Action to protect the public against the damage done to so many of them by cigarette smoking would have more effect upon public health than anything else that could now be done in the whole field of preventive medicine." So begins the latest report on smoking from the Royal College of Physicians, a report which contains nothing to brighhten the rapidly shortening lives of the world's smokers.
HOW TO STAY alive can be a depressing business. You can jog to your heart's content, eat plenty of fibre to keep you motile, avoid polyunsaturated fats etc. All good things to do but they may be of no use.
The Irish lifestyle is fatal. We have adopted the behaviour patterns of affluent consumerism and it is slowly but inexorably killing us. We eat the wrong things, we inhale the wrong air, we drink the wrong drinks, we take little exercise and we impose on ourselves a way of life full of stress and torment.
HEALTH STUDIOS offer the opportunity to achieve physiical fitness in plush surroundings under expert guidance. Of course, the task of shedding those extra pounds and firming sagging muscles will still involve a certain amount of hard labour but with facilities like saunas, solariums and massage available on the premises; health gyms succeed to some extent in sugaring the pill.
IN SPITE OF the huge advances in medical science in this century life expectancy, for those who reach the age of forty has not increased at all. According to Dr. Noel Hickey of the Department of Preventive Medicine at UCD. this is because of changes in behaviour patterns. He cites in particular the things we eat and the fact that most of us take a lot less exercise. Even without any obvious excesses, like overwork or heavy drinking, the average modern lifestyle is a health hazard. Most people are slowly, inexorably, killing themselves. By Eamon Dunphy.