Extend, and Improve Your Life, by Dr. Nancy Snyderman, chief medical correspondent for NBC News, which has a similar same perspective.

Overall, the book was a mixed blessing. It has interesting factoids, ideas we should all take to heart, but at times is misleading. As a consumer and a patient, I thought the truths and news you can use pieces were interesting. As a primary care doctor and patient advocate, however, I felt that many parts of the book were misleading. Perhaps one of the faults is it tries to be too ambitious and attempts to cover too many topics, which often are not in depth enough to be of much value.

Dr. Snyderman points out correctly multiple times that the path to good health is through prevention by adopting healthy habits, staying physically active, and maintaining a sensible weight. The structure of the book reflects this preventive focus and chooses to debunk many myths with these clever chapter titles - Annual Checkups Are Obsolete, Vaccinations Are Just For Kids, Doctor's Don't Play Favorites, Only Old People Get Heart Disease and Stroke, We're Losing the War on Cancer, Natural Means "Safe", and You Can Just Snap Out of Mental Illness. She tackles the truth about herbal and dietary supplements, the unproven value of full body scans, as well as the importance of vaccinations and preventive screening tests for cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

Throughout the book there are plenty of truth tidbits including, "you cannot catch sexually transmitted diseases from toilet seats; you do not need to drink eight glasses of water every day", among many others and news you can use segments that will make some readers hopefully more aware of what is myth and what is fact. These small sidebars were very interesting. I think patients and consumers will find these factoids topics of conversation.

As a practicing doctor, however, there are many areas which are misleading and others that provide information too superficial to be of value. Dr. Snyderman is correct in one of her chapters that heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in this country. However, she uses two individuals, a twenty-six year old former beauty pageant winner, who suffered from a stroke, and a forty year old woman, who died suddenly from swimming, as reasons why we should be concerned. The problem is that these type of occurrences are extremely unlikely and rare for these age groups and gender. The typical cause of these problems, atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries didn't cause these cases. The former was most likely due to a heart wall septal defect or a blood clotting disorder, known as a hypercoagulable state. The latter was probably due to sudden cardiac death from a fatal arrhythmia, like ventricular fibrillation.

In the area of stroke, she talks about atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia, as the leading cause of stroke. It is a cause, but this heart condition is typically found in patients over age 60 and far more common in people over 80 years old. She doesn't say that and one would naturally and wrongly assume based on the prior patient stories that it can happen at younger ages, which again is extremely unlikely.

Other areas that are covered superficially include when Dr. Snyderman discusses cancer and mental illness. She pushes for prevention as well as clarifies myths that still exist among the public. Unfortunately in the chapter on cancer, she also talks about various cancer treatments which isn't thorough enough and doesn't seem to fit in a book with this preventive theme. For the mental illness, one of the best written sections because of her personal experience, again the book is rather too ambitious and tries to cover anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder and the various treatment options even as she admits that "it is impossible to go into as much detail as I would like to". Though she gives a website reference, perhaps it may have been better only to cover depression as she and her husband both had experienced it, and acknowledge the other conditions.

Overall, I wanted to like this book as I believe the intent of giving the public the facts about what they can do to stay healthy and well is vital. I think as a practicing doctor and insider, however, the book at times it is misleading, in some areas is too light in content and in others the information deviates from the book's intent of wellness and health promotion.