Thinking of your life in a “health-span” rather than a life-span shines a new light on why we exercise most days.
We want mostly very good years as we age, being able to move around well in our 60, 70’s and 80’s. They would be termed as having a good health-span, but it needs some work regularly along the way.
If we look at at life-span, being on a stack of tablets, not being able to move around much because we are in so much pain and have little or no energy is no fun whatsoever. We may be “living”, but hardly living well or on our own terms.
Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure rarely happen all of a sudden, they are usually DECADES in the making and our lifestyle usually dictates how quickly these things threaten to blight our lives.
What we do today affects our future very directly and we can still change course even if we still on the wrong path and still try to convince ourselves we are “more fun” living this way, but what about the people who will have to look after us for our “fun lifestyle”.
Nothing wrong with having fun and a drink and something we don’t usually eat as a treat, but when its our daily life and not moving much, then we eventually end up in deep trouble.
Of course there are well-documented Centurions who smoke, have a regular drink, eat badly, and people often use them to “prove” healthy advice wrong in their own mind, but 30 year research into this group shows they are one-off’s with rare “lucky” genes that hardly anyone ever has. The rest of us are not so lucky.
The problem is science shows us often drastically that a lousy lifestyle eating and drinking what you want too often will eventually kill you, and far sooner than you think, or at least incapacitate you so life is much more of a struggle than it ought to be.
Decide what life you want to live, eating mostly good food and a life of plenty of movement, or a life relying on tablets, eating what you want, living in pain and moods continuously on the floor, only lifted briefly by food and drink times which only continues the vicious circle.
