Upon entering the Tartaglione office, a mural appears in the foreground that summarizes the thoughts of this family of doctors: “Start taking care of your life today. Be positive. Laugh. I learned to say no. Don’t stay still. Move. If you don’t like something, revolutionize yourself. Choose what is good for your body. Work to live. Prioritize what is important.”
Jorge Tartaglione He inherited his love and passion for medicine from his father: “I come from a family of doctors. My dad was a doctor, my brother and my children are doctors. “I worked with my father and my brother, and now my children work with me.”
For 32 years he walked the corridors of the Churruca Hospital and became head of the Medical Prevention and Quality of Life service. His professional work also led him to participate in activities through the Argentine Society of Cardiology and the Argentine Cardiological Foundation, which he presided over for several years.
In 1999 he took a new turn when he decided to enter the media: “More than twenty years ago I began to see that I could transfer my action to the community, that what I talked about with the patient in the office, I could expand to many further”.
“I practice what I prescribe”he says, with a pleasant tone and a smile that will not leave him throughout the conversation with Viva. “I get up at a quarter to six, I do gymnastics, treadmill, weights, I read from 7 to 9 in the morning and then I go to the radio.”
Cake, as his acquaintances call him, several years ago he embarked on the challenge of demonstrating that if a person adopts certain routines they can improve their quality of life. In fact, that is the basis of Small big changeshis new book, which he defines as a manual “full of advice, good practices and useful data.”
Today he is in a great moment: he has just published his fourth book, he hosts Family Doctor every afternoon on Channel 9, he participates in The immense minority on Radio with you and he continues to see patients.
Eating without watching TV lowers the rate of eating disorders.
-How many hours do you sleep?
-I sleep well. Am militant about eating early, I have dinner at eight at night and then I have time, if I want, to watch a little TV. The best thing that can happen to me is to be in bed at half past nine, covered and calm, and know that I have eight hours to sleep.
-Are you a cardiologist and also a family doctor?
-I am a cardiologist and my daughter Fiorella is also a cardiologist. But one day my son Joaquín told me: “I’m going to be a family doctor.” At that moment I understood how extraordinary family and general medicine is. This is how it came about Family doctorthe TV program.
-What are the Tartaglione meetings like? Healthy menu and medical talks?
-We have a house in Baradero and my wife and I go on weekends, she takes us ashore. There we have barbecue and if my children are there they sometimes challenge me: “Dad, you are eating with too much salt!”but no, we don’t talk that much about medicine.
Tartaglione and what needs to be recovered
-In the book you emphasize returning to certain rituals of yesteryear, what would they be?
-I start the book with a chapter about eating around the table. I remember that my dad would come home from the office and we would wait for him, even though it was late, to eat together, without television. That ritual has been lost. I insist that, little by little, we can incorporate it because the evidence shows that eating this way lowers the rate of eating disorders and also the rate of obesity because we eat better, we eat at home. Also It is important to find time to think about yourself and not be overwhelmed with everything that happens. Before, much more time was spent thinking about one.
Never eat anything that your grandmother didn’t recognize as food.
-How did the idea for the book Little Big Changes come about?
-One person told me that the television program had a basis that we could transmit in a book. There is a new medicine called “lifestyle medicine” that says that, if I make small modifications, I can change my life prognosis because all the diseases of this century, secondary to lifestyle, are caused by factors such as diet , stress or lack of physical activity and rest. In the book I did not include anything about stress because it is a very broad topic and I did not include anything about diets, because I do not believe in diets.. What I propose is, for example, cooking at home again, starting to make that small big change.
-Why do you suggest your readers not eat anything that their grandmother wouldn’t eat?
-You talked to my grandmother about disaccharide, polysaccharide and she said: “What is that?” Eat at home, make some noodles, knead. I chose things that come from the earth. Never eat anything that your grandmother has not recognized as food and eat everything that rots because it has no chemicals, it is healthy, fresh and natural.
-The book is a choral work with a prominent soloist, did you think about it that way?
-The choir has to be there. I am a choir conductor and I learn from the choir. On the TV show, I hope the psychologist Analía Carril, Fabricio Ballarini, Nora Bär or Rodo Reich arrive because I want to know what they are going to tell me and how I can get into the topic. I am delighted that my children, Joaquín and Fiorella Tartaglione, work with me and also my son-in-law. In the book I had very good collaborators, such as Fernando Rojas, a physical activity teacher, Analía Carril, who worked in my services at the Churruca Hospital, Franco Chiarabini, a garden specialist, and my children, who communicate very well.
-For some years now you have been talking about the healthy revolution, has it already started?
-The healthy revolution It is a divine concept because it is contagious: if you take care of yourself, the person next to you will take care of yourself. There is a great senior revolution because in Argentina the population over 65 years of age is growing and the population of those under 15 is decreasing. People over 80 are the ones who made the senior revolution, the healthy revolution. That is, I don’t know if I’m going to live 20 days, 20 years, 30 years, what I know is that I want to live them very well. I want to die as healthy and as late as possible.
-When a patient comes to your office overwhelmed by the economy, reality, how do you help them?
-First, I listen to it. I tell him that he does not have to punish himself, that he speaks to himself with affection because there are things that are not in his hands. I try to see how he can take care of himself, dedicate more time to himself, do little things that he likes, be with his loved ones. One always needs a route map, sometimes it is difficult to find it, so it is necessary to think, without getting overwhelmed, what the objectives are. I think we all seek to be at peace, to find lost joy.