People often look at the elderly folks along with their ill health and sedentary predicament to remark
“I don’t want to live like that! Better to burn out than fade away!”
This sounds like a legitimate opinion but do really want to drop dead at the age of 58 from a massive and painful cardiac arrest while your life flashes before your eyes and the curtain falls? Perhaps there’s a better alternative, somewhere in the middle.
My grandmother recently passed away at the age of 94. For the past four to five years she has lived in an aged care facility with dementia and very little ability to care for herself or really show many signs of being aware of her surroundings or the identity of visitors. She wasn’t in pain but was basically just existing each day. Is this a life worth living? You could argue able-bodied people many decades her junior are doing the same with the 7 day cycle of working for 4-6 days followed by a weekend and repeating it all over again. A birthday and perhaps a holiday marks the passage of time for another lap of the sun. However, that person theoretically can practice free will and change their circumstances and their quality of life whereas my grandmother couldn’t.
These days there are many ‘old world’ diseases which are now curable. HIV is now almost curable and even cancers such as melanoma are becoming a chronic disease thanks to the latest class of immunotherapy “MABs” or monoclonal antibodies.
However, due to a high proportion of occupations requiring machine operators, be they mechanical machines or electronic, it leaves a large proportion of us sitting on our backside for extended periods of time, for days on end. Clearly, for thousands of years, we didn’t do this as a species. Then, in the grand scheme of things, in the blink of an eye along the human timescale, we are sitting around. A lot. When we aren’t sitting at work, we are sitting in a vehicle commuting, so we can order or make a quick meal in 15 minutes so we can sit again to eat and drink. We then move to a more comfortable sitting position such as the sofa so we can sit or lie motionless to work electrons and photons jump about a screen for a few hours. At this point it’s getting late, so a fully vertical position is called upon for about 6-7 hours. The alarm sounds so we swear, get up and do it all over again.
So, this leads us to the problem of metabolic disease and how it’s slow but effective killer of the 21st century. Heart attack, stroke and diabetes claim many lives, not to mention mostly preventable cancers such as lung cancer ( but not all) and perhaps even neurological diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.
This leads to the original question that I was aiming toward. How do you live a long and healthy life? Perhaps we aren’t evolved enough as a species to know the full answer. However some of the clues are pretty obvious! Ultimately, it comes down to individual choices and tiny (good) habits.
If you work a sedentary job, there’s nothing to stop you from getting up and walking a lap of your workplace. Make it a lap via the bathroom if you’re paranoid about co-workers wondering what you’re doing walking around. Perhaps do some stretches if visiting the rest-room – it would take less than 30 seconds.
If using public transport, get off the train or bus one stop earlier and walk it in. If driving, park a 10 minute walk from office or workplace.
I think you get the idea by now. How many unhealthy people do you know who do such things for an extended period beyond a few weeks in New Year? None. This is one reason so many people or overweight and helpless. Tiny habits can lead to huge differences over time. Particularly if the additional walking leads to a few gym visits per week and you start using a standing desk instead of walking.
Physical health is one thing but mental health is the other hand. As per the name of this blog, sometimes doing the opposite or contrary to the majority are doing, leads to the best results. If nobody is meditating daily but you are, guess who will have better mental health after a few months? If everybody is glued to their phones or Netflix for every spare waking minute, but you aren’t, guess who will get the most out of life?