Stop eating like this now!/ Alimehmeti breaks myths about the modern diet

 

In the "Elevate" podcast moderated by Floriana Garo, doctor Ilir Alimehmeti spoke about the impact of modern lifestyle on health, emphasizing that social networks and constant exposure to information create great psychological stress.

He focused on the harms of smoking, emphasizing that it does not bring any biological benefits, while it is linked to serious diseases, premature aging, and reproductive problems.

During the conversation with Floriana, Alimehmeti emphasized the importance of quality of life in addition to longevity, arguing that family ties, socialization, and the active involvement of the elderly in the family positively affect mental and physical health.

According to him, elderly people who live close to family have a lower risk of neurodegenerative diseases, while social and intellectual activities such as dominoes or sudoku help maintain cognitive functions.

A large part of the discussion was devoted to nutrition. Alimehmeti criticized ultra-processed foods, added sugar, and the consumption of fruit juices, which he said can have sugar levels comparable to sodas.

He recommended eating as natural and seasonal foods as possible, avoiding processed products, breakfast cereals, and industrial oils, especially praising olive oil.

The doctor also focused on the importance of physical activity, warning about the increase in obesity in children and the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. According to Alimehmet, the combination of daily movement with a balanced diet remains the main basis for a healthier and more quality life.

PART OF THE INTERVIEW

Alimehmeti: The influence of many people, because people are made to communicate with a maximum of 50 to 100 people. Think about your life, you don't have more than 50 or 100 close people that you can call close, so family, close friends, close colleagues, there are no more than 50 to 100 of these people. Meanwhile, what happens? Today we are in contact with 100 thousand people through social networks, with 1 million people. Our brains are not ready to have this kind of interaction so large. This causes stress.

Garo: If you had to choose one solution, would you choose quitting smoking or not?

Alimehmeti: We have solid evidence of the major damage that tobacco causes and unfortunately it is widely consumed in Albania, so if it is for Albania, this is definitely number one.

Garo: And when talking about smoking specifically, why should someone quit smoking?

Alimehmeti: This is a good question. There is a reason, for everything we do in life, we have a benefit, we also have a cost, everything that life has. Regarding the biological side, so we are talking purely as biology, smoking has almost no beneficial effect. So it does not bring us anything. It does not have any positive effect and has all the possible negative effects.

Garo: And what about the possible negative effects?

Alimehmeti: So if we do a cost-effectiveness calculation, there is no efficiency and it is totally a cost. From the health side to the monetary side. Even to some extent the social side. So we all know the diseases that smoking causes, from the worst, complete, even earlier aging, even sexual and reproductive problems.

Garo: Is aging really earlier with smoking?

Alimehmeti: Absolutely yes. Absolutely yes. People can't separate this because it will depend on genetics, it will depend on other problems, for example you smoke and you also have polluted air, because this also falls into the same logic. So smoking in a place where the air is clean and smoking in a place where the air is polluted. Why? Because there is a synergy between these two types of smoke. So these two types of smoke work stronger if there is also polluted air and you smoke. It will depend on the age when you started, it will depend on how much you have smoked, so how many cigarettes you smoke per day. What type, because this also matters, so there were some other types of tobacco, like any kind of thing, it was a little more natural before. Today we have everything ultra-processed, we have no idea what...

Garo: So they're just chemicals that you put into your body and that cause all sorts of bad things.

Alimehmeti: Including nicotine, endless, endless, endless. So if we take nicotine alone, nicotine alone is not the problem. We don't know that nicotine has any major bad problem in the body, nicotine is the molecule that gives us addiction, for which we go looking for another cigarette, nicotine gives us that. But the problem is all the other substances that are inside.

Garo: Now that it seems like people, more and more those who are aware at least, aware, are moving towards the trends of living healthier and being in these wellness clinics and living longer... Is life expectancy increasing? But in fact, as life expectancy increases, are people actually living better? Does well-being also increase during these years of longevity, or are they not correlated together?

Alimehmeti: That's very right. It's important to look at both together. So it's not just about longevity, you also need quality of life.

Garo: Quality of life, yes.

Alimehmeti: Of course, quality of life is also needed...