Transform Your Health: The Four Pillars of Well-Being According to Cardiologist José Abellán

2023-06-13 07:17:32

Although every day there are more health information and well-being, we still do not give credit to the barbarities that we submit to our body Without us realizing under the banner of leisure. Series and movies keep us up latedo the purchase is presented as a labeled obstacle course, the hyperconnectivity misleads us and rush They leave us no time to move. Is it possible that we don’t know restfeed ourselves, exercise and connect with what is really important?

On these four pillars, precisely, rests the cardiologist José Abellán in What your heart expects of you (Editorial Grijalbo). His book is a model of care so as not to throw up your hands when the disease arrives, because health is not what is lost when we get sick, it is what we do not preserve during a life of absurdities assumed and preserved by the whole of society. Thanks to his clinical journey, the cardiologist decided to take a leap towards prevention because “the health system should prioritize prevention much more”, and he is the first to assume responsibility. “I’m not going to fool you, a person who hasn’t taken care of himself in years is not going to reverse all the damage because one day he starts taking care of himself,” he comments sadly.

In the background lies his professional lament: you have to prevent rather than cure. Although, of course, when it comes to starting late than never: “It will always be the best option to take a good lifestyle. You start when you start, but if you start today it will always be better than tomorrow”. With the purpose of raising the relevance of prevention in health insofar as a healthy lifestyle can completely change your life and the quality with which you enjoy of your days, José Abellán made social networks a loudspeaker great for reporting on health. Today more than 135,000 people take note of his advice through Instagram, many of them found in the path of popularity that his participation in MasterChef gave him. During the interview, and despite the interruptions, he cannot avoid pointing out that health is an issue relegated to the background that we should occupy and worry much more. Although he himself falls into the trap of the society in which we live and while he drives he answers a few questions with his free hands knowing that “multitasking It’s one of the worst things we can do for our health.”

In your book it seems that some habits that we have always believed blindly are contradicted, such as that walking is the healthiest for the heart. How is that?

Walking is important, but it is not enough. That does not mean that it is bad or that it is not indicated after suffering a cardiovascular event (such as a heart attack). We must be active and walking is surely the first step, the least, although I don’t know if it is the most important. Is not sufficient. Clearly, the classic recommendations, insufficient, have not greatly reduced the probability of having a heart attack. We should turn up the intensity and do strength training. My patients who have suffered a heart attack have to walk on a daily basis, but with us what they train is strength, even with high relative intensity, it is very important.

Should we all pick up some weights every day?

We are increasingly clear that having a strong and large muscle mass protects us from heart attacks. In addition to the classic cardiovascular risk factors (smoking, diabetes, cholesterol, etc.), which are important, there are other risk factors that we are not paying attention to, such as sarcopenia, which is having poor and weak muscle mass. Walking doesn’t make you strong, you have to do something else. This does not mean carrying 100 kg. Working on strength is something as simple as sitting on a chair and standing up 10 times in a row, working with your own weight.

Do we do many things for health that are not really worth it?

Ugh, yeah. For example, eating a diet low in fat, which is healthy. The problem is the adulterated, trans, ultra processed. Those directly kill. From there it was generalized that all fat is bad, but the fat in an avocado or olive oil, without going any further, benefits our cardiovascular health. Another thing is spending too much time sitting down, it makes our cardiovascular prognosis much worse. People with weak hearts lead a sedentary life and that kills little by little. We must be active, train. I can’t stop insisting that training is unnatural, no animal goes to the gym and animals don’t have heart attacks as much as we do. Why should we train? Because we spend a lot of time sitting down and without making great efforts and training is, in a way, the toll we must pay.

Does it mean that we should be on the move all day?

It means not stopping. It doesn’t mean we can’t sit down, but spending the whole morning sitting down, eating and spending the whole afternoon sitting down again to go out, perhaps half an hour walking and going to bed is insufficient. And then having the cell phone until the wee hours interrupts our biological clock and that worsens our cardio risk. We are not made to look at a screen with a light that dazzles us. Our body needs light during the day and rest at night. The screen creates disorders in our body, similar to chronic stress, which little by little make us sick.

“What your heart expects of you” by José Abellán (Grijalbo)

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In your book, you treat connection as one of the essential pillars, but you’re not referring to the hyperconnection that digitization provides, are you?

Our brain is absolutely saturated. We must be connected with our beings, those who live with us. We are social animals that throughout evolution have found in these bonds of connection with our fellow men more opportunities to survive. Our brain is made to handle few and quality relationships, it mishandles this hyperconnectivity. It saturates us and can lead to chronic stress. In addition, our metabolism benefits from our brain being calm. This amalgamation of thousands of relationships also generates chronic inflammation, which increases the risk of heart plaques.

Let’s talk about food, because it is not easy to eat in an orderly manner.

Indeed. But there is a golden rule that never fails and that is that natural foods are the best. We must not eat, we must feed ourselves. We have to change the concept because we can eat things that make us sick, but if we eat only food (the natural variant) it is very difficult for us to fall into unhealthy nutrition. Our body is balanced with foods that do not have a label (fruit, vegetables, fish…). Any combination that we make at home with them will always be healthy. If we already start processing the meat and turn it into blood sausage or cereals we turn them into pizza, all those variants with a multitude of additives, with a quantity of sugar and salt that is not what our body needs, because little by little it it creates stress on our metabolism and increases the risk of suffering a cardiovascular event.

But since we are born we receive a constant bombardment of unhealthy food.

Since childhood, marketing and companies are insane, they have no scruples and what is beneficial for children (as well as for adults) is strictly natural food. I have colleagues who have managed to get their children to have more avidity or appetite for nuts than for sweets. Simply, because never having launched.

What if social relationships push you to have an unhealthy diet? Now that the high season of barbecues begins, do you have to choose: friends or eat healthy?

Of course not. Flexibility is important. We don’t have to be extremists. But one thing happens and I have experienced this very closely, and that is that in the end if we are not aware of this, and on a day-to-day basis you do not stop being filled with exceptions, do not expect to have exceptional health.

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You spend an entire chapter sleeping. Have we forgotten how important it is to rest?

What we have to understand is that all his life the human being has been a living being that has worked with light. It is written in our genes that when the sun rises we must begin to function. In Spain we party a lot and we really like to go out in the afternoon/evening and it is not natural. We have a hard time getting up and we do it thinking about the nap and it shouldn’t be like that. We should also stop watching that series that we love so much and start prioritizing our health. We have forgotten about it and we are not aware that rest is essential. The life that forces us to stay awake, not to stop, to keep up a frantic rhythm, to be stressed at night, because of what we have to do the next day and that type of charge makes us little sick. Health is not something we have, rather we have to earn it and work for it. Have a good lifestyle.

Exercise, connection, diet and sleep, which pillar of these four should people start taking care of to be well?

In reality everything is interconnected. If you start taking care of the exercise you do and training a little more, awareness will come immediately and the body will only ask for the best. You will have a greater craving for natural food and when you start eating better and exercising, your body will ask you to rest at night more eagerly. And you will feel better and when you are well your relationships will improve and in the end these four pillars are interconnected and give rise to what is integral health. I tell people: ‘Don’t be overwhelmed, start with this and you will see that little by little the rest will come.’ But of course, we have to be aware.

Which one do you have to start with to start the chain?

I like to start with the one that requires more effort: exercise or food. I think people are very scared at the beginning of training. They don’t know how to start, but it’s as easy as starting to go for a walk. Then sign up for a gym and it doesn’t matter if they see you fat, don’t be ashamed. What arises, grows.

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