Our reader’s one hour of exercise a day is likely to improve his life expectancy, especially as it is brisk, but not violent. If it involves jogging, it should be done on grass rather than on the streets.
The reader doesn’t tell us his age, but in general it is better to avoid exercise in extreme temperatures. If it is very hot and muggy, or cold with a biting northeasterly blowing, reading the newspapers would serve his health better.
He should also avoid exercise if he has flu, a severe cold or a temperature. Exercising when feverish occasionally precipitates apparently inexplicable sudden death in young people, often on the football field.
The benefits of giving up coffee are not clear-cut. However, two cups a day wouldn’t damage our reader’s cardiovascular system, and might even improve it — it all depends on his genes. And if carefully timed it would not have kept him awake. The almost universally accepted belief is that modest amounts of alcoholic drink — and especially red wine — help to reduce deaths from ischaemic heart disease (coronary heart attacks). Alcohol in moderation can also be shown to increase longevity even after the benefits derived from the effect of alcohol on blood clotting and arterial disease have been removed from the equation. Unfortunately, if the alcohol intake rises above certain limits, the effect varies according to age, gender, race, family and lifestyle habits. In this instance the big advantages of alcohol to the cardiovascular system and the lesser ones to other organs are at first nullified, and later reversed.
Alcohol, and especially red wine, increase the proportion of HDL (the good cholesterol) to LDL (the bad cholesterol). There is an overall decrease in the amount of pernicious LDL in modest drinkers. Alcohol also alters the clotting mechanism by decreasing platelet stickiness, and has a useful effect on the amount of fibrogen and fibrinolysis in the arteries.
Over the past 30 years people have periodically suggested that the scientific data and epidemiological studies that demonstrate the apparent advantages of modest drinking, as opposed to being a teetotaller, are illusory. The antis’ hypothesis is that modest drinkers don’t live longer because of the red wine or the occasional whisky or glass of beer. Their theory is that the apparent benefit of modest alcohol drinking conveyed by the drinker’s improved survival times is related to characteristics in the lifestyle of teetotallers other than their rejection of alcohol.
Among the factors that might undermine the health of teetotallers, other than a reluctance to drink, are a higher incidence of insomnia, anxious temperament, a greater tendency to be workaholics and to feel undervalued.
The good news is that careful studies of the statistics of longevity are still encouraging to the modest drinker even after all these factors have been taken into account. These usually show that, as most of us hoped, a drink or two a day improves life expectation. Liver disease is a worry. Fortunately, only one liver in five is vulnerable and this vulnerability is especially apparent in young livers. If men were more careful than they are now to drink in the strictest moderation until they were over 35, and women until they were past the menopause, the statistics would look even better.
Meanwhile, a reader from Cheshire writes about the hazards of flying. After a three-week holiday in Portugal, she and her husband looked the picture of health. Within 48 hours of the flight home, however, she was struck down by a virus. After four weeks in bed she has lost 1st (6.35kg) and now feels so weak from her chest infection that she can barely stand. She is certain that the aircraft’s air-conditioning spread other travellers’ organisms, including the virus she caught. How can she regain the confidence to fly again?
I suspect that she was a victim of the RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) that raged earlier this year. There was also flu about, but not as much as usual. It is easy to confuse RSV with flu, and either with a heavy cold. I have known people this year who have been significantly unwell and coughing for up to eight weeks with this virus. And as when treating any persistent cough, or a patient who doesn’t seem to recover from a respiratory tract infection in the normal time span, it is always as well to have a chest X-ray. Aircraft owners claim that air filtration is now so efficient that viruses as well as bacteria are extracted. They attribute the multitude of infections picked up when travelling to the multiple contacts in hotel lounges, departure areas and in the aircraft.
Once in the confined space of an aircraft coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Other factors affecting the immune system, and increasing the chance of contact with other people’s organisms, include the inevitability of touching door handles, rails, seat backs and loo paraphernalia. These organisms are transferred to someone else’s face, nose and cheeks before being inhaled. Recent reseach has shown that as many viral infections are spread by contagion in this way as by inhaling droplet infections. Avoid scratching or rubbing the face and wash hands constantly.
Remember that travelling is stressful and will affect the T cells, the footsoldiers of the immune system. In future our reader should take everything at an easy pace, not become overheated or too cold. While away she should eat and drink in moderation and avoid excessive sunlight or exercise: the former may give you a tan and the latter a sense of fitness, but both adversely affect those T cells. The next flight should be taken in mid-summer, when there are fewer viruses about.
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