have a tendency to die however I wanted
I really really wanted my parents to
keep staying alive preferably forever so
every New Year’s Eve exactly at the
stroke of midnight
I made the wish to create an elixir of
life that would allow my parents to stay
alive forever I didn’t realize at that
time this childish wish would direct and
determine my whole future life and since
my mom used to tell me as long as our
health loss will last
logically my five-year-old self came to
conclusion that the people that might
help me with my goal would be the
doctors therefore I decided to try and
become one and this wish is to stay
alive forever is probably the most human
and the most desirable wish and it has
been used for ages in marketing selling
us countless of useless and sometimes
even harmful product how something sold
for a better health can be harmful well
on my way to this TED talk I bought
something I don’t use in my daily life
however it was advertised as something
that could help me with my third sore
throat with my asthma with my hay fever
in case of colds or bad breath and it
would help me to lose weight why not to
what it says right here
sore throat protection as if and by the
way you’re not allowed to smoke in here
this type of advertising comes from
early twentieth century however even by
1946 it was known that there is a link
between smoking and lung cancer and this
type of ads were persuading people to
buy cigarettes for health benefits
almost for another decade it has changed
nowadays however not as much as we think
in Germany from year 2000 the year 2016
the investment into the advertising by
drug producing companies have raised
more than 120 percent from 630 million
years to one thousand four hundred
eighty seven million euros accordingly
and many of you probably think right now
well I don’t use that many drugs however
I will be talking about something all of
us do on a daily basis and I’ll come to
that in a moment when I opened a
pharmacology book for the first time I
remembered its first page for the rest
of my life it was a quote by Sir William
Osler then said one of the duties of the
physician is to educate the masses not
to take the medicine I thought it was
quite paradoxical and strange to put it
on a book about drugs however after many
years spent studying other medical
textbooks I have come to understand
there is no elixir of life sorry mum and
dad and aging is an inevitable
biological process
except it seems for George Clooney it
was clear as well that unless we’re
unfortunate enough to have some genetic
disadvantage most of the time our health
is affected by something we do for a
continuous amount of time and the
results of that seem to come decades
later like smoking and lung cancer
even if affected by those crazy ads we
smoked for a week won’t affect our
health much however if we smoke for a
decade the chances that we will get lung
cancer lung fibrosis or heart diseases
grow dramatically and I think that this
principle should apply to everything we
do in our lives for a continuous amount
of time especially when it comes to life
essentials like sleeping eating being
active and having sex and those are the
things I will be talking about next but
before that I’d like to emphasize a very
important take-home message there are
just two simple steps towards healthy
and long life step number one adequate
yourself about your body stop blindly
believing the marketing propaganda and
I’m not saying you should become a
health snob because trying out stuff
without the scientific proof behind it
can be fun sometimes
however this first step which I would
call as well as thoughtful consumerism
becomes particularly important when
combined with the second step in
plant this knowledge into your daily
life those pills you take from day to
day those rituals and habits you do
months and months year-to-year because
they will have positive or negative
consequences on your life and on your
life expectancy and you know what I
thought that serve Williams Osler quote
was good but not perfect therefore I’d
like to paraphrase it one of the first
duties of each human is to educate
themselves about their body and the
first example I’d like to start with is
something I think is the most popular
activity among humans apart from
breathing sleeping and this brings me
back to the advertising of drugs the
most popular marketing fraud lose your
weight pill equipment foods mister any
link between swimming slimming pills and
asleep yes very much indeed in fact if
we would spend as much time on planning
our sleep as we do on obsessing about
our perfect shapes we would get a
healthier body much quicker the lack of
sleep leads towards gaining weight in
three different ways
firstly appetite stimulating hormone
ghrelin increases if we haven’t slept
enough so we wake up not only tired but
as well much hungry secondly the hunger
inhibiting hormone leptin decreases so
we not only want to eat more after
reduced sleep but also need more food to
feel satisfied and thirdly
our body becomes less sensitive towards
glucose regulating hormone insulin and
this leads not only towards gaining
weight but as well increases the chances
of getting diabetes and I think about a
two step scheme of living long and
healthy life is very applicable here if
we knew that the lack of sleep leads to
gaining weight step number one educate
yourself about your body we could
implant this knowledge into our daily
life and have positive long-term
consequences the second step so if
you’re trying to lose weight before
stuffing the jaws of slimming
supplementary business sleep on it and
while Sam is sleeping
samih not let’s talk about sex or to be
more exact the oral contraceptives the
oral contraceptives or that pill is the
most popular form of birth control in
Europe in Germany this being used by 55
percent of women aged from 20 to 49
years old and even by shockingly 72
percent of women aged from 20 to 29
years old and it has been known for
years now but Oregon receptors decreased
decreased the risk of several types of
cancer like ovarian cancer colorectal
cancer lymphatic cancer and
hematopoietic the blood cancer which is
true so many women have been using oral
contraceptives not only as a form of
birth control or birth control but as
well as a cancer preventing supplement
but yes there is a very big huge but I’m
so sorry to say the studies have shown
that oral contraceptives as well
increase the rate
of different types of cancer like breast
cancer cervical cancer central nervous
system tumors with more than eight years
of use with more than ten years of use
the risk of getting lung cancer
increases as well ladies time to draw
your constant pro stable and don’t get
me wrong I’m not against contraception
in any way I think each woman has a
right to decide on her own what happens
in her uterus however I’m as well for
that that women have enough sufficient
information to know what happens exactly
in their bodies
in 2007 the agency for research on
cancer has classified the contraceptive
combinations of estrogen and
progesterone which most of the oral
contraceptive pills as group number one
carcinogen as group number one
carcinogen and this is particularly
important for breast cancer globally
number one female cancer in the world as
of March 2017
there are 3.1 million cases with history
of breast cancer just in the United
States I was born in Lithuanian and that
would mean 3.1 million cases of breast
cancer that each citizen of my country
would have it in fact that’s even more
than the entire population anyhow I
don’t want to preach what’s right or
wrong because frankly nobody likes being
told which way to do it when it comes to
sex however I want to emphasize the
importance of knowing exactly what
you’re doing to your body with each
action in your life
Americans spend six billion dollars in a
year on vitamin supplements in Great
Britain forty five percent of the
population have a regular vitamin intake
clearly vitamins are vital but other
wittman pills well the health the
tradition Health Study number two has
shown there is zero real benefit of
taking multivitamin supplements in fact
there was no difference between vitamin
taking groups and the placebo taking
groups and this was shown by many
studies apart with exception of Pittman
D which due to our indoor lifestyles is
often deficient six billion dollars can
be spent variously however if we’re
talking about scientifically proven
benefits why not to spend it on
something like an annual gym membership
who should take vitamin supplements and
why well in general we should take
vitamin supplements when there is a
micro nutrition gap for example urine
can increase demand because of a
pregnancy because of a poor absorption
in case of a chronic or not disease and
simple physiological reasons like age
being newly born or really old so if you
are a healthy adult give it a thought is
it worth spending that much money on
something that has no bigger benefits
for your health than a placebo pill
thoughtful consumerism is
not only to your body but also to your
wallet during the research I’m a part of
which contributes to the better
understanding of congenital heart
diseases I met one of the few adult
patients we have let’s say her name is
judy judy has three children a husband
and a whole household to care about Judy
loves her family but never really like
taking medicine however she had to for
different hard drugs for her whole life
and on top of that
Judy started to gain weight it was very
worrying to her doctor because here
blood Sugar’s were bordering diabetes
levels but it was still in the normal
range until one day they weren’t and
Judy knew four years from her doctor
that being active and watching her diet
would make her Sugar’s drop and she
swore to do everything in her power to
make it happen but he’d be the life
always managed to intervene she was hit
in the stomach by the news that she has
to take yet another pill for the rest of
her life she left the doctor’s office
silently I started again and a half a
year for one of her appointment’s all of
a sudden she looked just half the size
she used to be I asked you if she was
taking the prescribed medicine she
looked at me and smiled gloriously not a
single time I asked her how did she
manage to lose weight well Judy applied
the two-step scheme of living long and
healthy life she said to me I changed
just one single thing in my life I
started cycling to work every single day
by doing that
judi managed not only to change her
weight but also to change her life
expectancy anyhow if we knew better how
our body functions we could not wait we
wouldn’t waste our time money and
sometimes even health on things that are
being sold to us by a multi-millionaire
companies for trying to sell us this
dream of elixir of life if we stop
buying those magic pills the market will
be forced to stop selling them to us
make an empire out of our body do not
make an empire out of drug producing
companies believing in magic is
essential for life however getting your
facts straight is essential for a long
life celebrate you’re curious yearning
contain the desire to stir draw comfort
from knowing exactly what you’re doing
to your body with each action in your
life hunger to implant those actions
into your daily life which would make
you age gracefully by all means try
things out but dread to live with bad
habits forever and remember one of the
first duties of each human is to educate
yourself about your body education is
knowledge and knowledge as they say is power