What makes you happy? It’s an important question because your happiness impacts your quality of life (QOL). Everything you strive for — money, a home, a car, vacations, nice clothes — is a means to achieving this essential goal.
But QOL is linked to many things other than external accomplishments or possessions. Wellbeing, which encompasses how you feel, think and what you are able to psychically do is, in my opinion, the most important contributing factor to QOL.
Diseases — like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure — can adversely affect your QOL. But making your health a top priority can help improve your wellbeing… and your quality of life.
There are many things in life you can’t control. But one of the primary areas you have direct control over is diet — what you eat. Improving your diet is a direct way to lose weight, reduce obesity, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and reverse type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
So if making a few lifestyle changes is the only thing standing in the way of achieving the QOL you desire, isn’t it worth it? Several recent studies confirm it is. Let’s have a look…
Small improvements = longer life
A study conducted by Dong Wang and colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and published in the journal Health Affairs, found impressive improvements in the American diet over a dozen years that reduced disease burden and saved lives.
For the study, researchers reviewed the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 to evaluate trends in dietary quality among 33,885 US adults from 1999-2012. Examining data that related to health outcomes in two large cohort studies found that improved diet prevented 1.1 million premature deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. What’s more, during the same period there were 8.6% fewer cases of cardiovascular disease, 1.3% fewer cases of cancer, and 12.6% fewer cases of type 2 diabetes.
It appears that pulling deadly trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils) from the food supply by the FDA was one of the main triggers for this improvement. Trans fats accounted for about 50% of the improvement with additional improvements made by reduction in overall consumption of red meat and sugary drinks along with the increased consumption of whole grains, fruits and polyunsaturated fatty acids (these are fats that are liquid at room temperature and turn to solid when refrigerated, like olive oil).
Take away: ditch the fried food and packaged foods and instead eat more fresh whole grains, fruit, and vegetables.
Home cooking beats type 2 diabetes
The American Heart Association website ran a news release on a study funded by the National Institutes of Health looking at the positive effects of home cooking on type 2 diabetes. The study was presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2015 and suggests that eating more home-prepared meals reduces your risk of developing type 2 diabetes — a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
Researchers analyzed data from about 58,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study and more than 41,000 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and followed for up to 36 years (1986-2012). None of the participants had diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer at the beginning of the study.
What they found at the end of the study was quite promising.
People who ate about two homemade lunches or dinners each day — or about 11-14 meals a week — had a 13 percent lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared to people who ate less than six homemade lunches or dinners a week. Additionally, those who ate home-prepared meals tended to eat less food and gain less weight. Less weight and less food means better health and higher quality of life!
The media has played a role in helping push the “eat healthy” message. But it seems Americans are still at great risk of food-related triggers for premature death diseases, like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and cancer. So why aren’t we doing more?
Physicians need to be more involved
Perhaps one reasons for the slow change is that physicians are not as actively involved in treating obesity and diet-related disease as they could be. But it seems they are not comfortable doing so.
“Many physicians may be more comfortable treating obesity-related disease such as hypertension and high cholesterol than providing counseling and treating obesity,” said Y. Claire Wang, MD, ScD, said at a briefing Thursday sponsored by Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as reported on MedPage Today .
Wang’s study, “Severe Obesity in Adults Cost State Medicaid Programs Nearly $8 Billion In 2013,” was published in Health Affairs, and asserted that “analysis of population-representative data indicates that in 2013, severe obesity cost the nation approximately $69 billion, which accounted for 60 percent of total obesity-related costs.”
Such costs are drastic, and a telling message that people need physician assistance. Physicians are unable to provide sufficient support, perhaps because of patient visit-time constraints or the fact that this means they must “treat the person and not the disease.” In any case, Americans need support in their ability to change their lifestyles, specifically those correlated with food consumption, to reduce obesity and weight-related disease, in order to live longer in an improved quality of life.
Conclusion
Changing habits is difficult, I know. I struggle too. We all have our emotional triggers, our family dynamics, our culture and beliefs around food, eating, and what makes us “feel good.” But nothing feels better than improved and sustained quality of life. The pleasure of eating too much or something bad for us is short lived. Improved quality of life lends better feelings to every day and extends our life overall. Remember, small changes in eating habits bring big results.
