Back to Basics: More Important Than Ever!
by Richard H. Cartabuke, MD
Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Cleveland Clinic
Medical Director, Healthnetwork Foundation
If I could have a megaphone and shout one message from the mountaintop, it would be this: eat well, sleep enough, and exercise regularly.
As medical community, we’ve been harping on this back-to-basics message for years. (Perhaps your spouse has also been harping on you for years.) But now there is an enormous and growing body of evidence showing that not only are these normal, simple things good for our health in areas we’ve suspected all along (healthy eating lowers your risk of heart disease—duh), but they also help in areas we never suspected (more fiber lowers your chance of developing dementia—who would have thought?).
Don’t Want Dementia? Eat More Brussels Sprouts.
You probably know fiber is good for you. Soluble fiber softens your stools and helps with regular bowel movements. It also helps you feel full, which can limit unhealthy snacking. But, as we are learning with so many of nature’s simple fixes, soluble fiber is good for you in ways we never expected—like reducing your risk of dementia!
You may have read in the news about a study out of University of Tsukuba in Japan showing a link between increased fiber intake and a lower risk for dementia. The study has been 20 years in the making. The idea was to look for dietary trends that might contribute to dementia later in life. Researchers had 3,700 healthy adults complete surveys on their dietary routines and tracked them for 20 years. The one trend that emerged most dramatically was fiber intake. People who had a diet with high fiber had the lowest dementia rates, and people with less fiber in their diet had higher rates of dementia.
Why a person does or does not develop dementia is certainly more complex than one isolated thing. In this study, for example, it would be interesting to look at other lifestyle habits of the high fiber eaters to see if there were other factors that contributed to their low dementia rates, such as exercise. But what we can say for sure is that soluble fiber is very good for you for more than one reason. So eat your beans and Brussels sprouts—doctor’s orders!
Vitamin D and Fish Oil May Lower Your Chance of Developing Autoimmune Disease
Here’s another small thing with a big impact: supplements that help you avoid developing an autoimmune disease, such as MS, Lupis, IBS, or psoriasis.
Physicians—myself included—are generally slow to recommend supplements. We like hard data, backed up by studies, ideally randomized controlled trials. And until recently there have been very few of these with any hard evidence for or against supplements. But as more studies come out, I am growing more open to the idea of recommending supplements instead of or in addition to prescription drugs.
One recent randomized controlled trial took almost 26,000 patients and gave them either Vitamin D or a placebo and Omega 3 Fatty Acids or a placebo. The patients were asked to report any autoimmune diseases diagnosed within the next five years. The study had a mechanism to confirm those diagnoses were objective. They found a 22 percent lower rate of autoimmune disease in the Vitamin D group and a 15 percent reduction in the Omega-3 group. The thinking is that these simple supplements help reduce inflammation, which lowers your chance of developing autoimmune diseases.
As a physician, it’s fascinating to me to consider something as simple as supplementation can impact something as complex as autoimmune diseases. I hope, and expect, to see more studies like this coming out in the future. In the meantime, you can be sure I will be talking to more of my patients about Vitamin D and Omega-3 Fatty Acids.
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