I was reading an article in today’s Globe and Mail that stated 81% of Canadians over the age of 65 suffer at least one Chronic Health condition. I also read another recent article in a health publication stating that “Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s.” The author was referring to the fact that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s doubles every five years in people over 65.
Equating an age to certain health conditions is a big mistake in my opinion, especially when so many “Baby Boomers” are approaching retirement age. And we see it all the time. Have you’ve ever been in a room dominated by senior citizens? The conversation enviably ends up in a discussion about their chronic illness(s) and all the medication they have to take. And almost all equate the fact that they have a degenerative disease to their age and not a life time of self abuse. And it’s not just the average senior citizen that thinks this way. Many doctors and medical clinicians also equate age with various degenerative diseases. “Age” is widely claimed to be the “biggest risk factor” for osteoporosis, macular degeneration, stroke, heart disease, diabetes and many forms of cancer.
The problem with equating the risk of these diseases with a meaningless number – your age – is that it allows you to abdicate responsibility and takes your focus off the true root causes of disease and puts it on something that you can do nothing about. Having said that, I'm not naive to think that you can live forever just because you eat well and exercise. Even the healthiest people eventually die of something. That's why I want to do everything possible to increase the quality of my life, for as long as possible by making good lifestyle choices when I'm young.
I was actually told a couple months ago that I should be careful racing my bike in a 170km road race this past summer, because “men of my age” have a greater risk of suffering heart attacks. Even telling him after the race that I tied for second place overall with guys 2/3's my age and made health and fitness a lifelong priority, he still stressed that I was at risk of a heart disease because I’m 55 years old. He was convinced that heart disease is something that happens to people of a certain age, regardless of their lifestyle, and only those with the great genetics will dodge the degenerative disease bullet.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The degenerative diseases that decrease the quality of one's life, or shorten it, have little to do with our chronological “age.” as a cause. Rather, they are the long-term ramifications of unhealthy choices that turned into lifelong habits! These diseases do not magically appear at a certain age. They are generally the end-result of poor nutrition, stress, lack of exercise and free radical exposure to toxic overload over a long period of time,
The longer you expose yourself to these risk factors, the greater chance they will manifest into a serious degenerative disease, or diseases. Given most North Americans haven't made health a priority in their life, it's only logical that they would draw the conclusion that age is directly related to certain degenerative diseases, because the statistics show it to be true. Unfortunately, the statistics only provide the observation, not the root cause.
Your focus should not be on your age, but removing the causes of these illnesses and diseases within your lifestyle – no matter what magic number you turned on our last birthday.
Enjoy the Ride …. Rob
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