Live Longer, Live Better

There’s nothing more frightening than the stories of people who are suddenly struck with a deadly blood clot (the scientific word is pulmonary embolism). What makes them so frightening is that there are no warning signs, they are frequently fatal, and they can and do strike people who are in the prime of their lives. Thankfully, though, they are relatively rare, and for the most part, preventable.

These blood clots actually form within the veins of your legs during long periods of inactivity, and are only deadly when they dislodge and move into your lungs. Risk factors include being elderly, recent surgery, smoking, and being on birth control pills. For all risk groups, the more immobile you are, the higher risk you are for forming the clots.

The good news is that there are some things you can do to help prevent these blood clots if you are someone at risk for them:

–Exercise your lower leg muscles every hour or two at least. If your riding in a car or airplane, simply stretch your foot forward and backward (making sure to use your calf muscles) for a few minutes every so often. Also, on a plane, make sure to go use the bathroom or walk up and down the aisle every hour or two.

–When driving, try to take a rest break at a parking area or gas station every few hours, making sure to get out of your car and walk around a bit.

–Drink plenty of fluids. Dehydration increases your risk of blood clots. Avoid caffeinated drinks on long drives or flights, and drink plenty of other, non-caffeinated fluids.

–Stop smoking. As if you needed yet another reason (besides ephysema and lung cancer!) to quit, smoking greatly increases your risk of blood clots. Furthermore, the combination of smoking and being on birth control medication increases your risk many times over.

–If you have a lot of risk factors, compression stockings (TED hose) have been shown to be very effective at lowering your risk of clots.

For more in depth reading, go here.

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I overheard it being said yet again today…”I’m never getting the flu shot again…I’ve been sick ever since!”

Long story short - The flu shot does not make you sick. Period. (As an aside, it can give you a day’s worth of mild symptoms such as headache, slight fever, etc., but they only last a day or so, and they are just side effects from the shot - not an actual viral infection)

What’s really happening then? Why do so many people complain that they got their flu shot and then promptly got sick? The combination of timing and “selective memory.”

Timing: The flu shot is always released in late fall. It has to be released at this time (the latest time possible) in order to give researchers as much time as possible to predict the most common strains that year (the shot only protects against three strains).

Well, it just so happens that late fall is also the time when people everywhere seem to come down with a cold virus. Don’t ask me why, it’s just a phenomenon of the onset of cold weather…people just seem to both spread and be more susceptible to the common cold this time of year.

Some cold viruses are mild, but others can leave you feeling terrible and hacking away. It’s those nasty cold viruses that make people everywhere assume they got the flu, even after a flu shot. But you know what? It’s not the flu, its just a common cold.

So then why do we get flu shots? Well, flu can be even worse than the worst common cold - it can keep you in bed for a week or more with fatigue, fevers, and chills. But besides making you feel terrible, it also causes a certain number of actual *deaths* each year (from pneumonia or other bacterial superinfections). Yes, it kills people. Most people who die from the flu are elderly or very young, but even people in their prime of life can occasionally be overcome. This is something that the common cold can’t even begin to do.

In summary, a flu shot will not keep you from getting sick at all. It’s not a miracle drug. It simply protects you from the most common strains of flu. And for some people, that can mean the difference between life and death.

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Age is just a number right? To a certain extent, yes. But depending on your lifestyle and habits, your body’s true age can be either much older or much younger than just that number. Decreasing your body’s true age can not only help you live longer, but also allow you to have more high-quality years. But what can you do to make your body’s true age decrease or at least stay the same? A few ideas:

1.) Double your intake of fruits and vegetables.

Basically, the brighter the color of your food, the more antioxidants the food contains. Antioxidants are nature’s anti-aging miracle drug. They inactivate dangerous free-radicals in your body. Free-radicals are known to greatly increase your risk of heart disease, cancer, and many other quality of life killers.

General rule of thumb: Eat 2 servings of a brightly colored fruit or vegetables with every meal. That can be as simple as drinking one glass of V-8 vegetable juice. Or adding dried cranberries to your cereal. By the way, chocolate is also a very good source of antioxidants. So after your vegetables, treat yourself to some chocolate for desert! (Side note: I recently saw dark-chocolate covered blueberries in the grocery store. This is quite possibly the most concentrated antioxidant source on earth!)

2.) Eat real, unprocessed foods.

This means a baked potato or sweet potato instead of french fries. Multi-grain bread instead of white bread. Processed foods typically have unhealthy additives which contribute to the aging process.

3.) Drink red wine.

Red wine has many times the number of antioxidants than white wine or other alcohol. It’s as easy as switching from chardonnay to merlot.

4.) Take your supplements.

As we age, our bodies ability to absorb nutrients declines dramatically. Though we may eat the right foods, we still may not be getting all of the nutrients we need. Consider your daily multivitamin as a kind of insurance policy.

For more information on these and other ways to age-proof your body, I found this book to be a great read:

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