Opinion: Push Prevention, Not Pills

Having a passion in our lives is important for our health and happiness, especially as we grow older. My passion is prevention, and for me it’s a matter of life and death. Both my parents died at age 62 of heart disease, and both were heavy smokers. I never took up smoking. I went on to become a medical sociologist and medical writer focusing on health promotion, disease prevention and early detection.

While I believe it’s critical to get the best possible health care, we need to spend more time, energy and money preserving our health. In other words, we should put health before health care and make prevention a priority.

We know what we need to do: Eat a low-fat, high-fiber, low-sodium diet; exercise regularly; use sunscreen; don’t smoke. Sadly, many of us don’t think about our health until we’re in the doctor’s office or emergency room.

Although the United States spends more on health care than any other nation in the world, we’re not getting much bang for our bucks. Not only does the dollar lag behind the yen and the euro, we lag behind Japan and most of Europe on the important health measures, including life expectancy. Two decades ago, 10 countries ranked higher in life expectancy than we did. Today, 41 do!

Last year, an Emory University study found that about twice as many Americans over age 50 are diagnosed with heart disease, arthritis and cancer as their European peers. And just this past February, the American Stroke Association reported that women in this country are twice as likely to have a stroke as women in Europe, and that American men are 60 percent more likely to have one than European men. Researchers attribute these striking differences to Europeans’ healthier lifestyles and better disease prevention, the centerpiece of many European countries’ health care systems.

Unfortunately, prevention is too often neglected in our treatment-oriented, inequitable, for-profit system. Three major risk factors for stroke—obesity, diabetes and smoking—are all preventable. More older Americans than Europeans smoke or did smoke, and almost twice as many are obese. The lowest stroke rates were found in southern Mediterranean countries, home of the healthy Mediterranean diet, and Switzerland, the chocolate capital of the world. And, speaking of lifestyle, most Europeans have twice as much paid vacation time as Americans.

According to a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, while genetics, social circumstances and health care play a role, the greatest opportunity we have to improve our health and live longer is our personal behavior. Taking advantage of that opportunity isn’t so hard. Physical activity can be fun, and eating what healthy Europeans typically eat—fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, olive oil, wine, goat cheese and dark chocolate—can be a pleasure.

Longer vacations couldn’t hurt either.