`A Road Map to Longevity, Debunking Myths About Healthy Living’ by Mario Sequeira, Om Books International, paperback, price unlisted.

“King of Spirits” Mario Sequeira’s second makeover book titiled ‘A Road Map to Longevity’, debunking myths about healthy living was released by Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant on June 21, 2024′

WELLNESS and longevity books there are in plenty now for many are chasing a long life full of prosperity, happy experiences and much else? But “A Road Map to Longevity” is written by a Goan, the “Port King of Goa” or the man of spirits for spirits are his business. In Goa the liquor business booms perennially if I may say so for good, bad or ugly.
Despite their love for feni and wine or whatever other liquor Goans too have reaped a long life. Goa offers the good life like no other state does. Mario Sequeira’s first book “Killing Me Softly” about the challenge of quitting smoking is a most engaging read and so is “A Road Map to Longevity” which now offers us the straight and narrow road of lifestyle changeovers to be fit and fine for 130 years if we so wish!
After quitting cigarettes it was a challenge for this writer to beat his tendency to be a heavyweight; gaining weight is many a Goan’s bugbear for Goans love their drink, food, women, children and lifestyle of plenty in a tropical paradise. It’s a never ending story of celebrations around the year with births, dances, marriages, feasts and what else. Understandably, to stay on the straight and narrow path of simple living and high thinking can be a mega challenge and it is for so many of us today.
With the good life come the so called lifestyle diseases of high blood pressure, diabetes, failing cardiovascular system, arthritis, all kinds of cancers…cancer is in every home today. Allopathy offers drugs to hold the line of wellbeing but we all know the story of side effects and how drugs work on the principle of diminishing returns. Mario Sequeira puts together in his second book a veritable treasury of nuggets of advice, experiences first hand and how he finally emerged in the light of living a balanced, healthy life to the fullest!
The books is replete with interesting quotes and personal anecdotes and his canvas of reading so vast that the real challenge must have been to put it all together in an easy nutshell of a read – something he has done very well in this homegrown book. He observes, “Current prevailing science wisdom says that our biological potential is 130 years though I think it is much more, but even if we take it as 130 years it means that when you are sixty-five you do not even begin middle age. If you get it right, sixty-five could be the best time of your youth!”
Mario takes cognizance of how old age is a punishment for the many in the hands of mainstream biomedical healthcare where medicines merely focus on managing diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s…but “By delaying ageing, we could delay the onset of most of these diseases which come with age.” Medicine should not be just a science of treating symptoms but rather healing the root cause of the symptoms, he notes. He notes, “We must look at health as a major asset that needs to be managed just like our assets portfolio. It needs to be nurtured so that it sustains us for long…”
There are a lot of updates on the subject of reckless consumerism and obesity laying the foundation for a future of being perennially unhealthy– so how to conquer obesity first? “Did you know that more than 80-90 per cent diabetics are obese? With obesity and diabetes come more than a handful of other chronic ailments like cardiovascular disease, gall bladder disease, Alzheimer’s, asthma, fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis, cancer. One feeds off the other….”
“A Road Map to Longevity” is an excellent blueprint to clue yourself up with loads of upgraded information on the latest medical research on the subject of reaping all round wellbeing, it’s also an inspirational read to cheer you up for it is never too late to make a beginning…making you want to walk the path the author walked to emerge out of say a dark, frustrating tunnel — to happy daylight. Smell the flowers as it were to bid goodbye to aging painfully, dreadfully, terminally for years on end.
You must read this book full of vital insight and solutions to be healthy and happy…and it’s not hard to do once you realize it is easier to be healthy than sick, by imbibing Mario Sequeira’s road map or blueprint for a healthy, healthy and long life. Chapters cover themes from what ails the world’s oldest supercomputer, the human body to the importance of micronutrients, the retirement myth, your mind as the chief alchemist, the second brain which is your gut, losing weight without going insane, myths about diets and diseases…and yes, meeting the mollusk, the oldest documented animal on earth, fascinating. All this by way of adapting the author’s roadmap which works for him up the ladder of sustainable wellbeing, it will work for anyone if there is the need, want and desire to live long and well! Find the fountain of youth with the help of Mario Sequeira in this book!
“A Road Map to Longevity” is full of information and first-person insight, it’s written in short bites and so easily readable – keep the book by your bedside, execute the goals of wellbeing on a daily basis. If you’re suffering from what most of us are suffering from post-40s you need this guidebook with a difference to pave your way back to youthful joy forever!

Excerpted from `A Road Map to Longevity’ by Mario Sequeira…
DISEASE AND DATE

In many ways, we become what we eat. What we are today is based on what we have eaten over the past many years. The World Health Organization (WHO) claimed that the inadequate intake of three critical micronutrients zinc, vitamin A and iron was responsible for a number of sicknesses. There are about ninety essential nutrients but they prioritized these three given their benefits. When deficient, they cause the most damage. The six essential nutrients are vitamins, minerals, protein, fats, water and carbohydrates which people need to consume from dietary sources for proper body function. There are two reasons that these are called essential nutrients. Firstly, we must consume them either as food or as supplements because our body cannot make them, secondly because their absence could result in us getting sick. Essential nutrients are divided into two categories: micronutrients and macronutrients. Micronutrients are nutrients that a person needs in small doses. These include vitamins and minerals. Although the body only needs small amounts of them, a deficiency can cause all ill health. In my opinion, the odds of getting all essentials minerals through our food are zilch.
A 2020 WHO report states that the global spending on health continually rose between 2000 and 2018 and reached US$8.3 trillion or 10 per cent of the global GDP. In 2021, health spending per person in the US was $12,914, which was $5,000 more than the high-income nation.
Guess where the highest-spending country was ranked out of fifty in terms of life expectancy in 2020? The US which spent $10,921 per capita was ranked 47th behind Thailand which spent only $296 per capita at 48th and just ahead of Seychelles which was 48th and spent $840 per capita. Japan which spent less than half the amount spent by the US, ranked first.

There is More to Longevity than Just Medicine
Why is it that the country which spent the most on health was not the one with the highest life expectancy? Why was it not even among the top 5 or even top 10?
Coming to our very own India, Delhi has the highest life expectancy at birth but the Andaman and Nicobar Islands ranks second in life expectancy at birth even though their health facilities are not a shadow of those to be found in Delhi.
During the past forty years, obesity in the West has grown into an epidemic. While India due to environmental and lifestyle changes caused by industrialization, migration to urban areas, rising per capita spending and a culture of eating out, obesity has really taken off. Over the last fifteen years, it has almost reached epidemic proportions. In 2021, about 6.4 per cent of women and 4.0 per cent of men aged 15-49 were obese. Approximately 176 per cent women and 18.9 per cent men in the same age group are overweight, but not yet obese. This means that about a fourth of young women in India are overweight and a little over a fifth of men are above the normal body weights.
Worldwide diabetes has increased manifold and has also taken on overwhelming proportions. The number of people with diabetes rose from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. This deadly disease was estimated to be affecting 463 million in 2019 and the number is projected to reach about seven hundred million by 2045. Shockingly, one in two people living with diabetes do not know that they have the disease. Prevalence has been rising more rapidly in low and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. In 2019, diabetes and kidney disease due to diabetes caused an estimated two million deaths.
India’s tryst with diabetes takes it on a very similar trajectory as it is an obesity epidemic. Did you know that more than 80-90 per cent diabetics are obese? With obesity and diabetes come more than a handful of other chronic ailments like cardiovascular disease, gall bladder disease, Alzheimer’s, asthma, fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis, cancer. One feeds off the other. As one gets fatter, the risk of diabetes and all the other related sicknesses increases sharply, which greatly affects the quality of life. Even the risk of early death increases dramatically.
Whatever makes us fat also makes us sick. What makes us obese and what makes us diabetics?