It is a bit crazy that everybody seems to agree that diet and exercise are important, and yet it seems like society is hell bent on making those things very hard to do well.

I went to the mall recently (big mistake) and I had to get lunch at the food court. I don't think there was a single gram of fiber across the 10 or so restaurants. So much of America is drive-thru garbage. Yup -- you don't even have to stand up to get your Big Mac. You can endanger other people by eating it while you drive.

We tell people to get exercise and then force them to have 9-5 desk jobs that have a 45 minute car-commute each way. And what's so much worse is that people are paying a ton of money for that car that's slowly killing them. It's not entirely their fault though -- that's just the way our society is set up. Walkability is a luxury only the rich can afford.

Then, 20 years later you show up to the doctor and the standard course of action is to prescribe a bunch of medications. The doctor says "you should exercise more and eat better" and many people just don't.

So much is broken.

The kid dying is sad, but it could have probably been prevented if the batteries were coated with a bitter agent such as denatonium.

IMO developing good sleep hygiene is by far the most important habit to cultivate.

It has lots of benefits, but the most important one is it replenishes your willpower. If you're trying to develop other healthy habits, it's 10x harder if you haven't slept well.

"eat healthy food as much as possible."

I usually stop, if my body signals me I had enough.

(might seem like pedantery, but I know some people do believe it literally, that it is healthy to just fill themself up with "healthy food", but it is not).

Nope.

I have one APOE4.

Her mother didn't get Alzheimer's until her mid-80s.

For those who are a bit intimidated by the thought of starting running, especially if you are a bit older, you don't need to run hard or fast. Slow jogging (zone 2) results in great cardiovascular improvements. Don't be afraid to start by alternating jogging and walking.

And if you can't spare 45 minutes 5 days per week, do it 3 days a week instead. Something is better than nothing.

And don't drink alcohol

Almost nobody believes it's a silver bullet or perfect shield against disease.

It's an odds game. I don't encourage people to start going into the long tail of diminishing returns to improve their longevity at the expense of everything else, but low hanging fruit like going for a walk every day has a very high ROI in later life quality of life.

You can do everything right and get taken out by an accident. So far I've dodged a loose trailer that came off next to me going the opposite direction, a rock dislodged by a marmot from the cliff above, two drunk drivers drifting towards me, a city bus turning towards me on an icy road, a few other left turning drivers who didn't see me in a crosswalk (I now carry a high intensity pulsing flashlight for crossing at intersections) and two near misses when a gust upset my glider.

Nobody thinks of it as a silver bullet. They know they can still get cancer, or get hit by a car, or whatever else.

Fine. But walking is also just kind of nice and unobtrusive for most people. I'd understand if you were replying to someone telling you to do strength training, but I'd argue walking is just pleasant.

The construction of GP and your post in sequence implies you think walking is not enjoyable.

GP: Go walking.

You: Instead, find a balance and enjoy life.

Walking is very enjoyable. Try it! Bonus, you'll come up with some of your best ideas!

Nobody thinks walking is a silver bullet, ie a cure all. It's a good preventative for the most likely cause of death (heart disease).

You're looking at this from the wrong angle. The dementia risk and longevity have overlapping factors. Lifestyle choices correlated with shorter lifespan are also correlated with earlier dementia onset. They're not perfectly proportional, but getting earlier dementia and also living shorter is lose-lose.

Technically there's an extreme version of this where someone's lifestyle is so bad that they're unlikely to live past 60, but the last 10-20 years of that life would not be fun.

That cuts both ways though, and I have quite direct knowledge of how this has been misused in really gross ways. But that said, I would still bias towards more freedom than less, and hope that we can get a handle on the more extreme cases.

You're completely missing the point. There's a significant amount of people middle aged and younger with numbers something like 125/75. They may have that same blood pressure never change from about 20 years old until their 70s.

Elsewhere they'd be borderline normal, but "in the west" (really just the USA) they're considered stage 1 hypertension and it's anyone's guess what wild nonsense the doctor will tell them once that's in their chart.

It's a total circus. Covering your own ass and screwing the patient over by assuming the worst is not preventative medicine. Overprescribing medication would cause harm if the patient is too naive for their own good despite doing everything else right. Nobody in their right mind should listen to that kind of doctor or take the medication.