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.

1.Eat all the time. Have you ever seen a fat hummingbird? Chances are, the answer is “no” unless it has some kind of metabolic disorder. The vast majority of hummingbirds are three things: slim, constantly moving, and constantly eating. We can certainly learn from these tiny, frenetic animals. Eating (small snacks) 5-6 times a day instead of gorging on three big meals actually puts the body into hyper-drive. Metabolism revs up and calories get burned. The opposite: long periods of fasting (as in "3 square meals") makes the body into an energy miser. It goes into starvation/conservation mode and begins to store fat. That’s the body’s natural answer to the question “hmm, I wonder when my next meal will be?”
TIP: Eat small meals (e.g. an apple and some string cheese) every 3 hours until about 7PM.

2.Turn on and tune up your mitochondria. At the cellular level, energy comes from power-packed mitochondria. They’re mostly located in muscle tissue and their main role is providing energy for lifting a dumbbell and/or that triple decker whopper you’re eating. As we get older, we begin to lose mitochondria and, thus, the ability to make food into energy. The unfortunate result is that the body stores up that unused food as fat. TIP: Exercise to increase mitochondria. You’ll have more energy and less fat.

3.Don’t stress out, workout. There are about 100 ways to gain weight and stressing out is one of the top ten. Don't stress out about it, though, because turning this around is simple. Instead of stressing out do some physical activity. You'll gain muscle which helps you to burn calories. This is especially important because as we age, muscle begins to shrink (a condition known as sarcopenia). So if you’re over 40 exercise is doubly important. While you're combatting the muscle wasting, the exercise also helps you to feel better and decrease stress hormones that can lead to weight gain. TIP: Workout to look and feel better

In summary, follow the way of the hummingbird, nature’s marvelous athlete. Eat (nutritious food) constantly and don’t stop moving.

1. Because 2008 was soooo 1999. All those things that weren’t good for you in the previous year should go out of fashion like Aqua-net plastered bangs. Just apply the rule for handling clutter: if you don’t need it, don’t want it and can’t use it, throw it away! That goes for bad habits too.

2. Because Jack Lalanne (the Juiceman) said: “if a man made it don’t eat it” and “if it tastes good, spit it out.” Now I wouldn’t be so extreme. Even Jack Lalanne can’t put down a good hummus dip, a slice of watermelon, or a nice juicy buffalo burger. Point is, though, most people can change their eating habits and the new year is a natural time to do it.

3. Because you are what you eat. Okay, this is very much like point number two but it’s THAT important. The new year is time to feel clean and lean. You’re going for the trim polished look of a celery stick. You don’t want to look deep fried and oily and you wouldn’t want Jack Lalanne to spit you out.

4. Because when the boogie man goes to sleep he checks the closet for Chuck Norris. And Chuck Norris WILL get on your case if you don’t start some kind of exercise program.

5. Because, at the age of 70, while shackled and restrained, Jack Lalanne propelled himself using his own two hands and two feet for 1.5 miles through the ocean while pulling 70 boats with 70 people in them. Alright, if you’re under 70 you just can’t let Jack show you up like that.

By the way, the pic at top right isn't me, it's Jack Lalanne. I'm personally not too fond of one piece jumpsuits, even the glorified yellow jammies Bruce Lee used to wear.

Nature hasn’t taken part in the equal rights movement—this includes an equal right to disease. According to a new study by the CDC, women in America make up 60% of all new cases of diabetes. Sorry men. According to Dr. James Anderson, a professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky, obesity is one of the major factors behind this alarming statistic. In fact, he points out that "80% of people with type II diabetes are obese" (emphasis mine).

Anderson adds that “Fifty-five percent of women in the U.S are considered overweight and 35 percent are considered obese. So basically, we’re talking about 60 million women.”

Anderson sums it up like this: “…inactivity puts women at a greater risk for obesity, which is often a direct precursor to diabetes…For every one percent of her body weight a woman gains after high school, her risk for heart disease increases about five percent. For every same one percent gained, that woman’s risk of developing diabetes increases by 10 percent. In other words, if you’ve gained weight since high school (and that’s probably pretty much everyone), your risk for heart disease and diabetes has increased.”

And how do we combat this? Simple: get off the couch, chair, bench, rock, or whatever you’re sitting on and start moving! Diabetes is serious business.