What Price to Live Longer?

Those over 55 years are the fastest growing demographic for a gym membership.  This current phenomenon is not lost to gym marketers who try to discourage the younger set from intimidating that lucrative group.  They have designed programs and hours that separate the two.

Humans have always been obsessed with living longer.   Many would consider this a good thing, as we have lowered our expectations. Not too long ago, emperors (and the fabulously wealthy) strove to live eternally.  The ruling leaders of such disparate areas as China, Mexico, and Egypt believed that they were the children of gods, merely visiting this world.  After death, they would return to live forever.  They had slaves to prepare their graves for such resurrections.  Many willingly joined them, so as to be eternally with their overseer. The “elixir of life,” as every high school graduate who paid attention those years we thought we were immortal, was the impetus for many of the discoveries in the New World.  And most recently, the Armenian-American short writer of the early 20th century opined that while in his heart he knows he will die, he always thought that, “an exception would be made in my case.”

We all feel this way.  We disguise our mortality with our clothing and our blood-pressure gadgets. We are taught to believe that we can live longer, if we only took care of ourselves through diet, exercise and frequent visits to our physicians.  All that is required is discipline. Books and articles keep reinforcing this message:  take care of your body and your body will take care of you.

The argument that life is to be enjoyed and not just to be lived has a new advocate.  Barbara Ehrenreich has added her powerful voice (and pen) that buttresses the position that the American obsession with fitness and wellness is killing us.  Ms. Ehrenreich, in addition to being a successful author, was trained as a scientist, has a Ph.D. from the prestigious Rockefeller University in New York.  When she completed the book, she was almost an octogenarian.  While she is known to be a “muckraker,” her arguments make a lot of sense.

There are three areas that I wish to address in this battle for the supremacy of a long-life:

•Exercise
We have been told that we need to work out six days out of the week.  There can be no negotiations on this issue and we can offer no excuses.  The literature designed for the elderly is replete with how we should divide our time between cardio and muscle training.

The reality is that all we need to do is to keep moving.  Every motion that we make can be life-prolonging, even simple walking. You need not train yourself to beat the four-minute mile.  A relaxing walk around the pond maybe all you need. We don’t require a treadmill, a stair-climber or the other expensive machines that are offered by a gym membership.  Nature, a few steps away from our door, provides all we need.

•Diet
Every year sees a new diet fad. Why eat like a caveman, as the paleo diet wants us to, or like a Greek or Italian, as the Mediterranean diet requires?  Perhaps we should refrain from eating anything at all.  Caloric restrictions or intermittent fasting has shown that such deprivations can prolong life, but in rats and other animals.

All humans need to do is stay away from fatty, salty and sweet foods.  Enjoy your food and forget about the scale.

•Physician Visits
The fact that a doctor wears a lab coat does not make him or her a scientist. Most of what they practice is not science – if only it were so. It is marketing.  The most important job a physician has is to set up the next appointment.  If you can live with dying in your sleep, skip the next visit and instead enjoy life, and accept your mortality.

Have any thoughts on the issue? Share them with us at www.MatureAging.com, and we may post them (only after getting your permission) in a future edition.

Till next time,

Josh