Keys to a long life…exercise and modern medicine.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today is doctor Peter Mihelos, our in house genius, historian, medical expert. And I understand doctor Mihllos, on your traveling overseas and on your trip overseas, you saved another life on the airplay.

0:18 Speaker 2 Yeah, it was somebody who had passed out and doctor ken Mark and I intervened and had to set up IVS and somebody who’s Harvey was one UNDERD twenty four and blood pressure was seventy over forty. Thank god, we were able to resuscitate that person and they did fine.

0:37 But it’s always scary, and that’s why when we travel abroad, we always remind our audience that of your US health insurance does not cover you abroad, and you should always get travel insurance, which includes medical evacuation and covering you medical for at least fifty thousand and we have at least five people that we know who ended up using

0:56 it abroad. So that’s just a reminder because people think when they go to the Caribbean they’re covered. You go to Puerto Rico or US Virgin Islands, you are covered. You go one island over to Aruba or Saint Bart’s you’re not covered. So always remind our audience to please get travel insurance and they assume that their credit card

1:16 covers them, but it doesn’t. They give you guidance, but you still end up getting a bill. And always bring your remember to bring your medications. Another little tip for traveling on airplanes, if you travel with any medicines that need to be refrigerated, use a small thermis. Put two ice cubes in a ziploc baggy. So any drops or

1:33 insulin or other medicines that have to be kept cool, you just keep them in a little thermos. So that’s another little travel tip. And on airplanes, because it’s very dry for dry eye, lubricate your eyes. But today we’re going to talk about a topic that everyone’s interesting and that is anti aging. And we’re going to start off

1:50 with our skin, and our skin is actually our largest organized.

1:54 Speaker 1 Should I play the music staying alive? Staying Alive?

2:00 Speaker 2 Absolutely, it’s all about health span, not just lifespan. We want to stay alive as long as possible and we want to die young at an old age. So it’s all about health because in the end, that’s all we have protect our mental and physical health, and that’s why people need to listen to WABC and we’re going to

2:20 give them a lot of health tips today, and we’re going to start off with the most important because we’re made of mostly water, and water is very important for our skin health. It plumps the skin and it keeps our blood thin. We get less heart attacks and strokes when we’re well hydrated because our blood flows thin, like

2:37 thin skin milk instead of like thick half and half. And that’s why hydration is so important, especially in the summer. That’s why people get more heart attacks and strokes. We hear about when they’re out playing tennis or sports or golf in the heat. And as we get older, people are afraid to have to run to the bathroom all

2:54 the time, so they forget to drink enough fluid. So hydration is very very important. And the other thing for antiaging. It turns out that sleep hygiene is critical. You’ve got to try to get as much sleep and it doesn’t necessarily mean you get it all at once. So some of us who as we get older, we need to

3:12 wake up and use the toilet. You can still catch up with your sleep, or like you and I talk about, sometimes we do sleep catch up on weekends, but during that sleep period. It turns out that the brain even has a mechanism where it cleans out dead and dying cells and does rejuvenation. So that’s why we feel so

3:29 much better mentally after we sleep. And taking care of your skin also includes avoiding minimizing the use of alcohol, and minimizing and avoiding smoking, because we now know that collagen and elastin, which are needed for facial structure, are inhibited and blocked by something in smoke which we don’t know.

3:50 And also we now if you have light eyes and you smoke, you have a fourfold increased incident in getting macular degeneration after your age of seventy five. So those are other anti aging tip tips. We also know that stress avoidance is not a good thing because now they’ve shown in recent literature when we’re stressed out or when

4:11 we fear, we have an ancient mechanism when we think we’re going to be attacked or in battle or attacked by an animal, our clotting system goes into activation and anticipation of bleeding and trauma. And that’s why people who are totally stressed out sometimes they wake up and they worry about everything, They get more heart attacks, and strokes

4:29 because your clotting system goes into overdrive when you’re stressed out. So that’s why stress avoidance. Some of the things that are important to reduce stress are exercise, and again you don’t have to do a lot, but short bursts of exercise.

4:41 It tells the body get ready, prepare yourself a battle, even if it’s five minutes of intense exercise. You know every day. That helps, meditation and yoga. I was recently speaking to.

4:55 Speaker 1 Go to Peter. In other words, when you feel stressed out, that’s the time you should do more exercise because it’s like preparing your body for battle.

5:10 Speaker 2 Absolutely, when you prepare your body for battle, and when your body thinks that there’s adversity, it turns on all these genes and repair mechanisms, and it then turns on something called autophagy from the Greek word auto fagot auto eat the bed and dying cells, and it tells your body, hey, get ready. Because if you run on a treadmill super

5:32 fast for five minutes and your body thinks that you’re running away from a saber tooth tiger, it’s an ancient mechanism that says, hey, you need to be able and ready and be prepared. So short bursts of exercise, and that’s what they call interval training, where people do a burst rest burst turns out to sometimes be more effective.

5:51 Now we’re finding out the long distance runners, like the marathon runners, they actually end up having more health problems, more atrial fibrillation, more heart problems. And I always tell in the original Greek marathon run for twenty six miles, the guy actually died at the end of the run.

6:05 So you’re better off doing short bursts of energy. And sometimes it can be even at your desk. They have those hand grippers. You can do that multiple times and then take a break and do it again. And that’s exercise, believe it or not. And even just taking walks and doing a certain number of steps a day. You don’t

6:22 have to be in great shape to do a certain number of steps, but when you also walk, you also make your bowels move better. You have more regular bowel movements. Why, because of gravity and a lot of abdominal muscles keep moving.

6:35 So even walking is a great exercise, and people who walk a lot they tend to have less cardiovascular problems because you keep everything moving. Same thing with high blood pressure when your bloodvest when you sit all the time, your blood vessels stay in one position. That’s when they get hardening of the arteries. They don’t move, but just

6:53 simple bursts of exercise close the elastic walls of the arteries to open and close. And when you keep them opening and closing, they’re less likely at a heart and and get stiff, and you’re less likely to get coronary rgreies, artery disease, strokes. And again it doesn’t have to be long periods of exercise. And some of the other things

7:12 I was just about to say was I was talking to a health coach Glory of Pope, who tells people about meditation and yoga and peace of mind is priceless, and all these things are so important as a total package.

7:27 And you don’t have to spend a lot of energy. If you can spend a half hour an hour towards your health instead of three four hours a day on the television or the internet, you can definitely add to your age. And also the foods as we’ve talked about in WABC, like the Mediterranean diet. It turns out that

7:47 extra virgin olive oil and avocados have the secret sauce called olaic acid, and the people and the cultures that have olaic acid, it turns on these longevity genes and repair genes called sirtuins. It seems that that’s the common theme in the Mediterranean areas of Kadia, Greece, Sardinia, Italy, Lummelinda, California with the avocados, and places in Japan like Okinawa.

8:11 Some of these root vegetables are loaded with these fital chemicals cololeic acid, and that’s why you and I are always trying to eat avocados, mushrooms, and the goal is to try to have twenty different plants a week, and that includes whether it’s a pumpkin seed, a brazilna, a piece of spinach, or a mushroom. Those are considered plant.

8:31 Speaker 1 One last question, because we’re almost out a time. The last question I had. I got to scratch the other day and I was scratched and on my counter was alcohol and peroxide. And I remember we discussed this before, but nobody remembers what is peroxide good for and what is alcohol good flow.

8:56 Speaker 2 Well, alcohol burns a lot more if you put it directly on a cut. The best thing actually to do when you get a scratch is to wash it intensely with soap and water and if you’re not allergic to neomyce and polymix and over the counter the neosporin type ointments.

9:12 You apply that and then during sleep you can have a band aid on it so it doesn’t wipe off, but that’s the most effective. The peroxide is good for cleaning dirty wounds after surgical care. After mose surgery, they use that alcohol if you have nothing else. Obviously burns and kills bacteria on the spot, but it’s very painful,

9:30 but good old fashioned soap and water followed by a topical antibiotic, usually around three times a day, and consult with your physician of course before you do anything. But that’s usually the standard of care and the reduces the chance of getting an infection because there are so many resistant bugs going around, and we’re waiting and excited that new,

9:52 better antibiotics are being developed that will soon be out to deal with these resistant bugs like we’re seeing, like the TB we talked the that’s coming into the United States. New York just reported last year five hundred new cases of TB. So the new generation of antibiotics will be very helpful because, as we learned, viruses and bacteria have intelligence,

10:11 as we taught people on WABC, and they’re learning how to get better at avoiding treatments and the antibacterial and antiviral treatment.

10:22 Speaker 1 Well, thank you, doctor Peter, me hellos and travel safe and we’ll talk to you again real sir.

10:29 Speaker 2 Thanks John, and thanks Margot for all you do for WABC and getting the truth out to our audience around the country and the world.