Dr Michael Mosley’s 7 best science-backed tips to improve your health
The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer and lockdown is easing. You may be thinking that it’s time to start shifting the COVID weight or get your sleep back on schedule.
The difficulty is that it’s hard to know the best way to do that. There are so many ideas out there, and a lot of them are false.
Luckily, Dr Michael Mosley has done the research for you. Here are his seven top, evidence-based tips for a healthy body and mind.
Keep an eye on your heart rate
Your resting heart rate is a good measure of fitness and also a powerful predictor of future health.
According to a study published in The Lancet in September 2008, patients with heart rates above 70 beats per minute are at greater risk of heart attack and hospital admission. With regular exercise you should see your resting heart rate fall.
Your resting heart rate is easy to find. Turn your hand so your palm is facing you. Use the index and middle finger from your other hand to measure it at the wrist, just below the thumb. Measure it when you’re sitting down and relaxed, preferably first thing in the morning.
Top athletes can have a resting pulse as low as 40 beats per minute. Mine is around 54.
So how can you get your heart rate down? Do more exercise and, if you’re overweight, lose a few kilos. The heavier your body, the harder your heart has to work to supply it with blood.
Read Dr Mosley’s full advice on monitoring your heart rate.
Eat plenty of beetroot and garlic to keep your blood pressure down
An ideal healthy systolic blood pressure is between 90 and 120mmHg, so what can you do if your blood pressure is slightly too high? Well, losing a bit of weight, exercising more and stopping smoking will all help, but so can consuming certain foods – or at least that is what we discovered on Trust Me, I’m A Doctor, when we did a small experiment with Dr Andy Webb at King’s College, London, a few years ago.
We wanted to test the claims that beetroot, garlic and watermelon could lower blood pressure. All three foods are said to work by boosting levels of nitric oxide in the body, which in turn causes blood vessels to open up and blood pressure to fall.
So what happened? Well the average systolic blood pressure of the volunteers at the start was 133.6mmHg. On the beetroot diet, this went down to 128.7mmHg. Consuming two cloves of garlic a day gave a similar result (129.3mmHg).
A fall in blood pressure of around 5mmHg doesn’t sound a lot, but studies suggest that if was maintained it would translate into a reduction of the risk of stroke and heart attack of around 10 per cent.
I love garlic and I am happy to pile my plate with beetroot and other nitrate-rich veg, such as rocket, spinach, chard and broccoli.
Read Dr Mosley’s full advice on lowering your blood pressure.
Create a lockdown routine to boost your mental health
Our lives have all been disrupted by COVID-19, resulting in a big surge in anxiety and issues of mental health.
A study, carried out by researchers from the University of Essex, delivered some stark findings.
The team used data collected from nearly 12,000 people who, for many years, have been asked questions about their mental health, and found that almost a quarter of respondents reported experiencing at least one mental health problem during lockdown – up from 10 per cent in pre-crisis times.
The temptation, when you are stressed, is to watch box sets and eat comfort food (and a survey carried out by King’s College, London, found that almost half the population have been doing just that during the lockdown). Though that may feel like what you want to do, in the long term it won’t do you any favours.
I feel strongly that, from the point of view of your mental health, ensuring you are getting enough quality sleep should be a priority, and when it comes to sleep it is essential that you establish a routine. You should start by setting a ‘sleep window’ – the time within which you are planning to sleep – and try to stick to it as closely as possible, seven days a week.
Read Dr Mosley’s full advice on creating a new routine in lockdown.
Switch up your home lighting to fight seasonal affective disorder
What I find particularly difficult about the shorter days is that I am part of the roughly 10 per cent of the British population who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Like most people with SAD, I get more gloomy and introspective as the winter wears on.
A few years ago, while making a film about SAD for Trust Me, I’m A Doctor, I met Anna Wirz-Justice, professor emeritus at the Centre for Chronobiology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She told me that, in winter, lack of exposure to daylight can throw our biological rhythms out of sync, which leads to the kind of symptoms that characterise ‘the winter blues’ or SAD.
So I bought a light box, which sits beside my computer and bathes me in 10,000 lux of bright white light for an hour or so in the mornings while I sit tapping away. I also go on early walks with our dog, since exercise outdoors in the morning light seems to be particularly effective at reducing the impact of SAD.
Read Dr Mosley’s full advice on managing seasonal affective disorder.
Caffeine isn’t all bad: it also has major health benefits
Apart from the flavour, what I love about tea and coffee is that they’re stimulants, rich with the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug, caffeine. A white, crystalline powder, it’s produced by plants to protect them against insect attack.
Not only do tea and coffee perk me up in the mornings, but there is strong evidence that caffeine consumers enjoy a range of other health benefits, with the benefits being clearer for coffee than tea.
A massive review of studies, ‘Coffee consumption and health: umbrella review of meta-analyses of multiple health outcomes’, published in the British Medical Journal, which looked at more than 220 studies, found that drinking coffee was associated with a significantly lower risk of heart disease and cancer, possibly because it’s rich in antioxidants and other anti-inflammatory compounds. Coffee drinking was also associated with a lower rate of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Try intermittent fasting to shed weight (and help fight off ageing)
Back in 2012 I made a science documentary called Eat, Fast And Live Longer which explored the science behind approaches to extending healthy life and holding back the hands of time. I concluded that the only proven way to do this was by calorie restricting.
Now, eight years later, there’s stronger proof of the benefits from calorie restriction or intermittent fasting (where you reduce your calories for two days a week).
In one study, CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of the Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy), researchers tested the effects of long-term calorie restriction on non-obese people.
In the study, 218 healthy people of a normal weight were randomly assigned to either cutting daily calorie intake by 15 per cent for two years, or continuing as normal.
Those in the calorie restriction group, not surprisingly, lost weight (an average of nine kilograms) but also saw big improvements in a range of risk factors, including cholesterol, blood pressure and C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation). They also reported improvements in sleep, mood, sex drive and quality of life.
Read Dr Mosley’s full advice on intermittent fasting.
Soak up some nature
There is a wood near me that I walk or run through most days. Even on a wet winter’s day I get pleasure from being among the trees, though to be honest, when I am running, I wear headphones to distract myself from the pain in my lungs.
But perhaps I should be spending more time appreciating my surroundings by cultivating a sense of ‘awe’. Doing that might increase my sense of joy and even my ‘smile intensity’. Or at least that was the finding of a study I came across, published in the journal Emotion.
In the study, scientists from the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, divided 60 volunteers into two groups. One group were asked to go for a 15-minute walk once a week for eight weeks, and to spend their time thinking about holidays, work, children, anything ‘internal’. The other group were also asked to walk, but to notice the colour of the leaves, the pattern of light on the ground, anything that might induce a feeling of ‘awe’.
They filled in questionnaires before and after, and it was found that those who were paying more attention to their surroundings got more benefit from their walks.
Read Dr Mosley’s full advice on how to get even more from your daily walks.
from... sciencefocus.com
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