It’s autumn 2031, and on a bright day in Cork, a major pharmaceutical company announce that they have discovered a new pill.
You take one a day. It extends your life. It protects your heart, dramatically reduces your chances of cancer and helps improve your mental health. It has zero side effects. Overnight the company’s share price skyrockets. The scientist responsible wins the Nobel prize. Chemists struggle to get supply and the entire world tries to get its hands on these expensive little pills.
Now back to 2024, and the medicine exists.
Its name? Activity, and it’s completely free.
A few years ago, researchers from Deakin University in Melbourne set out to see how activity levels had changed over the last 150 years.
They studied the activity levels of seven people who were asked to live like early Australian settlers.
These activity levels were then compared to a group of modern office workers.
Over one week, they found that the seven settlers were 2.3 times more active. This is the same as walking an extra 16km, or about 27 laps around Croke Park every day.
Most of us in Ireland are overweight, heavier than any generation before us.
This is partly due to our diet, but also because we are simply not as active as our ancestors.
Let’s look at an example. Two office workers, Martin and Aisling, work on the fourth floor of an office block.
Neither do any formal exercise and they both drive to work.
Aisling decides that she wants to get healthier.
Martin parks in the staff car park.
Passing Tim on the front desk he says hello and takes the lift to the fourth floor.
Aisling also drives, but she parks down the road from the office block. Walking seven minutes to work, she says hi to Tim, passes the lift, and uses the stairs to get to her office. She also uses the stairs during her lunch break.
Aisling will walk eight flights of stairs over the course of the day and 14 minutes to and from her car.
Over the next 10 years, she gradually increases her walking and stair climbing.
Eventually, she walks about 25 minutes per day and spends about eight minutes per day climbing stairs. Aisling has dropped her chance of developing cancer by 11% compared to Martin and dropped her chance of dying from a heart attack by a massive 29%.
So how does activity prevent cancer?
Our bodies are like busy factories.
We each have about 36 trillion cells. Lined up in a single row that would measure about 680,000km – enough to go to the moon and back.
That’s 36 trillion tiny factories working to keep everything running smoothly, constantly preparing, cleaning, and balancing chemicals.
Martin and Aisling’s bodies are like recipes.
If you add too much of one ingredient or too little of another, the recipe doesn’t turn out right.
The same goes for our bodies – too much, or a pinch too little, of certain chemicals can increase our risk of cancer.
That’s largely why fad diets aren’t a good idea.
It’s the goldilocks effect, everything must be “just right”.
Being active is special because it helps the “ingredients” in every single cell in our bodies.
Walking up those stairs helps to balance our hormones.
It tells our cells to make more cancer protective chemicals. It washes waste out of our bodies.
It makes our immune system stronger, reduces stress, and makes our cells produce more energy.
It releases happy chemicals, which, unlike the ones sold on street corners, are entirely legal.
Just like we mentioned in a previous article, it gets rid of a lot of cancer tickets.
In short it is the miracle pill that we are looking for.
You want to train to run a marathon or do an ironman challenge? Knock yourself out, but you absolutely don’t need to.
From tomorrow, climb some stairs, get off the bus one stop earlier, alternate between standing and sitting at your desk or park your car a little bit away from where you want to go.
If you do it regularly, you’ll have a 24% better chance of living until your life’s last chapter, instead of finishing half-way through.
Know the facts – own your risk – decide for yourself.
• Prof Mark Corrigan’s next article will appear next fortnight.
