THOSE STUPID LIFESTYLE CHANGES DON’T WORK ANYWAY…

For many, at first thought, the idea of adopting a healthier lifestyle seems almost painful and certainly not worth it.  Many have tried and did not see results in what they thought was a reasonable time frame.  Many think they have made healthy changes, but in reality their choices were the wrong ones.

A frequent retort to the suggestion of making healthier lifestyle changes usually runs along the lines of “Well–Uncle George smoked 6 packs of cigarettes per day, drank Jim Bean like water and never ate a vegetable in his life and he still lived to 104 until he was taken out skiing off a cliff on Machu Picchu…” 

I call this the “genetic lottery” approach.  How many of us sit on our duffs watching Jerry Springer reruns from the couch, assurred that we are going to win the lotto?  Do some people win the lotto?  Of course.  But do you want to hang your hat on that miniscule chance?  Didn’t think so.  So why are you so willing to do that with your health?

I have covered the concept of flow mediated dilation and pulse wave velocity in a prior post, but suffice it to say that these are very important markers for looking at how healthy our blood vessels are (or are not..).

This particular article looked at prediabetic patient adopting a low sugar diet combined with a high intensity workout (>3 times per week at >75% VO2 max) and found that, after 12 weeks and again at one year, pretty much every marker they looked at had improved pretty dramatically.  64% of the participants no longer met the criteria for prediabetes.

This is not a complete lifestyle overhaul, but rather very straightforward changes in merely two aspects of lifestyle.  Before you begin to shake your head and think you can’t adopt these simple changes, remember that your fate is not likely to mirror Uncle George.