After many years enjoying the pleasures, without worrying about excesses, bad habits and a sedentary lifestyle, there comes a moment in life when you decide to motivate yourself and take the path to health. It could be due to a medical scare, personal awareness or following the advice of those around you: you decide to take the bull by the horns.
You have switched to an absolutely healthy lifestyle, congratulations. You will lose weight, gain physical shape and your body will thank you in many ways. It will be necessary to see, however, if the damage that you have already done during the previous years is completely recoverable or if, at this point, there are aspects in which your body can no longer turn back.
The president of the Catalan Society of Internal Medicine of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia, Dr. Ferran Nonell, offers all the keys to what happens to the body when we go from bad habits to a healthy life, at a mature age.
Giving up tobacco will not cleanse our lungs or cardiovascular system overnight. It is not like resetting the phone to factory settings, but we will obtain a profit, even if it is not instantaneous.
As we detailed in a previous article, the benefits of quitting smoking extend between 20 minutes and 15 years after the last cigarette. That means that to reverse the risks of having a tobacco-related disease, it takes many years—at least one to five—to reduce the risks of various cancers. And it takes up to ten years to reduce the risk of lung cancer to half that of a smoker, although you will always have a little more risk than if you had never smoked.
"It has been proven that the so-called Mediterranean diet is the healthiest," says the doctor. Reducing red meat and alcohol (if possible, eliminating it) already brings us benefits." We must pay attention to cholesterol, but we have to take the figures with a grain of salt, since the level of bad cholesterol only depends on 10-15 % of the diet. "There are people who eat fat all their lives, who are obese and have normal cholesterol, and we all know someone who is thin, but has high cholesterol, probably due to genetic causes. There are even vegetarians with high cholesterol and atheroma plaques."
The recommendation, likewise, is that the more we moderate fats, the better. And answering the main question, a diet that eliminates fat will not reverse the cholesterol plaques that we already have formed in the blood vessels, but eating a lot of fat can form new ones. "The only way to reverse plaques is with intense medication (statins), and not in all cases," he explains.
Is it worth giving up alcohol? "Absolutely, yes. In our culture, alcohol is normalized. I wish we made the same change in attitude as we have done with tobacco in recent decades." Nonell warns that alcohol is "the silent killer" because it affects the liver. "Luckily, now we have fewer infections like hepatitis C, which was practically lethal. Now, likewise, it has been seen that fatty liver is not a harmless thing and can lead to cirrhosis," he explains.
It has been seen that "stopping alcohol consumption can help reverse fatty liver and, over the years, contribute to recovering a healthy liver," responds the specialist.
A sedentary lifestyle is a bad habit and it is highly recommended to do physical activity. "Here people get confused. I have colleagues who are 50-55 years old who one day discover that they have to take care of themselves. And, if they don't do anything, they start playing paddle tennis. It's not about that: you can't confuse activity physics with sport," he clarifies. "Physical activity means not sitting, but walking. All the steps you take or stairs you climb will be welcome to prevent many diseases or reduce the risk."
On the other hand, although sport is good, wanting to get to a competitive level when you have not done so before is practically synonymous with injury. "Competitive sport is not healthy," she warns. "Now there are many marathons and from time to time the news comes out of a sudden death among the participants. If you like a sport, prepare well and get a physiotherapist to advise you in the stages of preparation," he suggests. "And if possible, ask your family doctor or cardiologist to do a prior check-up with a stress test included."
From the age of 50-55, everyone has losses. For example, children become emancipated and start their lives, there are separations or divorces, we lose loved ones and we are left alone...
"Unwanted loneliness is not healthy, in any way. This leads to other changes, such as eating poorly, doing less physical activity...", explains Nonell. "You have no one to take care of you. Social prescription is advisable, that is, encouraging social activities that help to have a good state of mental health. Social networks, used well, can help a lot in this sense. If we avoid anxiety and depression, we will keep the rest of the factors of a healthy life in good condition.
