Not just a plate of limp lettuce

It was just the kind of news I like to read: exercise is bad for you. One of my perennial new year's resolutions is 'to do less gardening' and each year I have stuck to that resolution unflinchingly, however tempting it is to break it.

I now read that those who undertake prolonged strenuous exercise are more likely to be ill than those who do not. A study at Loughborough University concludes that those who participate in this way have an increased chance of upper respiratory tract infections.

So, I thought smugly to myself, I am doing fine. Pushing a few keys on my computer, getting up to make myself a cup of tea and energetically pressing the television remote control were all that were needed for a happy and healthy life.

But then in the same paper I discovered that mental decline is now thought to set in much earlier '“ at 45 not 60 as was previously believed. Another study had looked at civil servants (and do not reply 'ah well that explains it'. Hear me out). Seven-thousand of those who are paid out of our taxes were invited to take part (presumably during working hours?). They had to recall as many words beginning with 'S' as they could and also the names of animals read from a list. Ten years later the 45 year olds had suffered a 3.6 per cent decline in their abilities.

Still feeling smug, I started to assemble my list of words beginning with 'S' (scrofulous, salpiglossis and sudatorium immediately sprang to mind along with several obscene words) and concluded that my 60+ year-old brain is still functioning reasonably well '“ that was until I got to the next part of the article, which quotes the Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health in France and University College London (try saying that when your brain is wasting away): 'There is emerging consensus that what is good for our hearts is also good for our brains.'

In other words: take exercise and don't be an office chair potato. And that is when it gets serious.

The vegetable solution

I have come across two inspirational American doctors whose ideas might help us all keep our minds and bodies in fine shape for a little longer: Dr William Meggs and Dr Terry Wahls.

Dr Wahls suffered from progressive multiple sclerosis and had to use a wheelchair. I met Dr Meggs in 1996 when investigating the causes of Gulf War Syndrome. It was at the tail end of a hurricane and as we chatted in his office at the East Carolina Medical School the windows and doors were rattling so hard that I began to think: 'To hell with it, I want to get out of here alive.' Such cowardly thoughts would never pass through the minds of other SJ readers I am sure. He told me then about the role of inflammation in almost every disease and how much bearing our lifestyle and environment have on our health in general and inflammation in particular.

Dr Meggs has now written a must-read book entitled The Inflammation Cure, which sets out in a very readable way what he looks on as sensible steps for reversing such conditions as arthritis, diabetes, asthma and heart disease.