ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR AGING PARENTS

Written by Kimberly Goad Illustrations by Dan Page

YOU MAKE GOOD USE of your gym membership, your fridge is stocked with kale and blueberries, and you’ve never missed a checkup. Even so, you nurse chronic, low-grade worries about the latest supposedly healthy thing (“Should I adopt it?”) and the endless “bad” things du jour. “We’ve all lost sight of what it means to be healthy,” says Alice Domar, Ph.D., the executive director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health, in Boston, and a coauthor of Live a Little! Breaking the Rules Won’t Break Your Health. “Being healthy means being smart about balancing the things you should do with the things you like to do.” To that end, Real Simple consulted doctors, research scientists, nutritionists, physical trainers, and other health experts to set the record straight about the most common concerns among the worried well. Here’s what you need to know.

There’s no research showing that the protein found in grains like wheat, barley, and rye will give you brain fog, zap your energy, or keep you from losing weight. In fact, overconsumption of glutenfree products may actually be bad for you, according to Alessio Fasano, M.D., the director of the Center for Celiac Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston. Many aren’t fortified with iron or other vitamins and minerals, so you may be missing out on essential nutrients. And since they’re often loaded with fat and sugar to improve flavor, they can have twice the calories of their glutencontaining equivalents. UNLESS… You’re among the 1percent of people in the United States with celiac disease—meaning you can’t digest gluten and run the risk of seriously damaging your intestines if you try to eat the stuff. Or you’re among the 6 percent who suffer from non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Cutting out gluten is the only treatment for now, though a pill currently in development shows promise, according to recent research.

A calorie is a calorie, whether it comes from protein, fat, or carbohydrates, according to several major studies. “For health, it matters a lot where calories come from, but when it comes to weight, the body doesn’t care,” says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., the Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and a coauthor of Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics. “If you take in more calories than you expend in metabolism and physical activity, you gain weight. Our bodies do not violate the laws of thermodynamics.” UNLESS… The carbs that you’re always filling up on are refined (the kind in white rice and bread), and they can cause your blood sugar to spike, making you hungrier and slowing your metabolism, according to a study published in Journal of the American Medical Association.

Your blood pressure can change from minute to minute and is affected by everything from how much sleep you got to how stressful your morning was. (See “Your Essential Health Test Guide,” page 151.) That’s why your doctor may do subsequent readings to get an accurate number. UNLESS… You have diabetes, heart disease, or kidney problems; heart disease runs in your family; or you’re over 50. Any of these factors raise your risk of high blood pressure, so if you fall into these categories, your doctor will want to monitor your blood pressure more frequently and start blood-pressure medications if it remains high. Many people with slightly elevated blood pressure can keep their blood pressure normal with a healthy diet and regular exercise.

If you’re under age 50, some research shows that the benefits of annual mammography are small; the test causes many false alarms and can lead to a diagnosis of cancer that would never have become a problem during your lifetime. You and your doctor may decide that it’s enough to get a mammogram every two years between the ages of 40 and 49. UNLESS… You have a mother, a daughter, or a sister who has had breast cancer; you’ve inherited a genetic disease, like Li-Fraumeni or Cowden syndrome; or you have a relative who carries a BRCA mutation. If any of these apply, you should start getting mammograms at age 30, or 10 years before the age of your youngest family member’s breast cancer diagnosis if it was earlier than 40, says Nancy Keating, M.D., a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School.