Reduce salt intake, avoid processed food, keep weight under control… these are some of the advices that Dr Susruta Bandyopadhyay, director, department of critical care, at AMRI Hospital, Salt Lake, and a resident of AK Block in Salt Lake, gave to listeners gathered at the ground floor of an AE Block address recently in New Town. The cardiologist was speaking on how to stay fit.
The common perception is life was better a generation back as people ate natural food, pollution was less and lifestyle was controlled. But Bandyopadhyay countered the idea by pointing out that average life expectancy in India just after independence was in the 30s. “Now it is over 60 years. And many are living an active life, performing responsibilities and enjoying themselves.”
Vaccination, in his view, has had a role to play. “So many diseases people used to die of, like small pox, polio and diptheria, have been eradicated,” he said.
Awareness has also increased about common ailments like blood sugar, hypertension and cholesterol. “Get yourself screened for these conditions once you are over 40. And also for heart diseases and special types of cancer if there is family history,” he added.
Here are some more tips from him:
What to eat
• We understand what is good for us through trial and error. We eat a mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food as also cereals. It is not as if restricting ourselves to strictly vegetarian or strictly cereals will do us any good.
• You may take sugar in limited quantity, unless you are diabetic and therefore on sugar-free diet.
• Avoid soft drinks and packaged fruit juice, which have high sugar content.
• Take complex carbohydrates, like rice, cereals and roti. Avoid polished rice and refined flour. But a diet of only millet or only oatmeal is of no special benefit.
• Take limited salt. The American Heart Association recommends use of spices to be safer than salt.
• Fat is of two types — saturated and unsaturated. Avoid too much saturated fat — ghee, butter, dalda. Unsaturated fat can be monounsaturated fat (mufa) and polyunsaturated fat (pufa). Mustard oil, which is popular in Bengal kitchens, is fine in moderation but should be supplemented with sunflower or rice bran oil which has more pufa.
• Eat so that your weight does not increase. Weight change is linked not just to heart diseases or blood sugar, but also to cancer. Your waist size should be less than half of your height and keep an eye on your body mass index. As a race, we Indians are prone to mid-corpus obesity, which makes us liable to diabetes and heart disease.
Exercise
• Physical activity for 150 minutes per week is good for health. You can break it down to 20 minutes per day or longer or less number of days.
• If you are starting exercise after you turn 40, it is not advisable to go for jogging. It is better to walk. There could be risks of knee or foot injury otherwise, especially for those who are overweight.
Sleep
Six hours of sleep is essential. If you have a habit of watching films late into the night, you must catch up on sleep in the morning.
Timely treatment
Do not leave unexplained discomfort untreated, be it too much cough and cold, breathlessness on walking or climbing stairs, or sudden weight loss or losing track in mid-conversation. Women also need to be aware of some types of cancer like uterine or breast.
Last words
Dr Bandyopadhyay concluded the talk by pointing out that watching audio-visual content, though not bad by itself, makes the brain lazy if that is the only thing one does. Reading or spending time on hobbies keeps the brain active.
“People aged 75 or even 80 are leading active lives these days. They may feel lonely as the joint family has broken down and they are on their own. But they are also finding ways to be self-sufficient and have their own social group. So overall, one can say that the elderly are leading better lives now,” he signed off.
