If I could have a megaphone and shout one message from the mountaintop, it would be this: eat well, sleep enough, and exercise regularly.
As a medical community, we’ve been harping on this back-to-basics message for years. (Perhaps your spouse has also been harping on you for years.) But now there is an enormous and growing body of evidence showing that not only are these normal, simple things good for our health in areas we’ve suspected all along (healthy eating lowers your risk of heart disease—duh), but they also help in areas we never suspected (as I noted in last month’s column, more fiber lowers your chance of developing dementia—who would have thought?).
In the second part of my two-part series, I offer another back-to-basics tip: supplements like vitamin D and fish oil may lower your chance of developing autoimmune disease, such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, irritable bowel syndrome, or psoriasis.
Physicians are generally slow to recommend supplements. We like hard data, backed up by studies, ideally with randomized controlled trials. And until recently there have been very few of these with any hard evidence for or against supplements. But as more studies come out, I am growing more open to the idea of recommending supplements instead of, or in addition to, prescription drugs.
One recent randomized controlled trial took almost 26,000 patients and gave them either vitamin D or a placebo and either omega-3 fatty acids or a placebo. The patients were asked to report any autoimmune diseases diagnosed within the next five years. The study had a mechanism to confirm that those diagnoses were objective.
They found a 22 percent lower rate of autoimmune disease in the vitamin D group and a 15 percent reduction in the omega-3 group. The thinking is that these simple supplements help reduce inflammation, which lowers your chance of developing autoimmune diseases.
As a physician, it’s fascinating for me to consider that something as simple as supplementation can impact something as complex as autoimmune diseases. I hope and expect to see more studies like this coming out in the future. In the meantime, you can be sure I will be talking to more of my patients about vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids.
The is the second of a two-part series on some fascinating findings that may help you in your quest for better health. Part one appeared in the October issue of Legatus magazine.
RICHARD H. CARTABUKE, M.D., practices internal medicine and geriatrics at the Cleveland Clinic and is medical director of Healthnetwork Foundation.