CNN’s top doc on stem cells, the right way to exercise, and a breakthrough that brings us back from the dead.
Interviewed by Gordy Megroz
MJ: Your new book, Cheating Death, seems to say we don’t need to worry so much about dying.
SG: Well, the book challenges the notion that when your heart stops beating, you’re dead. That doesn’t mean you should stop using common sense, but medical advances have made it possible to keep people alive and allow them to recover after their heart stops. For instance, there was a skier in Norway who got caught in an avalanche. She ended up with her head in a freezing river for more than an hour and was hypothermic. When you become hypothermic, you greatly reduce the demand for oxygen and blood. The doctors decided to keep her in this state for more than three hours, and she slowly healed and was fine. Now paramedics can inject people with ice-cold saline if their hearts are failing to save them.
MJ: So what is the biggest threat to our health right now?
SG: It’s still heart disease. But we’re also lagging behind in certain medical advances, stem cells in particular. I’ve traveled to a lot of labs all over the world and seen what’s possible. I’ve seen stem cells used to reconstruct organs. So I think that within the next five years we’re probably going to see some evidence of stem cells being used to correct maladies that we didn’t think were fixable — a busted spinal cord or a failed heart, maybe.
MJ: At least Americans seem to be exercising more. Are we getting healthier?
SG: A lot of Americans think they are working out correctly but they’re not. Many folks focus on more aerobic-based activities, but they should concentrate on building upper-body strength. We know that people who work their upper bodies tend to have better lung function. Twenty minutes a day of isometric exercise seems to be the sweet spot.
MJ: What about our diets?
SG: Seven different-colored foods a day. I’m not a huge fan of adding supplements to our diets. When companies try to take the good stuff out of food and put it into pill form, they’re not surrounding it with the same micronutrient matrix that probably allows us to absorb those vitamins the way they were designed to be absorbed.
—-
This article originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.
Print this article
October 25th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Gupta in his book “Cheating Death”, and in interviews promoting the book, has done a huge disservice to the public. He has deliberately confused brain death with vegetative state. The two are very different. The general public needs to understand that a declaration of brain death, done by the statutorily and professionally mandated protocol, is the most certain method we have of determining death. No one rises up from brain death. In confusing the difference between vegetative state and brain death Gupta is responsible for unnecessary disstress for families whose loved ones have been declared brain dead, and for causing next of kin to reject organ donation and thereby causing the death of people on the transplant waiting lists.
[Reply]
November 9th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
C’mon Doc! “Many folks focus on more aerobic-based activities, but they should concentrate on building upper-body strength. We know that people who work their upper bodies tend to have better lung function. Twenty minutes a day of isometric exercise seems to be the sweet spot.” Upper body? Isometric? Surely people who do aerobic-based activities have better lung function. I’ve not seen people do bench press and lat pull downs as a way to improve lung function. Far better to do whole-body exercise, especially incluidng the large muscle groups of the legs!
[Reply]