Updated 3/1/2023

We all age and become subject to disease. But we can improve the chances of living a longer and healthier life. Scientific evidence suggests that there are six major lifestyle factors that we must attend to in order to maintain optimal health and improve our chances of longevity. In addition, replacing hormones lost after age 40 seems to be an additional critical factor.

There is no evidence to support the use of most dietary supplements. Don’t listen to bogus testimonials and fanciful explanations by slick promoters – demand scientific evidence. For supplements, this would mean at least one large (thousands of patients) double-blind randomized controlled study. I know of none that have demonstrated a substantial benefit.

If you choose to ignore these important lifestyle factors and instead hope the medical doctors can “manage” the resulting diseases, or that supplements will save you, then you are sadly mistaken. It is far better to change your lifestyle to a healthy one, this has been proven to improve health outcomes.

There is little evidence that improving your cholesterol numbers by drugs does anything more than change the number. Improving your blood glucose by drugs has much less impact on the destruction of your body by diabetes, than by actually getting healthy by lifestyle changes. To my knowledge, metformin is the only medicine that has ever been shown to actually decrease tissue damage in diabetics, many can lower the glucose level or Hemoglobin A1c but there is no evidence that this decreases end organ damage.

Exercise is more effective than drugs for depression. A WFPB diet is at least as good as fancy and expensive new immune-modulating drugs in controlling autoimmune diseases, and we do not yet know the long-term consequences of throwing a wrench into our immune system. Only a low-fat version of the WFPB diet has been shown to reverse cardiovascular disease… no drugs or surgery can do this.

A strong body of scientific evidence supports the following recommendations for leading a long and healthy life:

1. Whole Food Plant-Based Diet (WFPB)
2. Regular Exercise • Aerobic • Strengthening (resistance) • Impact
3. Adequate Sleep
4. Maintaining Social Connections
5. Limiting Alcohol Intake
6. Not smoking
7. Hormone replacement

It is virtually impossible to meet all these objectives completely. The goal is to get as close as possible.

Bone health is affected by a healthy, whole food plant-based diet, regular impact exercise, limiting alcohol intake, not smoking, and hormones.

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