My Physical Examination Sounded the Alarm at Forty

Recently I went for a series of physical checkups and was found to have several minor problems: multiple gallbladder polyps, renal cysts, fatty liver, and the fairly rare lumbosacral spinal epidural lipomatosis.

Most of these caused no symptoms; only the lumbosacral epidural fat overgrowth gave me lower-back and leg pain, but once I kept myself warm and started using an ankle brace, that problem was essentially gone. For years before this I had seen orthopedic doctors for my back and leg pain, but none could give a clear diagnosis or effect a cure; it just kept recurring. Yet the MRI I had this time showed thickened epidural adipose tissue anterior to the thecal sac at the lumbosacral level, about 8 mm.

All of these point to a single cause—obesity. Of course, I am not especially obese; to look at me I seem to have a normal build. But I know myself that my BMI is over the limit, and my fat is concentrated mainly in the abdomen—I have the classic middle-aged "commander's belly."

This is a problem with a long history. It is related to my lifestyle; for years I have preferred sitting still to moving, spending long years at a desk, buried in study and writing for half my life. Now that I have reached forty, my body is protesting. These health problems may look like minor, common ailments of middle age, but they also carry a certain risk of turning cancerous, and if I let things continue they will affect my health.

No one can claim his lifestyle is completely healthy, and people must correct their habits in the face of the facts. Yet changing one's habits is never easy for anyone. These health problems are warning me that I can no longer overwork at my desk and must increase my exercise; I have become "overweight from overwork."

My diet has always been light, I do not eat much, and I have no endocrine problems; I had a very normal figure when young, weighing twenty to thirty jin less in college than now. So the only cause is long-term sitting and inactivity.

Especially in recent years, I have set very high demands on myself in my studies and have constantly pushed myself to learn more medicine. My workload is also heavy; I have as many as two or three thousand long-term patients, and I always have no time for exercise. Sometimes, to satisfy patients, I do not even have time to use the restroom. I think many of my colleagues in medicine have the same problem.

After the checkup, I decided to increase my exercise, especially my effective exercise time. One should get five sessions a week of moderate or high-intensity exercise lasting 45 minutes or more, because anything shorter does not count as effective exercise and cannot burn off the body's excess fat.

I study tumors myself, and I know that about a third of cancer patients fall ill because of their own improper lifestyle. Building a new lifestyle means making big changes, which is not easy for most people. Some cancer patients, after being diagnosed, have through changing their lifestyle achieved recoveries that medicine could not.

I do not want my body to keep sliding downhill until cancer develops. Forty is the watershed of life; many chronic diseases are hard to detect before forty, but after forty they begin to surface one after another.

The most reliable means of anti-aging is to change one's lifestyle. People who gorge themselves, eat overly rich and fatty food, and lack exercise do indeed age faster than those with good dietary and exercise habits, and overwork also accelerates aging.

Medical progress lets human beings understand their own bodies more clearly and see more clearly what has gone wrong with their lifestyle. I sincerely thank the countless colleagues throughout history who have devoted themselves to medical research and contributed to the life sciences. It is because of the efforts of all our colleagues—not the contributions of one or two "medical sages"—that we have accumulated such rich medical knowledge, understand what is happening inside our own bodies, and can make targeted changes.

From now on I plan to gradually reduce my desk work and try to limit my patient load, seeking a balance between work and life so that I can live longer. The body is the capital of revolution; without health and life, I cannot serve others.