Whenever I used to pay my gran a visit there was one thing that always grabbed my attention as soon as I walked into her flat… Her dining table was covered with an ever-expanding selection of white paper bags from her local chemists.
There were so many bags that 3 people would have had to eat on their laps. The medications ranged from things for her type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and arthritis, and the rest were to counter the side effects of each other.
How healthspan differs from lifespan
My gran lived to the ripe old age of 91, but she had health issues since she was around 60. So, whilst her lifespan was 91 years her healthspan was just 60 years.
Whilst there is no universally agreed upon definition of lifespan, I’ll give you a commonly accepted one: Lifespan is the number of years you live, whereas healthspan is the number of years your life free from lifestyle-related sickness and the resulting medications
Quantity over quality
Lifespan says nothing about quality of life. It just measures length, that’s it. In my opinion this is a very low bar to aim for. If I’m going to live long I sure as hell want those years to be spent living well.
Lifespan is a bit like measuring the quality of a marriage solely on the number of years two people are married. I’m sure there are countless couples out there who absolutely hate each other but have some how decided to stay married for the kids, or because they fear being alone, or some other reason. A long marriage can obviously be a happy one, but the length itself doesn’t necessarily equate to happiness.
They require different strategies
The key difference between healthspan and lifespan is how you achieve them. You can achieve a long lifespan by being reactive. Ie: getting meds when something goes wrong. But to achieve healthspan you have to be proactive. You have to take proactive steps to avoid the modern lifestyle diseases.
You have to be proactive in your mental, physical, social wellness to increase your healthspan. Ultimately it comes down to habits, and what sort of life you want to live.
The ’age-related’ myth
We often hear people complain of ‘age-related’ sickness, and “it’s because I’m getting old”. I call BS on that and would suggest rather than being age-related it’s because the human body is so incredible that it can withstand and repel the onslaught of our modern lifestyles, but eventually it gets to the point where it can’t keep up the fight, and the diseases eventually win. It just tends to occur in old age that’s all.
Take Mr Motivator for example, the guy’s 71 years old and is fitter than most 20-year-olds. He takes a proactive approach to his wellbeing by exercising daily, not eating processed foods regularly and doesn’t drink or smoke. I’m sure he didn’t do badly in the genetic lottery, but his lifestyle would be the key factor, as environment is the on/off switch for most disease genes.
If he can do it so can you
Mr Motivator is the Roger Bannister of health. Running a mile in under 4 minutes probably seemed like a massive obstacle before Roger Bannister did it in 1954. But since he did it over 1750 other people have done it, some even faster than Bannister.
So now that we’ve seen Mr motivator cross the 70-year-old line super healthy, disease and medication free hopefully others will begin following suit, rather than accepting the age-related decline myth.
To achieve what Mr motivator has done you have to accept one key idea, you can’t react/firefight your way to good health. It doesn’t work that way. Proactive habits are the only way.
High bar or low bar? you choose…
So, lets raise the bar of our expectations and aim to thrash Mr motivators healthspan record of 71 years. He’s clearly worked hard to get where he is, but he’s no different from the rest of us. I think we can all give him a serious run for his money when it comes to our healthspan records…
Jonathan Pittam
Preventative Wellness Educator
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