How well are you ageing? Can you be in the 3rd or 4th quartile?
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Try to understand the graph above. The lines depict the number of people, with the entire population of 70 year old people divided in four equal groups (Quartiles). There is a huge difference in the wellness of people the same age. You can see that the bulk of the population is grouped at the low fitness end. If we assume you are in quartile two, at the top end, you are in the middle of the range, then you can expect to die in your early 80’s.
We know a lot about these “Normal People”, they can expect to be on several medications in the last ten years of life, to be suffering from one or more of the common chronic health issues, and to be disabled in important ways. We also know that they live ten or fifteen years less than could if they tool better care of themselves earlier in life.
In the fourth quartile, some people are amazingly fit, and capable, and if that’s you, that’s wonderful.
For the rest of us the question is, can we move our current fitness to the right, can we be in the third quartile, and even better close to the 4th quartile. That is very doable, for almost everyone. There is no magic in this, better diet, take an interest in being healthy, find exercises you enjoy, engage socially with other people, and sleep well. Maintain that effort through most of your life. The sickness shown in the graph above is about our modern communities; almost all of us are sick, the modern environment encourages and causes this sickness. It’s not about you, but only you can reverse that sickness in your own life.
Even if you have neglected to do that, Dr Peter Attia says that the earlier you take the business of being healthy seriously the better your results will be. So get on with it, there are many things you can do to make your own life an exception, don’t get like the old man below.
The image above doesn’t shock you, because in our sick community it’s NORMAL. Over and over, we learn that to be “normal” is to allow the living conditions of our society to make you sick, far too early in your life, to make the five horsemen of our community, strokes, heart disease, type II diabetes, cancer and dementia likely events in your own life.
Not entirely, but to a large extent, we KNOW that most of the problems those five horsemen cause are avoidable. And if that’s not the case, if we have a reserve of health, and strength, those horsemen only knock us down, they can’t knock us out.
That’s your challenge.
How do we age?
Is this old man 70, 80, or 90? That makes every difference to his future.
Dr Peter Attia has written about this saying that the four pillars of your capability in your last decade are stability, strength, aerobic capability and your ability to convert a lot of breathing into hard physical effort when you need to.
I want to be cycling, able to run, able to carry a weight on my back and walk up a decent hill, to dance easily, when I enter my final decade. I want to dress myself, and cut my own toe-nails, and feel confident that I can be active without the fear of falling.
For all of us uncertainty exists. Health setbacks happen, like covid-19, or my own angina attack, or you fall and break a bone. When that happens, your health doesn’t gradually decline, if drops down a step or many steps. If you are strong, if you have a reserve of fitness, you can recover those steps, but too many people cannot, and they hang on, until the next crisis, or the last crisis.