Dr. Agus is one of the world's leading cancer doctors and cancer researchers. He is a professor of medicine and engineering at USC. He heads USC's West Side Cancer Center and the Center For Applied Molecular Medicine.
At least twice a week, Dr. Agus has to tell a patient that he has nothing left in his arsenal to combat the patient's cancer. It's over, and in most cases the end of life is near. It's a gut-wrenching conversation that Dr. Agus has never gotten used to.
That we are no better at treating cancer today, with a few notable exceptions, than we were fifty years ago is maddening. More infuriating still is that many of my patients could have prevented their cancer or other life-altering disease had they done a few things differently earlier in life.
I'm pretty certain that most people could delay or totally prevent a vast majority of illnesses we see today - including not only cancer but heart and kidney disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders - if they just adopt a few healthy habits early on and avoid the ones that lead to illness.The best way to fight disease and other ailments that develop over time is to prevent them. A staggering seven out of ten deaths among Americans each year are from chronic diseases, with heart disease, cancer and stroke accounting for more than fifty percent of American deaths each year.
Dr. Agus offers sixty-five rules he believes take the confusion out of knowing how to live to be healthy and feel wonderful at any age. They aren't terribly exciting or difficult, but taken together they embody a recipe for healthful living.
The rules are below the jump. Don't look if you don't want to. Carry on with your normal activities.
Interested, eh? Here's the list.
Look, listen and feel. Record your body's features, characteristics and how you feel. Update monthly.
Measure yourself every day. Weight and blood pressure, and how many steps you walked in 24 hours.
Automate your life. Rise, eat meals, exercise and retire at roughly the same times every day.
Mobilize your medical data. Keep copies of blood test results, make a list on paper or computer of all your medical conditions, surgeries, allergies, prescriptions and medical events.
Eat real food. If the ingredients include things you wouldn't keep in your pantry, don't eat it. Better to eat food that requires no ingredients label.
Know your grocer. Find out what's freshest, where it came form and how it was grown.
Grow a garden.
Maintain a diet protocol that works for you. Avoid the latest fads.
Take a break during the work day to reduce stress.
Have a glass of wine with dinner.
Practice good hygiene.
Cohabitate. Humans need a connection to another human.
Maintain a healthy weight.
Get an annual flu shot. Having the flu puts a massive inflammatory load on your body.
Get naked. Check yourself for signs of skin cancer every month.
Get off your butt and move. Have some physical activity in the morning and in the afternoon.
Jack your heart rate up 50 percent above your resting baseline rate for at least fifteen minutes every day.
Start a sensible caffeine habit. It's good for you to have a cup of coffee every day. Don't overdo it.
Know your family history, who died of what, for the past two or there generations.
Consider DNA testing to learn your genetic vulnerabilities to diseases.
Inquire about statins if you're over the hill. They miraculously reduce inflammation throughout your body, and inflammation kills.
Take a baby aspirin every day.
Abide by screening and vaccination booster recommendations.
Plan a one, five, ten and twenty year health strategy.
Deal with sickness smartly. Get out of bed, take the necessary medicines.
Manage chronic conditions.
Partner with your MD. Prepare for appointments by listing ailments and questions. Be honest about how you feel.
Strengthen your core and maintain good posture.
Smile. It releases endorphins.
Pursue your passions. Have a hobby that you enjoy.
Be positive.
Find out what exercise or activity you aren't bad at, and focus on doing that.
Protect your eyes and ears.
Don't neglect your teeth and feet.
Learn CPR.
Make a mobile supply kit for emergencies.
Eat more than three servings of cold water fish per week.
Eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
Speak strongly to the next generation. Teach the lessons you have learned.
Embrace your OCD side. Wash hands frequently; keep your space clean.
Never skip breakfast.
If you become ill, take the positive from it and learn.
Stretch every day.
Keep a to-do list.
Ask for help if you need help.
Have children, or enjoy your neighbors' and relatives children.
Comply with recommended medical practices and prescribed medicines.
Own a dog.
Plan how you want to be treated at the end of your life.
Understand basic medical vocabulary.
Make a definition of your own health.
Avoid bad food ingredients and fad diets.
Avoid detoxes and "immune boosting" anything.
Avoid risky behaviors and dangerous sports.
Avoid airport backscatter x-ray scanners.
Avoid sunburns.
Avoid insomnia.
Avoid wearing uncomfortable shoes.
Avoid juicing. Just eat the fruits and vegetables in their ripe state.
Avoid eating more than three servings of red meat or processed meats weekly.
Avoid taking vitamins and supplements. They do more harm than good.
Avoid having no downtime for relaxation.
Avoid smoking.
If you've made it this far, wish Michael Haz a happy birthday today by using the code "linoleum nachos avast avast."
That's all there is to it. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling better already. And I'm noticeably more handsome. If you'd like to read more of what Dr. Agus has written, I recommend his other book The End of Illness. It's a more challenging read, and extraordinarily interesting.
Add your own rules in the comments.
41 comments:
Sara Lee has made living healthy impossible.
It's a quip that sounds pretty clever the first time you hear it: CHOOSE YOUR PARENTS WELL.
Gallows humor, I think is the category.
"Avoid taking vitamins and supplements. They do more harm than good."
I am skeptical of this as a rule.
Wine. check
Get naked. check
I don't feel like reading the whole list again but I think I got the important ones.
Avoid taking vitamins and supplements. They do more harm than good."
I am skeptical of this as a rule.
Do you mean skeptical of the advice to NOT take them or skeptical of the benefits of taking vitamins and supplements?
Personally, I don't see a problem with taking a few supplements. Some people go nuts and take handfuls of pills. I take a multi vitamin, calcium with vitamin D, vitamin E (fish oil) and an occasional aspirin. When I can remember to take those that it. I don't drink milk and while I love cheese, it doesn't love me. I love the sun, but with temperatures being so cold, getting out in the sun is not as likely in the winter. Summer. That is another story. Like Haz and his wife, we are sunbathing lovers. Since our diet is irregular. Sometimes good and balance and other times not so much. I don't see the harm in a multi vitamin once in a while.
Freeman:
"If you look at all the vitamin studies done on groups of more than a thousand people in the last few decades, many of them have shown that taking vitamin supplements is correlated with an increased risk of diseases such as cancer and produces little benefit to health. Some of these results were statistically significant, but some were not. The interactions of supplements and the body are very complex, but a simple explanation may be that the body likes to create free radicals to attack "bad" cells, including cancerous ones. If you block that mechanism by taking copious amounts of vitamins, especially those that act as antioxidants, you block your body's natural ability to control itself.. You block a physiological process. You disrupt a system we don't fully understand yet."
My doc has me on Vitamin D because my D levels were too low. I take a D-3 supplement and now the levels have risen.
I have a blood panel done every sis months. Based on those results, I inject a vitamin B complex once weekly, and take a prescribed D supplement all winter.
I do it because it is to my advantage, based on blood work. Dr. Agus argues against the taking of vitamins just for the purpose of "I think I need them".
His other book, by the way is simply brilliant. He discusses how cancer was known 3000 BC, and has defied all medical attempts at eradication.
He writes about how cancer behaves - how the breast cancer that metastasizes into a liver is still breast cancer, as opposed to breast cancer. And about how we don't know how many times we have had cancer, because the body normally resolves it through normal processes.
With due respect to the good doctor, his claim that we aren't significantly better at treating cancer today is wrong.
Fantastic list, Haz. Thanks for sharing it with us. You're the best.
These items spoke to me:
Get an annual flu shot. Having the flu puts a massive inflammatory load on your body.
I've been anti flu shot. No more. This years flu wasn't the worst flu I've suffered. But it was painful and it lingered a long time. I'm too old for this garbage.
Get naked. Check yourself for signs of skin cancer every month.
I'm a skin cancer survivor. (Malignant melanoma) Please, do this.
Bonus - naked!
Haz, I figured he wrote something like that. He should have specified, "Don't take antioxidants," if that's what he's worried about. Supplements are a huge category. Many of the studies that show supplements being correlated with death are poorly designed. People who are looking death in the face due to cancer or heart disease are more likely to take supplements than others, and there are many studies that do nothing to correct for this fact.
If people aren't going to eat that much cold water fish, fish oil supplements are an excellent idea. If people aren't going to eat the recommended five fruits and vegetables, a moderate (not megadose) multivitamin is a good idea. If people aren't going to get enough sun, D3 is a good idea. Etc, etc, etc.
"linoleum nachos avast avast."
1!.
He should have specified, "Don't take antioxidants,"
The author is an MD, a university professor, a cancer researcher with a worldwide reputation, and has formed two molecular research companies. It's reasonable to presume that he wrote it the way he meant it.
With a bow!
Thanks, Haz, a lot of great tips.
linoleum nachos avast avast !
Dos!
:)
Anyone have recommendations on sources of fresh water fish? And don't say lakes and rivers!
"linoleum nachos avast avast."
A staggering seven out of ten deaths among Americans each year are from chronic diseases, with heart disease, cancer and stroke accounting for more than fifty percent of American deaths each year.
You mean that seven out of ten people that die in America COULD live forever? Wow!
The food stuff is pretty iffy, but the assessment stuff ("Look, listen and feel. Record your body's features, characteristics and how you feel. Update monthly.") is done by Herself every morning.
linoleum nachos avast avast - and a Tora, Tora, Tora for good measure.
April Apple said...
Get naked. Check yourself for signs of skin cancer every month.
Please, do this.
Bonus - naked!
I'd say something here, but I don't want to raise deborah's blood pressure.
linoleum nachos avast avast
!!
3 John 1:2
Why the Hell would I want to eat nachos made out of linoleum?
Five! Five point five if I count Icepick.
lol Ed, don't worry about that...one thing I do religiously is take my BP med.
Happy birthday, Haz!
No matter what his qualifications, my comment stands. He's basically saying, "Don't supplement because you probably aren't reading the scientific literature and are doing it wrong."
And Rev is right about the cancer thing.
I like most all of his other tips though. Maybe I'll print them out and cross out the supplement one. Heh.
God had 10.
Islam had 5.
Confucius had 1.
Anyone who has 65 rules to a long life, has issues.
deborah said...
lol Ed, don't worry about that...one thing I do religiously is take my BP med.
Good girl.
That's one of those things you can't mess with.
I also have a problem w/ the vitamins and supplements. He likes statins, which I have taken for almost 20 years. Well, it is established statins sap the COQ10 enzyme from your body and you should take that supplement. That's my only beef...the "no supplements. People overdo supplements. But vitamin D, as others have noted, has become a real problem in the US. One of the main reasons is Boomers stopped eating organ meats, rich in vitamin D.
Thank you all for the birthday wishes!
It also helps a lot to have long lived ancestors.
Oh... "Choose your parents well."
Yes, that.
Is this guy successfully old or what? If you ask my two Canadian great aunts the three rules of a proven long life are: 1) be fat 2) sit on your porch 3) drink a fifth of Scotch each day.
He left out rule #61: focus on living and filling your life while avoiding telling others how to live theirs.
"Avoid taking vitamins and supplements. They do more harm than good."
Mark me down as one who had a Vitamin D deficiency. I had a pill once a day, and now my levels are normal.
Happy birthday, Michael!
had = have
Your aunts aren't really wrong, Chip. My aunt made it to 105 with those rules except she substituted coffee, cake and ice cream for the Scotch. I think she credited her longevity to peanut oil for some reason.
Re-reading the Dr. Agus's book, especially the section about not taking vitamins and supplements, he is saying not to needlessly take vitamins and supplements. Take the ones that are necessary as determined by blood or other tests, but don't gobble a handful of pills just because of articles written by pill makers.
This is especially true with supplements - herbs and weeds that lack scientific testing.
My rule of thumb is: If Dr. Oz (or someone like Dr. Oz) is selling it, I don't buy it.
@ Haz My rule of thumb is: If Dr. Oz (or someone like Dr. Oz) is selling it, I don't buy it.
I agree 100%.
Dr Oz is a fraud. His show is one big infomercial for needless money wasting products.
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