On Aging

On aging: President Kennedy said, “It is not enough to add years to one's life...one must add life to those years.”

86 year old gymnast Johanna and 94 year old quick-stepper Mathilda, featured in the videos below, are still rockin' into old age with robust health and vigor. They appear to be the exception while the norm, what we have come to accept, is infirmity, debility, and senility.

While we all age, and ultimately die, how we live (to the extent of things we can control), most often, determines how we die. 

It is not as if at age 65 one becomes old and everything falls apart. The reality is that decisions we made in our youth and all along the way, relative to health, either bolstered or undermined our body's genetic potential for optimal health. Sadly, most are making bad decisions and paying for it with serious health issues as they age.

Among many false notions we have about modern medicine is the idea that we are living longer. In terms of absolute life span, nothing has changed. What has changed is the average life expectancy. One thing modern medicine has excelled at is keeping more sick people alive longer; in many cases, longer than they wish. 

“Today's average modern adult spends more than 10 percent of his or her life sick,” spending the last 12 years of life dysfunctionally, with a poor and progressively deteriorating quality of life, waiting to die. Said another way, we are not living longer; we are taking longer to die.

“Half of those ages sixty-five and over have two or more chronic diseases, and a quarter have problems so severe as to limit their ability to perform one or more activities of daily living. Meanwhile, throughout the industrialized world, (more) people are living longer, but they are getting sick sooner. So the number of years they spend chronically ill is actually increasing in both directions.” In other words, while industrialized nations have been successful in decreasing infant mortality, our children are so unhealthy that the onset of disease is much earlier and they will live a larger part of their lives sick. They also have a decreased life expectancy.

It is by no coincidence that all of this translates into expanding profits for both the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex and the big Agra and chemical food industries.

Health and vigor into old age are not only possible; they are nature's set-point. We are genetically programmed for health throughout our lives. Johanna and Mathilda should represent the norm.  

The decisions we make throughout our lives, as influenced by our lifetime exposures and experiences (70%), and to a lesser extent genes (30%), will determine how we live into our old age, and how we die.

"Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.” 

That Was Then & This Is Now

That Was Then…And This Is Now

That Was Then:
Republican President Nixon told a press conference in July of 1969: “We face a massive crisis in health care. Unless action is taken within the next two or three years….we will have a breakdown in our medical system.” An article in Fortune magazine at the time, titled “$60 billion crisis” warned that the American health care system stood “on the brink of crisis.” That was when the national health bill was a mere $60 billion. Even so, skyrocketing medical costs were pricing health care out of reach to most Americans, and medical bankruptcies were on the rise.

At the same time (1970’s) articles were revealing that for all the investment in technology, hospitals, medical specialties and sub-specialties, medical-related expenses, etc. health care in America was not as good as health care in most other industrialized countries; i.e.: America had higher rates of infant mortality and lower life expectancy.

And This Is Now:
A Democratic President, Barack Obama, called “health care reform the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health. That is a fact.”

What was $60 billion ($1900/second) in health care costs in 1970 ballooned into $230 billion by 1980, $2.6 trillion by 2006 and is anticipated to reach $ 4.3 trillion ($139,000/second) by 2017. The consequences are already catastrophic.

In addition, things have only gotten worse:

More than 50% of all personal bankruptcies are related to medical bills. Every 30 seconds in the United States, someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem

More than 47 million American are uninsured.

America ranks 50th of 224 nations, in life expectancy

America ranks 180th of 224 nations in infant mortality

The only solution:

For decades, Congress has consistently failed to take any effective actions to restrain the uncontrolled and runaway costs of medical care.

The ONLY solution is for Congress to break the virtual monopoly that the insurance-pharmaceutical-medical industrial complex has on health care delivery and re-imbursement.

The only effective way to do this is for Congress to enact health care reform, creating a public option to compete with Big Insurance, erasing Big Insurance’s longstanding and privileged exemption from anti-trust laws.

With each passing day, the economic and political power of the special interests only grows. Any plan that does not include a public option is a failed plan from the inception. And, we cannot afford to fail.