Working amongst researchers that study the major chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity) starts to have an effect on you. I'm not particularly unhealthy, but nor am I 100% healthy. I have a bit of a chocolate habit. And I love hot chips, but can restrain myself from these better than I can chocolate.
Anyway, here's what I hear at work: I hear about chronic, non-communicable diseases having a large burden on the health system; chronic heart failure and pulmonary obstructions; Type 2 Diabetes.
It all starts to sink in.
Your ears start to prick up when your parents talk about a friend being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.
You worry about people of your parent's generation being diagnosed with high blood pressure and heart problems.
You think about how much more sugar you must be eating compared to your parent's generation, and how you will be doomed unless you start doing something now.
BUT THEN - I'm sure I'm eating less fat and salt than they did. And probably walking and exercising more than they did at my age.
But anyway, something to watch out for over the next 10 years as I enter my 40's. At some point, what goes into your body and how much exercise you do needs to be taken seriously.
I chatted a bit about this sort of stuff generally to my Dad a few weeks ago, and he "could not stress strongly enough" that breast cancer is something I should be watchful for. It seems that as well as my paternal Grandmother having this (not fatally) in her 70's, my paternal Grandfather's family was "riddled with it", and recently it has made an appearance on my mother's side of the family, albeit in a fairly distant relation. I'm going to have to get more informed about it - I'm fairly ignorant about the genetics of the condition for starters...
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