Live Younger Longer

Habits Drive Modern Deaths
The vast majority of
deaths in the U.S. are caused by
noncontagious (noncommunicable) diseases such as heart
disease and stroke, cancers, lung diseases, diabetes, and
others. Most of these diseases are driven by unhealthy
lifestyle habits.
Based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization

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Technology speeds on, but the biology of our bodies hasn’t caught up to
modern lifestyle changes. Pollution, stress, lack of physical activity, lack of
adequate sleep and overconsumption of processed foods have all
contributed to fairly recent health developments, such as the introduction of
long-term chronic illnesses that are now the top causes of death.
Furthermore, these conditions — heart disease, cancer, lung disease,
dementia — start around midlife and create an unprecedented burden for
individuals, families and societies. That means more years of coping with
chronic disease. Chronic disease can wreak havoc on your quality of life. It
can decrease productivity, chip away at independence and diminish social
engagement.
In other words, if you develop a chronic disease such as high blood
pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or diabetes, not only is
your life span shortened, but the quality of life you do have is diminished
significantly.

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Celebrating Christmas at the end of the millennium, as well as five years of remission
after I was treated for cancer the second time.
What I’ve learned
After I developed my second cancer before age 40, I was convinced that
cancer was going to be my cause of death and that it would likely occur
much too early in my life. When I had my second cancer, our children were
still quite young — Emily was 8, Katy 6, and Ben only 2 years old. I
wanted to be able to watch them grow up. I wanted to grow old with my
wife and enjoy many years together.
Being so sure that cancer was going to kill me — and equally convinced
that I would have a premature death — I felt compelled to learn all that I
could about how to prevent that from happening. My goal was to find out
what my risk factors for cancer were and change them for the better as
much as I could.

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By the way, a risk factor is a trait or behavior that increases your risk of
injury or disease. It’s similar to the way that driving without a seat belt
increases your risk of being injured if you’re in a car wreck, or that standing
next to a flagpole during an electrical storm increases your risk of being hit
by lightning.
What I learned over a period of a few years was actually very surprising to
me and can be summarized in two sentences. First, the risk factors for
cancer are essentially the same as the risk factors for heart attack, stroke,
Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction.
Second, I probably was not going to die of cancer but more likely of heart
disease, like so many other people.
The reason I wrote this book is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can
all make small changes over time to reduce our chances of chronic illness or
dying prematurely.
I started this chapter off with a quote from Sir Richard Doll, a British
physician and researcher who was one of the first scientists to link smoking
to cancer: “Death in old age is inevitable, but death before old age is not.”
I want to live for as long as I can. Having cancer twice really put that goal
into sharp focus for me. But it’s also not enough for me to just simply live
longer. I want to live longer in good health, so that I can enjoy a long life
with my wife and children. I want to be able to enjoy retirement one day. I
want to enjoy playing with grandchildren in the future. I want to be free to
travel and do many things.
When I first started in medicine, it wasn’t clear to me how to accomplish
this. But during my career at Mayo Clinic, I’ve learned a few things. I’ve
shared this knowledge with my patients, with my friends and family, and

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now, in this book, I share it with you. So let’s put a spin on Doll’s words,
shall we? Yes, death is inevitable. But premature death or growing old with
a chronic disease is not.

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