A giant legend has been sold when it comes to improving your health star-news.press/wp

according to Davi SeradharWe have all our health priorities are wrong. In fact, we have been sold a giant legend. We are unhealthy obsessed with what we can do in person – diet, exercise and the rest – and we greatly ignore the most important specified in our health. This magic bullet: the government.

Public health measures such as comprehensive health care, drinking water, clean air, and safe roads have a much greater impact on our chances of making them to 100 of any number of gym sessions or turnip juices. SRIDHAR, Professor of World Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, UK, has a new book called How do you not die (very soon)Which makes a strong condition that general health, not just the individual pursuit, is the key to living a long and healthy life.

I spoke to New world About the reason for swallowing the purely individual health myth, how we can make public health more attractive and what will you do if it was responsible.

Graham Looton: Do you say that she takes responsibility for our health is a waste of time?

Davi Sarridhar: No, no! It is very effective if you can do this. You can make an option to be in good health if you have resources, time and education. But I believe that the idea that individuals are completely responsible for their health – which is shown to us – does not reflect the facts of people’s lives. Where she lives and the circumstances in which she lives affect the period in which she lives. This is easy to forget with health problems, which are seen as your responsibility. You need people to get an agency on their lives and feel they can make a change. But in reality, when we see the change at the population level, where does it come from? In general, it comes from governments.

Why did we fall on the legend that retreats to us?

It makes us feel empowered. People like, “What can I do, today?” And “I can do it if I am difficult enough!” But it is difficult to make people think about the broader structural issues and how to change them. We are not like this. We are exposed to self-helping-well-being literature-which is great if you have time and resources. But there is less than structural factors because people cannot see them as applicable directly to their lives. There is a lot of irony about politicians, believing that they are all similar and do not change at all.

What is the correct balance between personal and general health interventions?

I think this depends on the case. With diet and fitness, you can take a lot of responsibility. But with things like air pollution and clean water, what can you do individually? You are at the mercy of the place where you live and your government.

Are things like celebrity meals and TIKTOK effects also tend to balance?

Yes. It is marketing. It seems that we believe that the things that are marketed and sold to us in the right way are better. I think there is a real marketing problem in public health. Perhaps the past years have not helped. Public health is seen as draconian and tepbearing, as freedoms are withdrawn instead of giving freedoms.

How do we change public health perceptions?

It comes to how we talk about public health. Instead of saying that it is good for the planet or that it is good for society, we can talk about it in terms of how to make life easier and better. I think people want to know, why is this good for me? It makes me look sarcastic, but this is the world in which we live.

Even so, it may be difficult to connect the message when there is a lot of wrong information about things like vaccination. Why do many people think of nonsense?

I think part of it is related to social media and the fact that it does not matter whether it is accurate or not: the real popularity determines. For example, you have Joe Rogan on the podcast that talks about measles – saying that Everyone had measles When he was a child and everything was normal. It is amazing. He is not a doctor. He is not a public health expert. He only gives his opinion. But it will be more influential than any health agency. If you go out and say, “You know what is the secret of a long life? The jinn and the activist!” , You will get a million clicks. I think this is the challenge.

There is also the challenge of implementing reasonable public health policies, right?

There is always resistance to change. Think about banning smoking in the bars, there was resistance. When the seat belts came, there was resistance. But in general, the resistance comes in the first six or year, then people get used to that and this becomes the rule. Change standards.

Your book contains many successful government intervention stories from all over the world. What is your favorite?

Because I am in Scotland, I must say Dunlan. Weapons legislation (after the fire was placed in school in 1996 using legal firearms) a hard battle, there was real resistance, but payment is contracts for non -mass shooting in British schools. Several lives were rescued. We have seen this template used all over the world.

In high -income countries, an estimated 20 percent of the deaths are prevented. What can we learn from countries that have a decrease in preventive deaths?

Places that must be seen are what we call the best-performance countries-places like Japan, which have one of the lowest rates of chronic diseases and the highest rates of cancer survival. So, she looks at the best performance and saying, if every country appears like this, so what can the numbers come down? Japan is significantly low, estimated at about 10 percent.

The average life expectancy of everyone – access to 80, 90, and perhaps 100. If you can die of aging, then you are in good condition, right? Because it means that there is no illness or failure in the organs.

But success means that we are ultimately with the elderly of the population. How do we deal with that?

I think we should see aging as a positive power rather than a negative power. We must talk about healthy aging, and not reach 100 in order to reach there, but with complete mental and physical abilities, without chronic diseases such as diabetes or high blood pressure, which constitute a burden on the health care system, and with the ability to live independently, which puts pressure on social care.

How long will it take to achieve this perfect position as the death rate that can be prevented is similar to the rate of Japan?

Being realistic, it is likely to be a period of 10 to 20 years. Things such as childhood obesity and changing the city’s design are not overnight. But they have large batches over time. One of the problems is that our current government model is the news cycle of the news cycle. Not even year to another. It is a title title, and it is continuing. Therefore, there is no hesitation of people to think about 10 years or 15 years because they fell into it.

Well, if you are responsible for the national health service (NHS) in the United Kingdom, what are the changes you will make?

I am sure they thought about this, but for me, prevention. We spend much less on prevention and much more on sharp care. Currently, the concentration is focused in the UK on hospitals and ambulance waiting times, and it will get worse with the aging of the population. So, I think I will go directly to prevention. What are the cheap methods that we can invest in preventing the discovery of things earlier? Choose three or four issues are the main reasons for the acceptance of hospitals and the question. How do we address them?

For example, we know high blood pressure is a silent killer. Can we have a program where people enter and achieve blood pressure once a year? This may cost more in the first year, but five or 10 years under the line, you save money. We can also take regular measurements of things such as the waist circumference, abdominal fat levels, sugar, cholesterol in the blood, or even a fist force.

we Last interview with you During Covid, when I said the epidemic was an opportunity to address some long -term public health issues. Did that happen?

No, I think, if there is anything, there was a violent reaction against public health and a violent reaction against the state’s intervention because it was very anomalous, in the sense of lock and wearing masks. Therefore, I don’t think we took over that moment. It is exactly great what appeared from the epidemic. Now there is more focus on individual responsibility rather than acting collectively.

Did we learn the lessons of the epidemic itself, and Is the world ready better? For the other?

This depends on what you look. In public health, I say no, we go back. Public health infrastructure, such as the testing infrastructure in the United Kingdom, has been dismantled. But in scientific progress, I say yes. We are better in vaccine design. We have better vaccine platforms, and more simplified research. The scientific community has become faster and more skilled. I am completely sure that if the bird flu begins spreading (between humans), the UK government will have a vaccine, it will get it in clinics. They will be ready to go.

Quote one near the end of your book jumped in my face: “We don’t need more research.” truly?

Yes. We know a lot. Perhaps we can get 90 percent of the road there with current knowledge about how to improve public health at the population level. Of course, there is always a field for more research, but do we need another study that shows that exercise reduces the risk of heart tools? Maybe not. It can be just distraction to say, “Let’s conduct more research.” Because you can only delay the decision. This was what I was trying to get.

Globally, are we going in the right direction of public health?

I think, in general, yes. Life takes a long time. Today we live better than 100 years. We may not make progress as quickly as possible, and there are some places where things are retracted. But the biggest path is that we have made a lot of progress.

What do you hope that people will take from the book?

Politicians can make a difference. Think of NHS. There was a deliberate decision made to create it. This did not happen randomly. I am trying to show that in the world in which we live, all we have is a set of policy options that have been made before decades, that we benefit from today. What we do today, we may not see improvements from, but future generations will. What I tried to do is give a little hope.

Topics: