About HealthSpan
We’re all living longer, but we’re typically spending those extra years in poor health, living with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular, liver and kidney disease.  HealthSpan is about the fight against the diseases caused by poor food and sedentary lifestyles.  It’s about how we can use diet, exercise, sleep and the reduction of stress to prevent accelerated aging and stay healthy enough to enjoy every part of a longer life.

 

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Jan 14, 2022

 

A new study has provided a little more evidence that olive oil, is, in the words of one distinguished researcher, “virtually a magic substance”.  The research, questioned 90,000 health workers about their consumption of olive oil over a 28 year period.  It found that those who consumed olive oil – even in small amounts – reduced their risk of dying over the following 28 years by an impressive 19%.  READ MORE


Dec 5, 2021

Either Tea or Coffee Could Protect You from Stroke and Dementia, But Drink Both Each Day and They’re Even More Effective

 

It stood to reason that tea and coffee, minimally processed plant products dissolved in water, were good for our health.  The evidence for the benefit as well as the pleasure they give has accumulated rapidly in recent decades, including that separately each is able to reduce the risk of stroke and of dementia.  READ MORE


Nov 30, 2021

Oxidation Is Killing Us.  Antioxidants in Foods Can Neutralize the Free Radicals Causing Aging and Disease

 

There’s a lot of talk – including on these pages! – about the way free radicals age us and promote disease, and even more about the power of certain foods to prevent this damage.  So here is an explanation of where free radicals come from, how food can neutralize them and how we can assess the antioxidant capacity of different nutrients. READ MORE


Oct 31, 2021

Breakfast Like a King and Dine Like a Pauper for Weight Loss and Better Health

 

At first glance it makes a lot of sense to eat most when more of the day’s activity is still ahead of you and you can expect to burn those calories rather than store them as fat. Like other ideas that appeal to common sense the maxim “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper” is one appears to have wide currency. There’s reported to be a Russian proverb putting it like this: “Eat breakfast yourself. Share lunch with your friend. Give your dinner to your enemy”.  READ MORE


Oct 20, 2021

More Is Better: the Dose-Dependent Effect of Exercise on Health and Longevity

 

Governments and health care providers tell us that we should eat a specified minimum amount of fruit and vegetables and take a particular minimum amount of exercise. But given that these recommendations mean changes – perhaps sometimes ones we’d prefer not to make – in our daily lives, how far can we trust them to deliver longer and healthier lives for the effort we’re being asked to make?  READ MORE


Oct 15, 2021

It’s Not Too Late! Even if You’ve Postponed Exercising to Middle Age, You Can Still Reap the Benefits of a Longer, Healthier Life

 

If you’re among the many people who’ve led a largely sedentary lifestyle into middle age, you can take up exercise and reverse much of the extra risk to health that usually results from inactivity. Better still, a new study suggests that you can gain almost all the health and longevity benefits of people who’ve exercised consistently since their youth.  READ MORE


Oct 4, 2021

Want to Reduce Your Risk of Death?  Fitness Matters More Than Weight Says a New Study.

 

It’s long been clear that, for most people, long-term obesity places them at greater risk of developing conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that not only reduce their quality of life but increases the risk of premature death.

But losing substantial amounts of weight by restricting what you eat can represent an enormous challenge.  Can you protect your health and life by increasing physical activity instead?  Might it make sense, in other words, to be “fat but fit”?  READ MORE


Sept 26, 2021

We Have a Hundred Trillion Little Friends.  We Need to Keep Them Sweet if They’re to Keep Us Healthy

 

In the average person, they weigh one or two kilos, are composed of around four thousand different species, and number a hundred trillion members. They are the bacteria in our guts.
Evidence is multiplying that this huge workforce plays a critical role in our health, especially in avoiding obesity and the diseases caused by the needless activation of our immune systems, also known as inflammation. READ MORE


Sept 20, 2021

Eating Well On a Limited Budget Doesn’t Have to Mean Eating Fast

 

If budgets are tight, and especially if time is even tighter, it’s easy to short-cut on what you eat. It can seem a lot easier to visit the kebab or fried chicken shop on the way home or get a Big Burger in place of the steamed vegetables you suspect you should be eating.

And eating healthily – isn’t that something to worry about a few years down the road?

Sadly – or perhaps, predictably – the answer is an inconvenient “no”. But, why not?  READ MORE


Sept 8, 2021

Babies Are Dying in the Developing World for Lack of Breastfeeding. What’s the Effect on Infants in Developed Countries?

 

Figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spell out the terrible toll taken on infants in some poorer countries. Even in a large and rapidly developing country such as Nigeria, more than one in ten babies do not make it to their fifth birthday.

Nigeria has halved its child mortality rate since 1990; before that twenty-one percent of children died before they were five. The figures are similar to those for other west African nations such as Chad and the Central African Republic. UNICEF says that despite the steep decline in child mortality an estimated 5.2 million children under five died across the world in 2019.  READ MORE


Aug 25, 2021

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there were a liquid you could drink that was refreshing, had zero calories, actually helped people to lose weight, and made your body work more efficiently?  Better still if it came out of a tap and was piped to every house in the country!

Yes, you’ve guessed – this life-enhancing, health promoting, and entirely harmless drink is water.

Everyone knows – well, more or less everyone – that we’re largely composed of water.  The figures tell their own story.  Up to around 30 litres inside our trillions of tiny cells, up to about 13 litres in the gaps around the cells, perhaps 3.5 litres in our blood.  READ MORE


Notes From a Chicago Kitchen
What you eat directly affects the way your body functions, your risk of disease, how much energy you will store as fat and how quickly you’ll age.  Our notes offer delicious ways to eat the whole grains, vegetables, legumes and fruit – and the fiber, vitamins, minerals and antioxidant, anti-inflammatory compounds – we all need to maximise how long we live, and our healthspans – the number of years we spend in good health.

 

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