# The One-Page Health Cheat Sheet

Companion to **Everything I've Learned About Health, Mapped**: https://shek.terrak.ai/health/map/

Seven areas, distilled to what to actually do. Nothing here is medical advice, and none of it
replaces a doctor who knows your situation. Sources are named at the bottom so you can check any
of it yourself.

---

## 0 · Adherence: the one that decides whether any of the rest happens

- Pick the version you would still do on your worst week. That is your floor.
- Attach it to something you want, not to a rule about discipline.
- Never negotiate the floor downward; never turn it into a ceiling.
- Missed a day? The next repetition is the only thing that matters. Skipping twice is what ends
  streaks, not skipping once.

## 1 · Sleep

- Aim for **7 or more hours** (AASM / Sleep Research Society consensus, adults 18–60).
- Fix the **wake time** first; it anchors everything else.
- Work backwards with cues, not willpower: last real food ~3h before bed, screens off ~30 min before.
- Cool, dark, quiet. Fix quantity before spending money on quality.
- Assume your quality is fine and your quantity is not, until measured otherwise.

## 2 · Food

- Half the plate vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter whole grains.
- **Protein 1.4–2.0 g/kg/day** if you train (ISSN position stand). Most people are well under.
- Cut sodium at the source: pickle, papad, namkeen, packaged masala, sauces. Not the salt shaker.
- Prioritise foods with high satiety per calorie. A deficit you can tolerate is the only one that works.
- Build in the thing you enjoy, on the plan, on purpose.

**Indian swaps that do the most work**

| Instead of | Use |
|---|---|
| Pickle / achaar | Lemon, raw onion and tomato, no-salt coriander-mint chutney |
| Papad, sev, bhujia, namkeen | Roasted makhana, roasted chana, vegetable sticks |
| Instant noodles, ketchup, soya sauce, ready masala | Cooked from scratch; spices instead of salt |
| Biscuits and bakery | Whole-grain roti, oats |
| Processed cheese and butter spreads | Fresh curd, paneer in moderation, hung curd |

*Flavour without salt:* lime, coriander, mint, garlic, ginger, green chilli, roasted jeera, black
pepper, tamarind, kokum, curry leaves, hing, amchur.

## 3 · Movement

*(Tags: 📊 = evidence · 📖 = a framework, not a finding · 🔧 = my own rule, no study)*

- 📊 **Strength: 30–60 min/week** is where most of the mortality benefit sits; it plateaus after
  about an hour. *(Meta-analysis, 16 prospective cohorts, ~10–20% lower all-cause mortality.)*
- 📊 Get fitness **measured, not estimated.** Fitness predicts mortality with no upper limit found
  *(122,007 adults)*, and people overestimate their own by ~17%, **the least fit most of all.**
- 📊 **For falls: balance training, not strength alone.** A Cochrane review rates exercise for
  falls prevention as high certainty, **but strength work alone did not prevent falls**; it
  worked only combined with balance training. Tai Chi and the Otago programme are the
  best-evidenced options.
- 📊 Most training should feel **too easy**, a small slice genuinely hard, little in between.
  ⚠ *Strongest evidence is in trained athletes over short blocks; 80/20 is an average, not a rule.*
- 📖 Train all four: aerobic base, peak aerobic capacity, strength, stability. *(Attia's framework
  in* Outlive*, useful as a checklist, not itself a trial result.)*
- 🔧 Restarting after a layoff: come back at about half, for two weeks. *(My rule. The principle
  that load spikes cause soft-tissue injury has support; these numbers are mine.)*
- 🔧 Grip, hinging and carrying age better than anything you do on a machine.

## 4 · Breath

- Nose over mouth, awake and asleep.
- To calm down: exhale longer than you inhale. Roughly 4 in, 8 out, for a few minutes.
- Slow breathing at about 5–6 breaths a minute has the most support behind it.
- Under heavy load, breathe out through the effort. Do not hold your breath through a maximal rep.
- Forceful or breath-holding practices are **not** universally safe. Ask a doctor if you have any
  blood-pressure history.

## 5 · Screening

- Get a baseline earlier than you have been told to. Your thirties is the point, not too early.
- Ask for tests that show **trajectory**, not just current status.
- Measure blood pressure properly **at home**, repeatedly. One clinic reading is close to noise.
- Know your fitness as a number.
- Write down what you were told. A result you cannot find later is a test you did not really take.

## 6 · Measurement

- Start with a **question**, not a device.
- Trends are signal; single daily readiness scores are mostly noise.
- Chest strap for training heart rate. Arm cuff, not wrist, for blood pressure.
- When the question is answered, **stop measuring**.
- Test the belief you have never tested. That is where the value is.

---

## Where these come from, and how far each one goes

| Claim | Source | How much weight it carries |
|---|---|---|
| **7+ hours of sleep** | Joint consensus statement, American Academy of Sleep Medicine + Sleep Research Society | A 15-expert panel reviewing the evidence across nine health categories. Guideline-grade |
| **Protein 1.4–2.0 g/kg** | ISSN Position Stand: Protein and Exercise | A professional society's formal position stand, not one study |
| **Dietary pattern** | DASH-Sodium (Sacks et al., *NEJM* 2001) and PREDIMED | DASH-Sodium is a **controlled feeding trial**, the strongest design here. ⚠ PREDIMED was **retracted in 2018** over randomisation failures, re-analysed and republished; its ~30% reduction in cardiovascular events held |
| **Fitness ↔ mortality** | Mandsager et al., *JAMA Network Open*, 2018 | 122,007 adults, hard endpoint, no upper limit found. ⚠ **Observational**: association, not proof of cause |
| **Strength 30–60 min/week** | Meta-analysis of 16 prospective cohorts, *British Journal of Sports Medicine* | Pooled across studies, J-shaped curve. ⚠ Observational, self-reported activity |
| **Balance prevents falls, strength alone does not** | **Cochrane** systematic review | Cochrane is the strictest tier of synthesis; rated **high certainty** |
| **Falls end independence** | CDC and WHO surveillance | National/global statistics, not a study. Tells you the scale, not the fix |
| **You misjudge your own fitness** | Self-rated vs measured VO2 max studies | ~17% overestimate, moderate correlation. ⚠ Small studies; trust the direction, not the decimal |
| **The four training pillars** | *Outlive*, Peter Attia | 📖 **A framework, not evidence.** One physician's synthesis; a good checklist, not a trial |
| **Half load for two weeks on restart** | 🔧 Me | **No study says this.** A conservative heuristic from my own injuries |

⚠ **Most of the strongest evidence above is observational**: large and consistent, but it shows
association rather than proof of cause. Where something is a framework or my own opinion, it is
labelled as such, because a cheat sheet that hides the difference is worse than no cheat sheet.

Questions, corrections, arguments: abhishek@terrak.ai