Lectures on geriatric disease prevention and health care

The prevention of geriatric diseases does not rely on sky-high-priced supplements or unannounced physical examinations. As long as "individualized daily habit adjustments + targeted risk screening" are done, more than 80% of common chronic diseases in the elderly can be delayed or even avoided.

I'm really not making this up. Last week, when I was at a consultation at our community health service center, I met Aunt Zhang, who lives in Building 3. She spent nearly 4,000 on the so-called "Vascular Scavenger" health product. She took it for just half a year. This time, the physical examination showed that the carotid artery plaque was still 1.2mm, which was the same as last year. She was still wondering why she had eaten so much and it was useless?

Speaking of this, I have to mention the dietary controversy that is currently raging on the Internet. One group says that the elderly should be vegetarian and light to be healthy, while the other group says that they should eat more meat to replenish nutrients, otherwise they will have no energy. I have seen two extreme examples: Uncle Li who lives in the neighborhood next door believes that vegetarianism is good. He has not touched a bite of meat in three years. Last month, he was diagnosed with sarcopenia. He had to rest twice to climb the third floor and it was difficult to carry ten kilograms of rice in his hand.； There is also Aunt Wang in our community who eats braised pork every day. She is happy with any meat. Last time her blood lipids were so high that the doctor advised her to be hospitalized. In fact, there has long been a consensus in the nutrition community that the diet of the elderly is "restricted but not forbidden". It does not mean that you should be completely vegetarian, nor should you eat fat meat. For the elderly over 65 years old, it is just right to eat 1.2-1.5g of protein per kilogram of body weight every day. For example, if you weigh 120 pounds, eat an egg every day, drink a glass of milk, and eat 2 taels of lean pork or fish and shrimp. It is completely enough. There is really no need to go to extremes.

Oh, by the way, speaking of exercise, an old man came to me last month and told me that he had read online that walking 20,000 steps a day would help him live longer. He walked hard for a month and developed fluid accumulation in his knees. Now it hurts even when going downstairs. This is also a common controversial point: some people say that "life lies in movement" and the more you move, the longer you live. Some people say that "a thousand-year-old king and an eighty-thousand-year-old tortoise" should rest quietly. In fact, is there any standard answer? If you have bad knees and arthritis, wouldn’t it be difficult for you to walk 20,000 steps? Swimming, playing Ba Duan Jin, or even sitting at home and lifting your hands and feet to do strength training are better than walking around blindly. If you don’t have any underlying diseases, then walking 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day, a little sweating is just right. Also, uncles and aunts with high blood pressure and coronary heart disease must not go out for a walk early in the morning before dawn. Cold air stimulates vasoconstriction, which is easy to cause problems. Wait until the sun comes out to warm up before going out, no less than half an hour.

Many people said that I had free physical examinations at my workplace every year and had no problems. Why did I suddenly get sick? I met Uncle Liu a while ago. All the indicators in the routine physical examination last year were normal. At the beginning of this year, he had stomach pain and was found to have early-stage gastric cancer. Fortunately, he was found early and had an operation and everything was fine. Why? Because routine physical examinations did not include gastrointestinal endoscopy at all, and he had a chronic problem with gastric ulcers, he had never taken the initiative to do so. Nowadays, there are two schools of thought regarding physical examinations. One group says that physical examinations are over-medicalization and can frighten people into getting sick if they detect minor problems. The other group says that the more expensive the physical examination, the better. Even PET-CT should be done every year, which is actually wrong. The more expensive the physical examination, the better, nor does the more items the better. It should be added based on your own situation: if you have a smoking history of 20 or 30 years, a low-dose spiral CT scan for lung cancer every year is more expensive than taking an X-ray tube. ； If you have a family history of diabetes, check your glycated hemoglobin once every six months, which is more accurate than fasting blood sugar. ； If someone in the family has had gastrointestinal cancer, a gastrointestinal endoscopy should be done every 3 to 5 years to really nip the risk at the earliest sign.

Oh, by the way, there is also the issue of health care products that everyone is most concerned about. In every lecture, people ask, can I buy this health care product? Now there are two sides arguing, one saying that all health products are IQ taxes and of no use, and the other saying that I took a certain health product and my blood pressure has stabilized and my sleep has improved. Let me tell you the truth: regular blue hat health products are essentially dietary supplements. If you usually don’t have enough vitamin D when you are exposed to the sun, or you can’t drink cow’s milk, If milk is deficient in calcium, then taking corresponding supplements is indeed useful. There is no need to beat it to death. But if it is the kind that tells you that it can "dissolve thrombosis", "radical cure diabetes" and "anti-cancer", no matter how much it sells, just turn around and leave. If it really has this effect, the hospital has already used it. How can it be the turn of a small salesman to sell you eggs in the community?

When our community held the first small lecture last week, Aunt Zhang was still dubious. Over the past month or so, she has returned all the useless health products. She drinks a glass of warm milk every morning, and does Tai Chi for half an hour in the evening with her old sisters. You see, how can the prevention of geriatric diseases be complicated? It doesn’t mean that you can’t eat this or do that, it just means you can find a method that suits you and stick to it slowly, which is better than anything else. If you have any personal questions later, please stay here after the show and I'll show you one by one, okay?