Deborah Ross: With all these health tips, I can't go wrong

If you ask me...

If you ask me, I need to pay more attention to my health, and have therefore decided to live according to all recent health advice proffered by newspapers. I am only on Day One so cannot report on any benefits yet, but am full of resolve and have already made a number of important and, I hope, life-changing decisions.

For example, I am absolutely determined to drink a glass or two of wine a day as this will help stave off Alzheimer's (Daily Mail, 19.08.11) while, simultaneously, I shall be giving up wine completely as it is "damaging to older people's brains" (Daily Mail, 23.08.11).

I do not yet know how I will negotiate both drinking and not drinking, or how I missed the four-day window when I could do drinking without worrying about not drinking, but can tell you with complete certainty that I shall be trying to do so while staying happily married, which is the key to living longer (Independent, 23.08.11), and not getting married at all, as marriage makes you fat (Daily Mirror, 23.08.11). And if you are unhappily married and fat? You may well die tomorrow, you will be delighted to hear.

I shall, of course, be cutting down on salt as it increases the risk of both stroke and heart disease (Guardian, 10.05.11) but, at the same time, I also won't bother as salt may actually be good for you (Daily Express, 06.07.11). Between drinking and not drinking, marrying and not marrying, salting and not salting, I don't know how I'll find the time to pile my plate with protein, but suppose I'll just have to. It's by far the best way of keeping off weight (Daily Telegraph, 25.11.10) even though such Atkins-style diets may have rather had their day and, it seems, do more harm than good (The Times, 09.07.11).

Naturally, I won't be exposing myself to the sun without slathering myself in high factor sun cream, as I'd rather not suffer from skin cancer (The Sun, 12.08.11) although, at some point, I will need to sit down and ask myself: is skin cancer better or worse than the fragile bones that can result if you slather yourself in too much (Daily Mail, 23.08.11)?

But the main thing is I can't wait to get going with my new regime, particularly as waiting to get going with a new regime has been shown to take six years off your life, and it may be as long as four days before further research will show it does the opposite. It can make you wonder why you bother, but I wouldn't. That causes impetigo. Fact.