PLATTSBURGH — Making healthy choices in what we drink and what we eat can improve our daily quality of life, but it can also literally add years to our lives.

Dr. Robert Vogel, chief medical director of the Pritikin Longevity Center and Spa and co-author of the "The Pritikin Edge: 10 Essential Ingredients to a Long and Delicious Life," visited Plattsburgh recently to speak at the EXPLORE conference's Heart Teaching Day.

EXPLORE, or Experience and Professional Learning Opportunities Result in Excellence, is a series of local presentations brought to professionals by several organizations, including CVPH Medical Center, the Clinton County Health Department, Plattsburgh State and Clinton Community College.

Vogel, also a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center, used some stern words to emphasize both the individual's and the health-care provider's role in maintaining a healthy relationship between diet and the heart.

"Coronary heart disease is not an inevitable part of being a human being," Vogel said in front of more than 100 area health-care providers, including doctors, nurses, dieticians and therapists. "It's more a result of lifestyle. The diseases we have, we bring on ourselves."

SHORTER LIVES
Poor diet choices coupled with inadequate exercise accounts for 400,000 annual deaths in the United States, about 14 percent of the overall premature deaths from preventable causes, Vogel said.

Combine that with the 19 percent who die from tobacco-related disease and the 5 percent whose premature deaths are caused by excessive alcohol, and one-third of the nation's preventable deaths are a direct result of lifestyle choices, he said.

"Many of us in America think we have a great life," he said.

But figures suggest, he added, that we are living a third-world lifestyle.

"We take pride that we are living longer, but for the first time in human history, we've experienced a decline in life expectancy."

The fact that healthy lifestyle choices significantly decrease a person's chances to develop heart disease is not news, Vogel said. But knowing that does not seem to impact the fact that people still do not make solid lifestyle choices.

"Don't we love our kids?" he said with a raised voice as he produced a graphic showing that obesity in America has risen dramatically over the past 15 years. "Why are we feeding them cheeseburgers, hot dogs, Lunchables?"

The key to longevity, as it is with simple weight loss, is to reduce the amount of calories in the daily diet, he said, noting that laboratory tests with mice have clearly shown that reducing calories significantly increased their lifespan.

IT'S NOT THE POTATO
Americans love their sugar, however. When the country was founded, people averaged six pounds of sugar per person per year, Vogel noted. Today, the average adult eats about 150 pounds per year, and the average teenager about 250 pounds.

"And we wonder where obesity comes from," he said emphatically. "One of the greatest causes of sadness in the country is obesity. It's not especially fun being an obese child in the U.S., and that's the real reason for stamping obesity out."

Losing weight is often a difficult endeavor for people, but it is doable with proper incentive and proper guidance, Vogel said.

"If I take one cookie per day out of my diet for the next five years, I will lose 50 pounds," he said, emphasizing the need to truly change eating habits to gain positive results.

Hamburgers, french fries and pizza are the three favorite foods of Americans, he said, suggesting that people need to re-evaluate the meaning of diet and nutrition.

For instance, a simple baked potato has 490 calories per pound, while the same pound of french fries is 1,490 calories and one pound of potato chips is 2,900 pounds.

"It's not the potato that's the problem," he said. "It's what we do with them."

Vogel also covered many of the options between junk food and smart snacks and emphasized the need for people to take control of what they eat every day and to remain active, though he suggested that strenuous exercise may not be advantageous as people get older.

He also discussed the pros and cons of alcohol, sharing the fact that excessive alcohol kills 100,000 people a year but one drink of wine per day has been shown to reduce the risk of heart attack.

E-mail Jeff Meyers at: jmeyers@pressrepublican.com