Transcript for How ‘strong’ has become the ‘new healthy’
Now to our “Gma” health alert. “Parade” magazine is out with a new survey taking a look at what America thinks it means to be healthy and I am so honored to be on the cover of this week’s magazine and to get more on this topic that affects all of us, joining us now are Lisa Delaney, the editorial director of “Parade” magazine and parade.com and Dr. Mark Hyman director of the center for functional medicine at Cleveland clinic. Welcome to both of you. These view, how are they changing? We wanted to take the pulse of how Americans think about their health. We’ve seen some shifts away from the perfect body image and towards things like yoga and more of a mind/body focus so we embarked on the survey with Cleveland clinic and, you know, we’re going to explore those findings with you today. What it means to be healthy now. And great partner with Cleveland clinic like this. Yes. Medically speaking what does this mean. This is a great shift because we’re moving away from the beach body lose ten pounds in ten days and get rid of your belly fat to focus on health and wellness. Wellness industry is a $3.5 trillion industry and they care about optimization of their health. That’s a big shift in our culture. We’ll let the audience take part in this because you saw some shift with asking people how they see themselves. So I’m going to ask the audience a couple of questions and you have a, B panel to these answers. Would you rather be viewed as sexy. A, sexy or, B, smart? Okay. A lot of smart. I guess there’s one sexy back there. All right. That’s okay. Got to keep it real back there. Okay. That’s right. Would you rather be, a, thin, or B, physically strong? A, thin or, B, physically strong. There you go. Now, that’s “B”. That’s a good answer. That’s what we found. That’s what we found in the survey. People were much more interested in the sort of less superficial things about their health and wanted to be smart and strong and that came, you know, the whole findings of the survey really comes to this idea that strong is the new healthy. And that’s one of the reasons we wanted you on the cover because — So kind. You really exemplify that. Everything you’ve been through with your cancer and you’ve been so positive and strong, inner and outer strength, you’ve really shown that. I appreciate it. It’s as much mental as physical. Thank you. It was truly an honor. Some misconceptions. People think if I pop some vitamins, main an hour of exercise, I’m good to go. We have this myth you can exercise your way out of a bad diet. You can eat whatever you want. If you have one soda, you interest to run four miles. If you have a supersize meal you have to run four miles a day every day of the week. Eating the right food is key. Low sugar and star shall and right fats and vitamin thing, the sad news is our diet is so nutrient depleted because we eat processed food we actually do need vitamins. The average American deficient. It’s not a replace many, it’s a supplement. It’s not going to replace a whole foods healthy diet. Bottom line, your recommendations for people? My bottom line I think, one, we need to go for parental screening. With cancer we all need to go get checked for diabetes and cancer. Getting checked is important. Second thing is we need to focus on vegetables, it’s boring but, you know, we actually eat far less than our recommended five to nine. Should be 9 to 10 or 12 and we should have 70, 80% of our plate as plant rich foods and the last thing is sleep. We’re sleeping two hours less a night than we did 100 years ago and that affects our cognition, performance, our happiness, our mood and also it’s a risk for disease like heart disease and even dementia so we need to make sure we prioritize sleep. It is not a luxury. It is a necessity and meditation. Meditation is key as well. I know and I though that helped you through your struggles and helps you get the energy to do this every day. That’s exciting and one of the things we found was that people are valuing meditation and prayer more as a measure of their health. But they’re not following through and I know that’s hard but there are easy ways to take ten minutes out and get your head together. So worth it. Thank you so much. We want to note these results from an op-ed online survey.
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