I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Roizen, MD. Dr. Roizen is the author of the RealAge series of books and co-author (with Mehmet Oz) of the YOU books.
I had some questions for Dr. Roizen about the latest book in the YOU series: You: Staying Young. This book is outlines 14 “Major Agers” that cause deterioration in the body and gives concrete, practical examples of how to minimize the impact of time (and lifestyle) on the body. Read a full review of You: Staying Young.
ME: Where do you see most people failing in terms of staying young and living well?
ROIZEN: Most people fail because they think they can make compromises and in doing so take short-term pleasure over long-term health, and the effects just accumulate on them. Let me give you an example: Last night one of my patients e-mailed me. She was working on losing weight and she felt she had a good day. The only thing she did wrong was having croutons and dressing with a salad. She wrote, in the e-mail, “I felt I had done pretty well the rest of the day and it was okay to have the croutons and dressing. I felt I deserved that.” But the croutons had 50 calories each and she had about 20 of them. The salad dressing had another 430 calories. On top of that, the croutons had over 70 grams of saturated fat. Her ‘low calorie’ salad was actually a high-fat, high-sugar, high-calorie meal. Another example is lattes – she thought she was getting 100 calories of milk in each large latte – it is more like 900 and almost all of it saturated fat.
One other problem many people have is that they use exercise as a trade off for eating poorly. Exercise is great and it helps certain genes that are healthy be “switched on,” but meanwhile, things like saturated fat “switch on” other genes that cause inflammation. Poor diet and exercise don’t equate. You can’t go ahead and eat fatty foods just because you exercised. Making these small compromises, having some cookies or other foods every day adds up to a lot of aging.
People also don’t understand how valuable small things are. A few minutes of walking (literally 30 minutes of walking) every day can add up to a lot of benefit. People don’t realize how much control they have over how long they live and how well they live. They don’t realize how fun it is to be healthy and how little effort it takes to do it right.
ME: Meditation is an interest to me and you mention its benefits several times in the book, but did not get very specific in the “toolbox” section when talking about meditation and deep breathing. Can you say more about these topics?
ROIZEN: When [Mehmet] Oz and I finished writing this book, it was over 600 pages and we had a goal of 350. We had to make some choices. We removed a chapter on meditation and faith beliefs. We have plans to use this material in our next book.
ME: Can you speak a bit about the role of nitric oxide in aging? You give the example of erectile dysfunction in the book, but what other examples are there?
ROIZEN: Each of the Major Agers works in all the body’s systems. We gave the erectile dysfunction example because it is easy to understand. Our belief is that when endothelial function is not permanently damaged [endothelial function controls the expanding (dilation) of the blood vessels – healthy endothelial function is vital to cardiovascular health], dilation can be restored within two weeks through lifestyle changes like those observed by Dean Ornish and here at the Cleveland Clinic with Caldwell Esselstyn. We believe that restored nitric oxide production may be the cause of these improvements.
ME: You mentioned that energy medicine may be the next frontier - could you say more about that?
ROIZEN : Both of us believe that there is much more is accumulating on the use of energy to change physiologic function. Whether you look at acupuncture, Reiki or faith healing (meaning direct prayer), there has to be a physiological mechanism for how they change the body. Probably these work through setting up energy currents in the body. We believe that this area will be progressively covered more and more in research.
ME: There is a distinctive style in the illustration in the books – is there a story behind that?
ROIZEN: We wanted to affect men; we wanted men to get healthier too. The traditional purchaser of health books is female; for example, 82% of the RealAge books were purchased by women. We wanted to reach men because we thought they are an important group to get healthy, too. We wrote this to try to motivate health in men. Since men like cartoons, we tried to get the cartoons to be a lot of fun.
ME: Any ideas on a way for people to find a good preventive doctor? It seems hard to find someone who is willing to take the time to move beyond screenings and check-ups.
ROIZEN: If you go to a physician’s office and they have our book on our desk, that’s a good sign [laughs]. You have to interview doctors. I just don’t know any other solution to it.
ME: Anything else to add?
ROIZEN: The main message you got from me is that the average human body is amazing and you get a do-over to be healthy in life and it doesn’t take that long and isn’t that hard.
Read more about You: Staying Young.
