A week ago, a woman in her early 70s, who had been close with her family, came to the hospital for an ultrasound examination of the thyroid gland. As a person who was thorough in health management, she was taking good care of herself with her diet, nutrition, and regular exercise, and there were no problems except for thyroid nodules in her medical examination. She did thyroid ultrasound and carotid ultrasound together, but there were atherosclerotic plaques (hard lumps formed by the hardening of debris such as cholesterol in the lining of blood vessels) in both carotid arteries, and I was surprised to see that the patient was shocked.
| Picture = Reporter Kim Ja-kyung |
As I grow older, I start to look for health management methods published in various academic journals and prestigious conferences on how to live a long and healthy life. There are a lot of complicated and difficult contents to understand with a consistently good method or too much information, recommendations, and taboos, so I would like to compare the method of using our body for a long time to an apartment in an easy-to-understand way for the general public to talk only regarding important things.
First, managing blood vessels is a shortcut to longevity. If you use an apartment for a long time, there are more cases where it can’t be used because of rust than if the walls or pillars collapse and cannot be used. Our body also needs to take good care of the blood vessels so that they do not rust, so that they can be used in a healthy way for a long time.
Hypertension management is also necessary. Hypertension is defined as a systolic blood pressure of 140 mmHg or higher and a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mmHg or higher. High blood pressure causes microscopic incontinence due to pressure on the inner walls of blood vessels. If debris such as platelet cholesterol accumulates between the incontinence for a long time, the blood vessels gradually narrow, leading to atherosclerosis and further diseases such as angina, myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction (secondary vascular dementia) and renal failure. The recent trend in hypertension management recommends active treatment even when the systolic blood pressure is 130 mmHg or higher, and several papers prove that people live much healthier and longer than those without treatment.
Next is diabetes management. If the blood sugar level is high for a long time, the sticky glucose-binding substance adheres to the blood vessels and gradually narrows the blood vessels. In diabetes, it damages the peripheral blood vessels of the eye, leading to reduced vision, cataracts, retinal disease, etc. It can lead to chronic kidney failure as a complication. For reference, diabetes is the most common cause of hemodialysis in Korea.
Hyperlipidemia management is also essential. As our diet is westernized, the intake of cholesterol is increasing, leading to many diseases such as hyperlipidemia and fatty liver. In the past, Okinawa was famous as a village for longevity in Japan, but it is ironic that it is no longer a village with longevity but has become a village that does not even reach the average lifespan of Japan as food is gradually becoming more westernized. It is common to see food residues we ate and discarded, especially oil stains such as cooking oil, sticking to the sink pipe. Because bad cholesterol adheres well to our blood vessels, aerobic exercise that lowers bad cholesterol and raises good cholesterol, a low-fat diet, and if necessary, keep blood vessels clean by using drugs that reduce bad cholesterol is a shortcut to using our body for a long time and healthy. would.
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The importance of bone care cannot be overemphasized. Accidents in which the elderly need to be most careful are falls. As we age, our sense of balance deteriorates, our eyesight becomes weak, and our muscles and reflexes become dull, leading to frequent falls. The hip joint (hip joint) is the most commonly fractured part in a fall accident, and if treatment is not smooth, the probability of death within one year is regarding 50%. When you have osteoporosis, the risk of fractures due to falls increases, so it is necessary to take vitamin D daily or take an injection once every 3 months to strengthen bones.
Shin Woo-won, Director of Shin Woo-won Internal Medicine Clinic