Steven Spielberg has recently made his case for “Super 8.” In the spirit of less-is-more, I make mine for Super 6: the list of six factors most likely to add years to our lives, and life to our years.

What prompts me to focus now on my ‘Super 6′ list is a patient I saw in clinic recently who had experienced a potentially life-threatening cancer a year or so ago, and is now living in the aftermath of a surgical “cure.” He came to my clinic looking for ways to reduce the likelihood of that cancer ever recurring, or any other ever occurring in the first place.

Such collisions with our mortality tend to sharpen the focus of patient and clinician alike. Whereas any given patient might like to know how to promote their health, this patient approached the topic as a veritable quest. And whereas I might rattle off a number of suggestions to my healthy patient looking to stay healthy, this patient was a goad for me to rack my brain, and re-scour the relevant literature.

As you might expect, discussion with this patient was far-ranging. He wanted to know about everything he could do to bend fate and probability in his favor. So, naturally, we discussed both conventional medical therapies such as drugs (there is no clear role for them in his case), and nutrient/botanical supplements.

But three principal considerations drove this discussion, as they should drive any discussion about intervening to prevent future disease: risk/benefit trade-offs; the magnitude of any likely effect; and the quality of underlying evidence.

Those three considerations drove our discussion inevitably in the direction of the Super 6: feet, forks, fingers, sleep, stress and love.

Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/healthy-lifestyle_b_884062.html

Original post by Dabin Yang