Haydn Shaughnessy outlines the top 10 things that made his life better during the year and is happy to pass on a few tips for a healthier lifestyle
This year was a remarkable one for health, with one great new breakthrough product in cancer care and many small steps forward in our appreciation of how to live healthier lives. As significant as any of the big breakthroughs, people seemed to be looking for all those important and elusive steps that would take them back to a more authentic lifestyle.
We are stumbling towards that authentic lifestyle even as the alcohol sales increase and adolescents become more publicly objectionable. Seen from the perspective of the man and woman in the street trying to build a healthier you, 2005 nevertheless was a great year.
Herceptin came onto the market, at last an option for breast cancer sufferers who are not susceptible to hormone therapies. It will save lives and in Ireland it's available as a preventative measure, a big plus for the Department of Health. In some areas, Ireland's cancer care shines.
Juicing is booming at Nude in Dublin and a variety of smaller outlets in Cork and elsewhere around the State. I've never been a big fan. How do you digest juice?
Nonetheless we borrowed a Green Star juicer and become cautious converts to apple, carrot and ginger. The Green Star produces high quality juice, arguably superior to that available from cheaper centrifugal juicers.
The health benefits of the sweet potato have been little reported, but I'm as much a convert to the knobbly tuber as I am to juice extraction.
Researchers in Japan have isolated what they call the sirtuin pathway, a mechanism by which sweet potatoes encourage the body to produce a protein, SIR 2, that switches the body from reproductive mode to preservation mode. That means sweet potatoes help you live longer.
The Art of Eating by MFK Fisher is the kind of book that doesn't get written any more. Fisher wrote in the 1930s of how, she, a food conscious American, discovered the intricacies and manners of French regional cuisine.
Fisher writes about food as relationships rather than glitz, the commune of the table rather than celebrity, food as a building block of personality as well as health.
I love my MBTs, the shoes that have a ball in the middle of the sole and make you walk like a Masai tribesman (or woman but thankfully not both). I picked up a pair of MBTs in October and within a week was walking and holding myself better, meaning straighter and with more scope to breathe properly. This year was one when getting the basics right assumed a new level of importance.
My Wild Fitness holiday in Portugal took me from near zero to a mini-triathlon in four days. Possibly a dangerous thing to do, but this growing market has introduced some interesting options beyond the aesthetic breakfast at the traditional health farm.
It enabled me to see beyond my limits, a sensation worth running a whole triathlon for. And the sun shone too.
Okay, you can see the gimmick a mile off but The No Sweat Exercise Plan is a sensible approach to exercise, guiding those people whose doctors, spouse and kids are putting pressure on them to do more. The plan is a road map of appropriate exercise. Read this book, learn how to do less and also feel less guilt about it.
We converted this year to using coconut oil in our kitchen. We've followed the modern pilgrimage to olive oil but found ourselves invariably putting on more weight. Three things convinced us to use an alternative for cooking.
Olive oil can weigh in at 120 calories per tablespoon, olive oil has a low smoke point, signalling that even at cooking temperatures it alters its state, and coconut oil just tastes great in the background of a typical dish.
The best health research of the year was that from Harvard University showing sunshine is as good a medicine for cancer victims as many of the harsh chemotherapy drugs. Sunshine made a welcome comeback in 2005, though we're still in the grip of an ultraviolet aversion.
This beat, but only just, confirmation that Vioxx has unacceptable dangers when used as a preventive medicine in inflammatory diseases of the bowel. A negative doesn't count in a list of the top 10 but campaigners against Vioxx will be asking why its demise took so long.
Finally, Live Blood Analysis. This is a way of seeing your blood in all its minute detail - the red blood cells, the white, the rogue bacteria, fibrinogen, and other microscopic particles that don't belong. Mine was done by Barry O'Brien of Galway who cautions against using the results for anything other than a diet motivator.
Avoid anybody offering diagnosis through Live Blood Analysis but if you need reasons to lower the fat intake of your diet, for example, go see it live.