To fast or to feast? To walk or to run? To tan or not to tan? We get swamped with various views, advice, recommendations and guidelines available from personal trainers, dietitians, doctors and other gurus and official and non-official sources about these questions. Healthy lifestyle matters are a subject on the mind of many people, hence these questions require clear answers.
We all agree that health is one of our most important assets. This means that healthy lifestyle really matters. We want to have reliable advice from trustful sources and confidently follow the recommendations on the subject, This, however, is not always that easy.
The importance of correct diet, appropriate physical activity and carefully controlled sun exposure and their synergistic effect on health is evident from research and clinical studies https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31688298/, https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijsem/international-journal-of-sports-and-exercise-medicine-ijsem-6-165.php, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19381980.2016.1248325 and it is important to recognise that. Individual impact of each of these factors on health conditions is significant but in combination they complement and synergise their role in disease prevention. Nevertheless, this often comes across with scepticism and opposition.
To fast or to feast? Some respectful sources say avoid dairy or limit protein intake or limit carbohydrates or follow Atkins or South Beach or keto diets while others draw your attention to “My Plate” or other colourful diagrams and encourage you to eat a variety of foods.
To walk or to run? Some experts say avoid strenuous exercise and just keep counting number of steps while others insist to do interval running, do aerobic exercises or get engaged in other forms of high levels of physical activity.
To tan or not to tan? Some recommendations promote sun avoidance while others emphasise the health benefits of sun exposure.
What should you do then? Should you dress in sun protective clothing, walk to a nearby cafe and enjoy in a shady corner under a sun umbrella a tuna melt sandwich made with multigrain (often mistakenly perceived as wholegrain) or sourdough bread or should you have a glass of green smoothie, put on an organic cotton sleeveless top and run to the beach or a park to take some sun and then do aerobic exercises?.
How could we know the right answer? And should we continue to read this and other blogs or just consider them as another one of many and switch to your favourite TV series or a computer game or get dressed up for a night out and do as good as it gets? Our advice is: certainly read them, think them and make the right choice i.e. get information from various sources, thoroughly review the evidence, check the credentials of the advisors and make your own decision. Discuss it with the health professionals whom you trust.
We know that finding the right answer is not an easy task. We are overwhelmed with conflicting information and contradictory recommendations. It is definitely right that we need to consume more plant-based food but why then the Nurses' Health Study and some others failed to show statistically significant associations between consumption of fruits and vegetables and the risk of major chronic diseases? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...
What are the methodologically flaws of some research and clinical studies? In the following posts we will consider pros and cons of different lifestyle approaches to help you to try to find the right answers so stay tuned and attentive.
If you have any questions after reading this blog we would love to discuss them with you. Send us an email and we'll reply to you shortly.