In baseball, a triple play is a rare and beautiful thing to see. Unfortunately, the major causes of death in the United States - heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Altzheiner's, kidney disease (we will ignore Covid-19, which was #3 in 2020, as temporary) - are all due to a triple play of lifestyle factors that are almost entirely under our control.
These three risk factors are the direct result of our modern lifestyle of overeating, eating unhealthy foods, and lack of exercise. These lifestyle factors work together to create the disease causing metabolic imbalances that trigger the obesity epidemic of excess body fat, chronic system-wide inflammation and insulin resistance. Together this triple play causes diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, some cancers, coronary issues and perhaps dementia.
The sad thing is, we could vastly reduce our risk of these complications by making fairly simple lifestyle adjustments to our diet and activity level. But we won't. Instead we shop for "diets" and "programs" that cost a lot of money and don't work. In baseball, a triple play is a rare and beautiful thing to see. In life, it is neither rare nor beautiful.
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