Better Health is Possible
The detail of the Skewed Fitness Graph isn’t important. The critical factor is that the “fitness” of people at 70 years of age is quite tightly grouped in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quartiles. We are not very fit.
Statistics in the USA show 80% of 70-year-olds are already suffering from metabolic dysfunction, often completely unaware of the issues that are accumulating to shorten their lifespan.
HALF of these 70-year-old people will be dead about 15 years later. That’s actually good, we are living longer, we die about 10 years later than a previous generation.
It’s also true that almost half of us, as individuals, can extend our healthy lifespan by improving simple lifestyle habits; nutrition, exercise, sleep, work, relationships and education are all important.
According to Dr George Vaillant, almost all of those who die between 55 and 80 suffer ill health for many years. In addition, “they often die, because of lifestyle choices over which they have significant control.” You don’t want to be in this group. You need not be.
Our bodies are adapted to being “like you”, the lifestyle you have is established by habits and feelings and social relationships. I’m like “me”, and I’m like “my friends”. This may trap you in the 1st or 2nd quartile and possibly cost you 10 or more years of healthy life. That’s avoidable. Take an interest in your health and how you might improve it.
Are You Preparing to Make Changes in Your Life?
Most of us need to work to improve our lives. There’s much that you already know and are trying to do, but life gets in the way. The “new you” becomes the “old you” again. That’s the opportunity for progress, once you KNOW that better health is possible.
This next page lists many things that you may already know about, but perhaps you need reminding about. You start by doing what you can from the next THREE pages.
What Health Coaching Does! (survey)
Improved understanding and use of Medical Services. An advocate for you if you need one.
Better evidence of dietary success. Weight-loss, Diabetes Control, Ulcer healing, Blood pressure control.
Improved Physical Fitness. Strength, flexibility, balance, stamina, speed.
Improved Diabetes Control – Reduced Asthma hospital admission.
Substantial reduction in pain, disability and depression.
Much better self-management of chronic health problems. Fewer visits to the doctor, much less time in hospital.
The Causes of Poor Metabolic Health for almost Everyone.
It’s not about the doctor, or the hospital or often about medicine at all.
What you buy to eat, and drink is critical. Our effort to live the easy life might be shortening it. the quality of our sleep is critical to our health. Our choice of transport or the use of tools to reduce physical effort, may be working against living a longer healthy life.
The Poor Health of the Nation
Although we are living longer, by the age of 60, at least 70% of people already suffer from the chronic metabolic problems that will end their lives, probably ten+ years short, and often after being severely disabled for most of the last decade. There’s an enormous opportunity to change that outcome for individuals.
This particularly applies to people like me who was trained as a teacher, and part of that training was so that I could give my students high quality health information. I now know that much of what I was taught (1960’s) was wrong. Most of the physical training ideas were wrong, and the dietary ideas were completely without foundation. Even most of the medical ideas that were common practice in the 1980’s were still without scientific backing. Who knew? None of us.
The American Dietary Guidelines were produced in the late 1970’s and copied around the world. But they were a political compromise, without scientific validity, but the guidelines changed the nature of food manufacturing and advertising. The world got fatter and sicker on a low fat, heart saving diet.
So here we are. In the 1990’s medicine as practiced was still not scientific. Even today, that is partly true. Unfortunately, dietary wars continue. You see the failure of public health knowledge, on the street, in supermarkets, and at the beach. And sadly, the staff in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and university staff in health-related specialties, tend to suffer the same problems as the rest of us.
Your Own Autonomy
Everybody needs to have complete control of their own decisions, and that’s why most people are very reluctant to consider using a health coach. The six health improvements, that Health Coaching provides (Above) has been documented in the USA, when coaching was “new” and less specialized than it’s become in recent years.
Even people with significant expertise and knowledge about health, still fail to be healthy themselves. That is a puzzling thing. Or perhaps not, maybe we are looking in the wrong place for answers. If it’s not about the science of health, although the best new science if helpful, maybe it’s about how you put a successful life together, about lifestyle.
Where do you shop, how do you travel, how much time do you spend sitting, do you get time to exercise, how are you sleeping, do you have your own garden, can you still run, do you weigh the same as you did at 25, do you have a large circle of friends? For almost everyone, the answers to those questions will be so close to identical, maybe that’s the problem. It’s not just about your choices; it’s also about the way our modern society is.
Our modern way of living makes almost all of us SICK and most of us will suffer ill health for many years, before we die, ill health that the doctor cannot cure, despite the best modern medicine and medical procedures. Normal health is killing us. If you are like most of the community, where is your autonomy? How can you learn to be not like everyone else, and preserve your own health? That’s the question.
An Uncertain Future
How to Avoid Early Death by Heart Attack
