When I was about 8, I remember trying to listen to make sure my mom was still breathing. I wanted to make sure she hadn’t somehow died during her noon nap. Having heard her breathing (and or snoring), I’d go out and play.

Paranoia? Well, it’s a possibility. Then again, I had a few reasons to be worried about my mom--reasons such as stroke, high blood pressure, arrhythmias, type 2diabetes, congestive heart failure, end stage kidney failure, kidney stones and duodenal ulcers, just to name a few. As you can imagine, a body can't stand up to so many diseases for without breaking down. It was the eve of her 70th birthday when her body finally gave up. It was just a day before we had been planning to celebrate her life and there we were bemoaning her death.

In a time when a woman’s average life expectancy is about eighty, this was too short a life. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could hop into a time-travelling DeLorean, rev up to 88mph and, with a trail of flames, take my knowledge of the human body back 15 years ago when it could have helped my mom.

That won’t happen, of course, so I seek recourse in reality, helping my patients in a way I can’t help my mom. These patients are 70, 80, 90, 100 years old, ill and debilitated in very complex ways. There are limits to what I can do, but contrary to what Depeche Mode used to say, everything counts even in SMALL amounts.

Still, as the faces and fragile bodies of my patients remind me of my mom, I see the power of well-timed prevention efforts. Yeah sometimes I can fix bodies, but why should they be broken? The saying goes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s true enough but I think the analogy is an order of magnitude off. An ounce of prevention isn’t worth a pound of cure, it’s worth a TON of cure.

At work, I see people dying almost on a daily basis. What went wrong and when? My question often leads (literally) to a trail of crumbs. Cake crumbs, chip crumbs, pastry crumbs…it’s usually a lifetime of poor food choices and an inactive lifestyle. Sadly, this usually starts early. In fact, one study found that the fatty plaques that clog your arteries are evident as early as grade school!

That’s a reason to worry, no doubt. But it’s not a reason to give up. In the world of birds, the dumb Dodo birds gave up. The wise old Owls learned to adapt. There’s plenty of very basic things you and I can do to keep what happened to my mom from happening to ourselves, our children or family and friends.

It’s a simple as this: we NEED to exercise and eat right. It’s not an option. All the money ever printed won’t do a dot of good if you’re too tired, depressed, sick or dead to enjoy it. That’s why I’m doing everything I can to live healthfully and get the word out to all of you. It’s never late to make things better. And it’s never too early either.