The secret to reaching the age of 80 in good shape is to “start taking care of yourself when you are young”, “get regular physical exercise” and “stop the clock for 15 minutes of rest every day”. The recipe shared by cardiologist Valentin Fuster, director of the Carlos III National Center for Cardiovascular Research in Madrid and the Cardiovascular Institute of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York (USA) is simple to maintain a good quality of life during the meeting. by the illustrious Official College of Physicians of Madrid,
The renowned cardiologist has defended the need to take care of both the heart, which he considers the “quantity of life”, and the brain, on which the “quality of life” depends. “We are learning that the same risk factors that cause heart disease, untreated high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, etc., lead to the progression of senile degeneration and Alzheimer’s, which means we have to stop the disease,” he said.
“The problem we have in today’s society is that we don’t have time to think that the most important thing is to take care of our quality of life, our mental health,” said the doctor, who told that half of the patients who come to him The consultation “he has a problem not of the heart but of the mind, a condition that is repeated throughout his life”.
Importance of an optimistic outlook towards life
It gives a prominent place to mental health, an area in which Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos is an expert.@LuisRojasMarcos) psychiatrist, researcher and professor of psychiatry at New York University, who, as an inseparable pair, have participated in a joint dialogue organized at the College of Physicians of Madrid on physical and emotional well-being.
Psychiatrist Rojas Marcos said, “If I had to choose between the heart or the mind, I would choose the heart first, because without it I cannot think, but the most important thing in life is what we do with our brain.” Are.” Pointed out the importance of communicating and talking to ourselves with respect, as well as maintaining an optimistic outlook on life, making a list every day of things that make us feel good or allow ourselves to live better programming as the key.
“Covid has damaged our sense of future”
And in this sense, he recalled that “the psychological impact that the pandemic has had on people has been largely due to a sense of uncertainty that damages the ‘sense of the future’ and creates anxiety and helplessness”. Still, remember that positive learning comes from painful experiences. He added, “Let us not forget that in this process and in our struggle to overcome it, we discover positive qualities, which are followed by painful growth, which unfortunately happens not for all of us, but for a significant percentage. meant for.”
“The pandemic has shown us the limits of humanity and science. The reality is that we have become aware of human vulnerability,” said Valentin Füster, explaining that Covid-19 has shown that human beings are always “they Not everyone knows” or “they have it all”. But he also noted advances in research in areas such as mRNA vaccines, “which were believed to be disease-derived products, when it has been observed that the majority are defense components.”
Warning on the use of artificial intelligence in medicine
With regard to the prevention of diseases, Dr. Fester indicated that “we continue to treat too late and we are forgetting that we should be preventing much earlier, with all diseases, not just heart diseases”. , They said. “The future is prevention and that is where we should put all our efforts, well thought out, very mature prevention, prevention in which quality of life is a priority,” he declared.
Furthermore, cardiologists stress the need to use new tools and technology to “understand health”, because once health is understood, without forgetting the human and cognitive part, “preventing disease”. “It would be possible. “Today’s medical students need to learn more about the patient”, and warned about the risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to medicine. “ChatGPT is terrible from a scientific point of view, we don’t know where the information comes from, so we have to be very careful that it doesn’t eat us up.”
