KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 15 — Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has advised Malaysians to read newspapers every day to help keep the mind active.
In his column published by the New Sunday Times today under the heading "Here's my recipe for staying healthy", Dr Mahathir said when talking or making speeches, memory of words and phrases and the alternatives would spring to the mind easily with regular reading.
He said if one does not read or seldom reads, the words do not come spontaneously when talking or making a speech.
"Reading newspapers every day also helps to keep the mind active and improves the capacity to form words and phrases.
"It is normal for an old person to remember incidents in the past than recent incidents. But even this can be improved with reading and talking," Dr Mahathir wrote.
The 94-year-old prime minister devoted much of the column to answering the one question people repeatedly asked him about — his ability to function at this late age.
"I feel obliged to explain my experience even if it is not based on scientific study. Frankly, I don't know how I am what I am. All I can say is that I have been fortunate in not suffering from the diseases that shorten one's life," he said.
Dr Mahathir said while he survived a heart attack 30 years ago, heart attacks are not as fatal as it used to be.
He pointed out that certainly many things are control and people should do their best to control themselves to stay healthy and possibly live to a ripe old age.
"Self-discipline or the ability to control what we can do in life, is life-saving. We must always try to control our desires," he explained.
Good eating habit is Dr Mahathir's first recipe to stay healthy, saying people should eat to live and not live to eat.
"The body really does not need a lot of food except when one is young and growing. For them, food is needed to ensure good bodily growth. Still, the amount of food must not be more than what is needed.
"Obesity often follows overeating even among children and the young. And obesity is not good for health and longevity."
Dr Mahathir said children grow fat because doting parents insist on them taking a lot of food which they should not.
Instead, parents should teach their children to eat more fruits and vegetable and less rice or carbohydrates and certainly less sugar.
Elaborating on obesity, which afflicts a very high percentage of Malaysians, Dr Mahathir said the problem usually begins at the age of 40 due to the tendency at that age to eat as much tasty food as available. He said when food is tasty, more of it would be taken.
He said the stomach responds to the bigger intake by becoming bigger and when this happens, more food is needed to assuage the feeling of hunger, which results in weight gain.
This would then lead to the heart working harder to deliver blood and absorbed food to the overweight body. To cope with the heavier work, the heart enlarges and as the blood pressure goes up, it brings with it all kinds of related symptoms and diseases.
"So in order to avoid blood pressure diseases, eat less and don't grow fat. Besides the heart, the other organs of the body such as the liver, kidneys and pancreas will all be overstressed. Any one of these organs may fail and shorten life," he says.
— Bernama
