Eat Move Sleep – Tom Rath

INTRODUCTION

Choices count. You can make decisions today that will give you more
energy tomorrow. The right choices over time greatly improve your odds of
a long and healthy life.

A hundred years ago, many people died from infectious diseases
because they had no cure. But today, a majority of people die from
preventable conditions. The next time you are with two friends, consider
that two of the three of you are likely to die from heart disease or cancer.
The problem is, you do not see the threats that your small daily decisions
pose in the moment. You have little urgency to change your diet until all
those years of fried food, sugar, and processed meat cause a heart attack at
age 60. At that point, reversing disease is possible but more difficult.
No matter how healthy you are today, you can take specific actions to
have more energy and live longer. Regardless of your age, you can make
better choices in the moment. Small decisions — about how you eat, move,
and sleep each day — count more than you think. As I have learned from
personal experience, these choices shape your life.

A Personal Perspective
At age 16, I was playing basketball with friends when I noticed something
wrong with my vision. There was a black circle in the middle of my visual
field. I assumed it would go away. Instead, it got progressively worse. I
finally told my mom, who immediately took me to an eye doctor.
That black spot turned out to be a large tumor on the back of my left eye.
The doctor said it might lead to blindness. As if that was not enough, I
needed to get a blood test to rule out other medical problems. A few weeks
later, my mom and I went back to the doctor’s office for the results.
The doctor told us I had a rare genetic disorder called Von Hippel
Lindau (VHL). While VHL typically runs in families, my condition was a
new mutation that affects just one in every 4,400,000 people. This mutation
essentially shuts off a powerful tumor suppressor gene and leads to rampant
cancerous growth throughout the body.

I still vividly recall sitting on one side of a large wooden desk as my
doctor tried to explain what it would be like to battle cancer for the rest of
my life. It was one of those moments when your stomach sinks and your
mind races for an alternate explanation. My doctor then described how I
was also likely to develop cancer in my kidneys, adrenal glands, pancreas,
brain, and spine.

While the thought of losing my eyesight was tough, these longer-term
issues were even more daunting. That conversation with the doctor forced
me to wrestle with much larger questions about my life. Would people treat
me differently if they knew about my illness? Was there any chance I would
get married and have kids? Perhaps most importantly, I wondered if there
was any way I could live a long and healthy life.

Doctors tried everything to save my eyesight, from freezing the tumors
to cooking them with a laser. But the sight in my eye never returned. Once I
got over this loss, I turned my attention to learning everything I could about
the other manifestations of this rare disease.

I quickly realized that the more I learned, the more I could do to increase
my odds of living longer. As new information emerged, I discovered I could
stay ahead of my condition with annual MRIs, CTs, and eye exams. If
doctors caught tumors early when they were small, the tumors were less
likely to spread and kill me. Learning that was a huge relief. Even if it
required some difficult surgeries, there was something I could do to live
longer.