Prevention

#prevention #disease #habits #consistency

I've been reading Petter Attia's book Outlive and it is such a great book that I would recommend to anyone. Amongst the many things he discusses is the idea that currently we are in a phase called Medicine 2.0, which focuses mainly on disease treatment and prolonging lifespan to some extent. However it does not do a good job at preventing these disease. He proposes a move toward what is called Medicine 3.0, in which we are striving to prevent these diseases in the first place and prolong our healthy lifespan, in which we are disease free and still able to do the things we like to do.

Unfortunately a lot of doctors mainly focus on treatment when you already have a disease or reach a certain threshold to be diagnosed. However, especially for younger people, just because you don't have it now doesn't mean you aren't rapidly progressing towards it in a few years. Atherosclerosis starts to build up in our arteries in our late teens/early twenties and our glucose levels in our blood stream can begin to creep up as well. Not to mention things like blood pressure, triglycerides, and cholesterol. Although medication isn't always the answer, we have to realize that the lives we choose to live will have an impact down the line. At the very least, we have to take responsibility for our actions. There are many things you can do to change the outcome you might be moving toward. It is never too late to make a change. Most of us know generally what changes or areas we could improve. But the challenge isn’t just knowing, it’s taking the step to implement it.

For example, I know someone who had a rising hemoglobin A1c (marker of essentially glucose that hangs out on your red blood cells and is a good marker of longer term glucose in the blood (2-3 months)) who lost weight and was able to reduce this and essentially stopping diabetes in its tracks. It is for sure possible and we all can make changes today. I hope you give this a thought because you might not think it matters much at all now, and maybe you're right, but you'll thank yourself in 15 or 20 years.

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