Common Sense Health: The Real Risk Isn’t What You Think

By Diana Gifford-Jones on July 18, 2025.

I have a strong belief in personal responsibility.

From an early age, I was taught that my own daily decisions will determine my future.

You will know, for example, where I heard that sugar is the “white devil”. It’s a conviction helps me avoid it. For another, if I don’t use my muscles as I age, I know I will lose them.

But there’s a set of problems we’re not talking about. In fact, in our personal hopes and efforts for good health, we are often obsessed with fear about the wrong risks.

We focus on cholesterol but ignore loneliness. We cut carbs but don’t move our bodies. We chase step counts, yet deny ourselves sleep, nature, purpose, or joy. If my father championed common sense, I want to build on his message with something just as important: whole-life prevention of ills – with ills very broadly defined.

That means looking beyond pills, blood pressure and protein intake. It means stepping back from the microscope and seeing the full human picture. And increasingly, large-scale studies are proving the factors that most powerfully protect our health and wellbeing are often the ones we’re least likely to track on a fitness app – or even in most doctors appointments.

Take the Harvard Study of Adult Development, an ongoing project that began in 1938. It’s one of the longest studies of adult life ever conducted.

Its key finding? The most consistent predictor of long, healthy lives isn’t diet, wealth, or even exercise-it’s the quality of relationships, also called “social fitness”. Close social ties were more protective than any single medical metric.

Loneliness, on the other hand, has been shown to have health effects comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

In recent years, there have been dozens of studies that explore the impact of multidimensional lifestyle interventions – in other words, these studies test the effects of health care programs that blend physical activity, social connection, nutrition, stress reduction and other treatments.

The findings consistently show superiority over single-focus strategies for managing diabetes and reducing cardiovascular events, stroke and depression, just to name a few.

Illness is not always a precision fix. You may be better off tending to broader dimensions of your life.

It’s worth knowing about the FINGER trial from Finland too. It’s one of the first major randomized controlled trials to show that a blend of modest lifestyle changes (better diet, light exercise, cognitive engagement and social activity) could slow decline in older adults, even among those at higher risk of dementia.

It’s research like this that is sparking a healthy wave of organizations addressing social isolation. GenWell, found at genwell.ca, is one example.

This is the new frontier in prevention, living in a way that protects your health because it supports your humanity.

This isn’t about rejecting advances toward more technical, lab-driven medical breakthroughs. I have huge respect for medicines that cure or manage diseases and for surgeons and their scalpels. I’m proud of what science can do. But too many of us have outsourced health to lab results, forgetting that daily habits, environments, and emotional lives matter as much – sometimes more – than our biomarkers.

Let’s shift the lens. Let’s talk about what really keeps us well. Not fear, not fads, not guilt, but meaningful, joyful, intentional choices, sustained over time.

What does this mean you do?

You can start by making an old-fashioned phone call to a friend, a neighbour, or a family member you haven’t connected with for a while. Make a date to get together, go for a walk, cook a meal and do it with the music turned on.