Zorba Paster: Getting Ready For All Those Resolutions

Resolution time, everyone. I know, I know. It’s not what you want to hear.

Every year we go through the same thing. I resolve to do this, I resolve to do that — and three days later, it’s fallen apart.

True, you can resolve to improve your life anytime of the year, so why now?

Well, perhaps it’s the turning of the calendar. We have to write 2020 instead of 2019. Or perhaps now that the holidays are over, after all the hubbub, we need to cool it a bit and be more realistic.

Maybe it’s all the advertising that’s settling down. During the holiday season, ads are constantly telling us how happy everyone is — which we all know is just not true. (I could use stronger words here but my mom would be really upset if I even thought of them.)

Or maybe it’s just that we’ve reached the nadir of the sunshine, and now we’re on the upswing. Hurray! Five more minutes of sunlight means the world is coming out of the tunnel of darkness.

Or maybe it’s just one of those pagan rituals embedded into our culture. With the sun coming back, the body will rise so we can live again.

I’m not sure which of those ideas is most responsible for us making resolutions, but I do it. Like many others, I think of the future now. But instead of giving tips on what you should do, let me reflect on what studies might set the mood for you.

First off, let’s talk about your muscles. Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggests that the amount of muscle mass you have in mid-age is linked to heart attack risk when you get older.

The older we get, the more muscle mass we lose. I slimmed down to my college weight, looked in the mirror and thought, yikes! Where did those love handles come from? Not that I had six-pack abs before, but I didn’t have this much fat.

We lose about 3 percent of our muscles every decade. Can’t stop that from happening, but you can take what you have and pump it up.

When the researchers in this study looked, men and women with the highest muscle volume at mid-age were an astounding 81 percent less likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to those with the lowest muscle volume. Bottom line: Pumping it up in your 40s might mean a healthy heart in your 60s.

Next up, stents and bypass surgery vs. taking pills to prevent heart attacks. A large federal study showed that pills alone are just as good for most people. Bypassing a clog or putting in a wire to keep one part of an artery open is not better than swallowing daily meds.

Why is that? Probably because a clog can occur anywhere in the heart. So if you “fix” one clog, that won’t block things off somewhere else, but another cholesterol plaque down the line just might do it.

Now, it was still important to do bypass surgery and stents in cases of people with intractable chest pain and those coming into the hospital with a heart attack. But as for prevention, it looks like drugs win the game.

The study was large, more than 5,000 patients followed for over three years. All had moderate to severe blockages, with 1 in 3 getting angina monthly. None of the surgeries were emergency procedures. The drugs used were statins, blood pressure pills, aspirin and drugs to slow the heart.

Half of those in the study got medical therapy, and half got stents or bypass plus medical therapy. Results showed no difference in mortality in either group.

So that brings me to my next resolution: Read about health. Do it all the time, from good sources. It’s shocking, but not everything on the web is true. When you see your doctor, PA or nurse practitioner ask questions and expect answers.

Pick reliable sources — they’re out there — and read about health. Your resolution this year should be to become more educated about health and wellness. It will pay off, for sure.

And my final resolution is something rather silly: Moderation in everything, including moderation.

I was sitting with a patient the other day, a guy from Chicago. He had a rough life as a kid, wanted to get healthier, so he came to me for advice.

Part of that was to tell him about the king of diets, the Mediterranean diet. He looked at me saying, “What about my barbecue? I love that stuff.”

My answer was simple: What you do most days is what really counts. So when Super Bowl Sunday comes around, you might have a veggie tray there, but chips and salsa, cheese dip, grilled brats — that’s what I’m going to have. I’ll go to the Mediterranean diet on Monday. Stay well.