Questions to ask yourself … to be healthier this year
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Dr Karan Rajan, NHS surgeon, lecturer and author of This Book May Save Your Life, on how to improve your mental and physical wellbeing. I’m not a believer in setting lofty targets or an all-or-nothing approach. There’s evidence that even if you increase your number of steps from a baseline of 1,000 a day to walk an extra 2,000 a day, it’s associated with reduced cardiovascular disease. A recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggested that doing up to four minutes of vigorous exercise a day, whether that’s walking briskly up the stairs or carrying heavy shopping, halved stroke cardiovascular disease risk in middle-aged and older women. Doing something more than you already are is a great starting point.
It’s about caring for these passengers living inside us, because they control multiple aspects of our health. Increase the amount of fibre you eat and have diversity in your diet, both in food types but also character – so the colour. Add in more reds, blues and deep purples, because colours are correlates of the polyphenol antioxidant capacity of the food, which are natural anti-inflammatory chemicals. Prebiotic fibres have the greatest impact on the microbiome so, for example, the common prebiotic found in an apple is pectin, while for garlic it’s inulin, and we know pectin and inulin promote the growth of bifidobacteria, allowing it to thrive. Other types of bacteria thrive on other, different types of prebiotic fibre, so getting that diversity means you can support a diverse community of microbes.
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