What are the preventive measures for geriatric diseases?

Integrating low-intensity health intervention into daily life, instead of relying on surprise physical examinations and "fake health" created by supplements, can prevent more than 80% of the risk of common geriatric diseases.

Don’t believe it. I met 62-year-old Uncle Zhang at a community free clinic before. In the past few years, he thought that spending thousands of dollars a year for a full physical examination was equivalent to being insured. He couldn’t live without braised pork every day and drank at least two taels of white wine every day. Last year, the physical examination directly revealed high blood lipids and borderline hypertension, which scared me. The advice we gave him later was nothing special, which was to replace half the plate of braised pork for dinner with a small portion of steamed pumpkin or stir-fried vegetables. After dinner, don’t sit on the sofa and watch TV. Instead, walk slowly around the neighborhood for 20 minutes. On weekends, don’t just play cards at home. Instead, go to the park to play croquet with your old friends. He persisted like this for half a year, and the indexes were basically back to the normal range when he was checked again. Even the doctor didn’t prescribe him any medicine.

Speaking of this, someone must ask, should I buy the various elderly supplements sold on the market? This is also a controversial point now. One group says that the elderly have poor digestion and absorption and must supplement with protein powder, calcium tablets, and various vitamins. The other group says that normal eating is enough, and supplements are all IQ taxes. In fact, there is really no need to go to extremes. If you usually have bad teeth and your intake of meat, eggs and milk is not even half of the recommended amount, drinking a spoonful of whey protein powder and supplementing with vitamin D every day can indeed help prevent malnutrition and osteoporosis, but if you can eat enough eggs for every meal , a cup of milk, two ounces of lean meat, and a lot of supplements, which will increase the burden on the kidneys and metabolism. We have treated a 70-year-old aunt before. In order to prevent osteoporosis, she took 3 high-calcium milk tablets and 2 calcium tablets a day. In the end, she was diagnosed with kidney stones and suffered a lot.

Some people also think that since daily intervention is so useful, physical examinations are no longer necessary? Of course not, it’s just that you don’t have to choose the “physical examination gift package” that includes everything every year. It’s better to spend money on targeted screening. For example, for elderly people who have smoked for 20 or 30 years, a low-dose chest CT to screen for early lung cancer every year is much more useful than taking a chest X-ray every year. ； For those with a family history of diabetes, in addition to routine fasting blood glucose checks, glycated hemoglobin can be added to see the average blood sugar level in the past three months, which is much more reliable than a single blood sugar result. It can also detect abnormal glucose tolerance problems early, and timely intervention can avoid the development of diabetes.

Another point that many people ignore is emotional regulation. Many people think that all diseases of the elderly are caused by food and laziness. In fact, many clinical causes of high blood pressure and coronary heart disease are violent mood swings. I met the 68-year-old Aunt Li before. She usually eats and exercises regularly, but she likes to compare pensions and scores with her grandchildren with her older sisters in the community. She gets sulky when she comes home every time she loses. She gets dizzy and flustered when she gets into trouble, and her blood pressure soars to over 150. Later, her son enrolled her in a Chinese painting class at the University for the Elderly. He studied painting at home every day, and did not chat about the parents' quarrels. After more than half a year, she said that she was no longer dizzy, and even the chest tightness that she often suffered before did not appear again. The last time she measured her blood pressure, it was stable at around 130/80.

In fact, to put it bluntly, there is no mysterious secret recipe for the prevention of geriatric diseases. Just don’t engage in any "unexpected health regimen" and stick to small things such as a light diet, regular activities, and a relaxed mind. It is much more effective than spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy a health bed or expensive supplements.