Now that dementia has become the "biggest killer" in Australia, there have been plenty of stories flooding the media about it, even going as far as taking the battles of the sexes angle - as women have a higher rate than men. What I haven't seen mentioned in any of that approach though, is it is because dementia is an age-related disease, and women live longer than men by about four years in Australia. The biggest killer for men in Australia is still heart disease.
Pretty unfair.
It is a bit misleading that dementia is the leading cause of death though, because it is nearly always a secondary factor that actually causes the death, with dementia being the underlying condition. Still, as someone who has hard a traumatic brain injury (infarction [stroke]), I am about 3x more likely to get dementia than the average, so I assume that "yeah - that'll be me." However, what people should consider if they are planning on living past retirement age, is that in general being healthy is the best defence against dementia.
Easy.
Really though, it isn't that hard to do what it takes, it just means eating healthily and having a balanced diet with enough nutrients, exercising regularly and keeping fat down (especially belly fat - caused by carbs), and avoiding getting hit in the head too often. While physical degradation is just part of life and our brain is physical, we can improve the function of it so it is working as well as it can.
Just like the rest of our body.
I feel I have been dealt a pretty bum hand in this life in many ways, since pretty much all the important bits of me have been heavily impacted in some way, even though I have looked after myself for the most part. Yet, I still don't understand how so many people who have very few physical reasons, have so many physical problems.
Ok... I do understand.
Or at least, I am pretty sure it has something to do with how we value our emotional feeling more than our physical feeling. Our "needs" are not dictated by biological necessity, they are chosen by emotional state. Think about yourself for a moment (as if you ever stopped) and consider when you are most likely to eat junk food, or drink alcohol, or skip exercise. How were you feeling at that time? Are the reasons physical, or are they emotional?
Did you need to finish that whole bag of chocolate? Where you unable to go for a brisk walk or to life some weights? Was the fourth, fifth and sixth beer required for your hydration?
Probably not.
You just didn't feel like it. Or you did feel like it - whatever the case might be. But it wasn't needed by your body to function, but your actual needs were overpowered by your emotional needs and you gave in to the toddler's tantrum and conditioned yourself a little more, to be a little worse.
This is human nature.
We aren't very good at delaying our gratification for an unguaranteed future, but we are very good at treating ourselves now, just in case tomorrow doesn't happen. Yet - tomorrow always happens and for the most of us, we are going to live to the averages for our type of person. For instance, one study suggested that a morbidly obese person in the US can expect to live to about 58 years of age, which is 20 years less than the average. The average... not the healthiest. It is about the same as a heavy smoker.
But the problem with not planning for a future that is probably going to arrive, is that while we make decisions in the moment based on how we feel right now, we aren't very good at predicting how we are going to feel in that uncertain future. And as someone who is only 46 but have some parts of my body functioning like I am in my seventies, I can tell you - it feels like shit. I have lived with pain since my mid-teens, and it keeps accelerating at a faster pace the older I get.
Unless you already live it, you don't know what it is going to feel like when your weight has increased further, and you joints have aged a couple decades more. You don't know what it feels like when a mild flu becomes a major issue. And you definitely don't know what it feels like to look into the mirror, and not fully recognise the person staring back. You know them, but they don't look like who you know, and the timeline is disjointed, like it has been passed through a kaleidoscope and split into a puzzle.
We all slow down.
And as we are living longer, with far less daily routine than we had previously, it is natural that our brains are breaking down earlier. Living long used to be indicative of health. Now, it is indicative of medicine advancement. Living longer, doesn't mean living better, and I suspect if we did know what it was like to come in and out of dementia symptoms, many would choose not to go on. But, preparing for that means living better all the way up to that point.
Feeling better now.
Someone that truly feels well, doesn't eat themselves until they vomit, or drink themselves into a stupor. Someone truly healthy has a mind that functions well, a body that functions well, and an emotional understanding that functions well, to maintain a high quality of life - not a good feeling right now, at the expense of everything else to come.
We don't need fad diets or personal trainers.
We just need to pay attention to the needs of our body, rather than the demands of our feelings.
Taraz
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The men die due to their high cholesterol, beers, red meat, lamb, barbeques. Their widows to be, all the while drinking wine, or worse, or having their girl's brunches and so on, kill off their brain cells with booze.
We are probably on the tail-end of the impacts of leaded petrol, diesel, etc which also contributes to a lot of these deaths, which should, in theory, see a steady increase in the length of life.
But, importantly, what is the point of a long life, if it is one full of suffering?
With euthanasia now available as an option, I wonder if there will be a statistic for life expectancy by natural causes, and that of "its terminal", ciao, via euthanasia.
Unleaded might be dropping, but now there are a million more chemicals, micro plastics, and reduced food nutrition to fill the gaps abd then some.
VAD accounted for about 5% of deaths in Canada last year. I suspect it is going to go up a lot in coming years as people have no meaning abd no means as they get older. I also think the age of euthanasia will come down, and the reasons won't be a terminal illness.
I don't see the point of a long suffering life. My retirement plan is a noose.
Invest in rope before hyper-inflation takes hold.
Will have to make it out of a pair of old jeans.
It probably never was intended as such, but the lyrics of a Florence and the Machine song, Ship to Wreck go along these lines. Not the jeans, but definitely, the noose. Its dark.
May you not reach for a pair of old jeans for a long time!
I always keep a pair handy.
Now every time I look at jeans, I'll think of your future expiration. Hearts and minds.
It's unfair that many times those who actually take care of themselves and try to be healthy end up beaten down. And yet, most money in the system goes to treat those who are really responsible for their physical demise, as they have become the majority, eating up the resources needed for research on the rare cases.
As my family is quite disease ridden and some of it might be genetic, I do the extra step to prevent that. Not in a perfect way, but in a conscious way, knowing the risk I'm taking when enjoying a couple of beers, and so on. Also, I don't have a healthcare system to fall back into, anyway. It depends on me.
It reminds me as I was in the waiting room at the hospital with other people during Covid with a suspected stroke, violent alcoholics with police guard were ushered in straight from the ambulance. four hours I waited.
I think this is necessary to be conscious about. Where I think the risk for many is that they underestimate the feeling of their future self who might look back and say, did I really need a couple more so often?
Quite different from Europe, isn't it?
There actually is a public health system here, plus a second back-up system. The public hospitals are notoriously underfunded, though, and basically give out Paracetamol for everything. For check up and tests and such, you have to get your own supplies, they give you a list for needles, syringes, bandaids, infusion water, almost everything.
The back up system is a combined social security and health insurance. During the good years, when Ecuador was running well, it worked nicely. But then the oil price fell, and corruption became obvious, and the state started "borrowing" money from that insurance, bleeding it dry to fund prestige projects. So, that isn't working well, either.
I have a private insurance that covers me up to 30k. I hope I'll never need it, until now, my awareness regarding my health seems to be working. Lily is insured there, too, but most of her little illnesses are the typical children stuff, so I don't even bother uploading the receipts as it's below the self-paying threshold most years.
I couldn't agree more. We submit to our desires that are played upon by media (eat this, buy this) and wonder why we get ill.
Our move down the coast is part of a bigger plan to ease into old age in a healthy way. And there's an age care centre down the road they can roll me to when I lose my marbles.
This makes it handy! They could play a game a bit like in Hansel and Gretel, where there is a trail of marbles for you that leads straight to the old age home - where much like the witch, in the future they will throw you in the oven for lunch ;)
Ha, well I do have some good meat on my bones ...
It’s true that many health problems, including dementia, are linked to how we live now, not just to ageing. A lot of the choices we make are based on how we feel in the moment rather than what our body truly needs.
The food we eat these days is not helping matters as they contribute to our overall well-being. Imagine the way the food we eat these days is processed. Using fertiliser to plain the crop for bountiful harvest and also using various degree of chemicals to preserve them.
We have to live well and be deliberate about our well-being. It might say we won't live long, but do. We just have to make a decision today that will put us in good shape in the future.
I think a big decision people should be making (at least here in Europe) is how much packaged and pre-cooked food they eat. It is all just full of chemicals.
We really need to pay attention to our body mostly to maintain a good living in other to balance areas that needs proper treatment. Health is wealth there's no argument about that because without a good health nothing good can showcase to perform activities.
What do you do to look after your health?
I watch what i eat and engage in regular exercise.
I still tend to eat a bit when I get stressed. I also have those days where I just don't feel like working out, but I think they happen less than the days where I actually do things right, so that is good. What kind of secondary factors are there? Just like forgetting to eat or going out and dying from exposure? Stuff like that?
That's the whole point. Excess food is stored as fat in the body. It's a burden, a weight we have to carry. It's foolish. I could understand this if we were bears; we are a people with so much potential and variety. Living for the day might make sense in some circumstances, but it will cost us greatly in the future. Eat a healthy, balanced, and regular diet. Get 6-7 hours of sleep. Exercise regularly. Actually, what we need to do is very difficult. It's not.
My father in law has dementia. He is in his mid seventies and had multiple serious health issues prior to developing it. He had serious case of emphysema and heart condition and a few other things.
For the last decade I watched him slowly decline. First nothing was noticeable, then he started refusing to learn new things, like he didn't want to use smart phone. Then a few years later he started having slight memory problems, then they got worse. Then he started getting lost while driving.
His doctor at first kept saying that it is sleep apnea and he just needs a breathing mask at night. The doctor might have been right, but after years of refusing to use a machine and refusing to give up heavy smoking his lung capacity really deteriorated. Lack of oxygen to his brain has caused changes that basically resulted in dementia.
It got so bad that his wife who has many health issues herself and is almost eighty could no longer care for him and we had to place him in a special home...
All because not only he would not exercise or eat properly, but he wouldn't listen to us or doctors and keep smoking, drinking and not using oxygen or breathing machine....