“Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.”

—Miguel de Cervantes

If you have a sedentary job, it is enough to exercise regularly.

Myth: It is not enough to exercise regularly, or even daily. Studies show that prolonged periods of immobility, whether sitting or standing, create a risk of sudden death six times that of people who move continuously in their jobs. This is independent of exercise. To counteract this, many people are turning to such things as standing desks, instead of sitting at a desk in a chair. There are apps for your cell phone that tell you to periodically move, stretch, or simply change position. The goal is to move around more or less continuously throughout the day.

As long as you feel OK and have no restrictions in your activity level, you probably don’t need to worry about heart disease.

Myth: The first sign of heart disease may be a heart attack, stroke, or sudden death in as many as one-third of people who have heart disease and don’t know it. If you have a history of heart disease in your family, high blood pressure, diabetes, are overweight, or have elevated cholesterol levels, have a regular check-up with your primary physician. If there is any question, there are noninvasive tests, such as a cardiac PET scan, stress test, and others that can identify persons at risk. The time to begin a heart-healthy lifestyle is before you experience a cardiac event.

You need to drink eight glasses of water daily.

Myth: You need to stay hydrated, but there is no need to walk around all day sipping water, as some people do. You get water in the foods you eat and that counts, too. The way to stay hydrated is drink when you’re thirsty and monitor your urine color. Assuming you have normal kidneys, your urine should be light yellow to almost clear. If it is dark yellow, you are dehydrated and need to drink. Don’t use sodas or even fruit juices for hydration because of high sugar content. Beverages with caffeine, such as coffee and tea, are not ideal because they cause your kidneys to excrete more water. Alcoholic beverages should never be used for hydration.

Sugar from natural sources, like fruits and honey, is healthier than refined sugar.

Myth: Sugar is sugar. Pure, refined cane sugar is devoid of nutrients whereas natural sources may contain some beneficial factors, such as antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, etc. Even so, too much sugar from any source is not good for you and can contribute to problems—heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and so on. It is better to avoid refined sugar and get natural sugars from whole fruits rather than juices. The fiber in fruit slows the absorption of sugar in your gut and prevents sugar spikes in your blood and slows down insulin production. If you want to drink your fruit, use a blender to get the juice, pulp, and, when possible, the skin. The latter is where most of the fiber and many nutrients are.

You can eat prepared foods as long as it says 0 grams of trans fats in the list of ingredients.

Myth: This is one of the most dangerous myths. No amount of trans fats (a type of fat that is not found naturally in food and is created by heating or added to foods to increase shelf life) is safe to consume. Trans fats damage cells and can cause all manner of health problems. Food labeling laws allow manufacturers of foods that contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving to list their content as zero. If it is fried, baked, or contains any form of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fat, it contains trans fats, no matter what the label says.

Choose low-fat alternatives in the foods you buy.

Myth: Low-fat usually translates to more carbs, and current research indicates carbs may be a bigger problem than fats ever were. Many manufacturers add salt and sugar to make low-fat products tastier. Research shows it is the type of fats you eat that matters, not whether you eat fats at all. You need healthy fats in your diet. Vegetable and nut oils—olive oil, walnut oil, and avocado oil—all are excellent choices for cooking and use in salads. Even saturated fats, such as found in animal and dairy products, and nuts such as coconuts, can be part of a healthy diet as long as other aspects of the diet are in good balance.

The best diet is the ___________ (fill in the blank with your choice: Atkin’s, paleo, Mediterranean, Ornish, South Beach, Macrobiotic, Hallelujah, etc.)

Myth: There is no perfect diet that suits everyone. Many factors, such as lifestyle, genetics, age, sex, personal health history, and more play into whether a particular diet is optimal for you. The best diet provides necessary nutrients, enough calories to maintain a healthy weight, and maximizes your health potential. It must not be so complicated that you need a degree in nutrition to follow it. Not least, it must be enjoyable and varied enough you will not tire of it. Too many people focus obsessively on their diet to the exclusion of other important factors, such as being active, reducing stress, getting enough sleep, and eliminating unhealthy habits. Overall health is not achieved by finding the perfect diet. It is the consequence of daily, conscious decisions and actions that move toward better health.

If you want to see your future health situation, just look at your parents, since you have their DNA.

Myth: One thing we have learned is that people are not necessarily locked into whatever their DNA is programmed for. Just because your parents died early, or lived into their 90s, had cancer, or heart disease, or were subject to an addiction, does not mean you will. Now, we speak of factors that can modulate the expression of certain genes in our DNA. This is why lifestyle choices become so important. We don’t really know, in most cases, what causes a specific segment of your DNA to be expressed or not. Just do your best to keep up with advances in medicine and try to follow the tenets of a healthy lifestyle. Your primary physician is a great source of information.

Once you get old, it is too late to try to reverse aging changes to your body, acquire new skills, improve your memory, or make other fundamental changes to your life.

Myth: If studies have shown one thing, it’s that it is never too late to make changes to benefit your health. Even people in their 90s can learn new skills, increase their strength and mobility, improve their memory, and even reverse such things as narrowing of the arteries that supply their heart muscle. Of course, it is also true that the earlier in life you begin, the greater the rewards you reap from whatever changes you make. So, the ideal is starting when you are young, but never assume it is too late to make positive changes.