How long will I live?

How long will I live?   I am constantly reading that life expectancy is increasing and that we will all live longer. Wikipedia shows the current average life expectancy at birth in the United States as being over just 78 years old. Previous generations of Americans would have had much lower life expectancy, with no realistic expectation of living into their late seventies and beyound. Perhaps because life expectancy seems to be such a hot news item I find myself pondering my longevity.

How long will I live is probably not a question that many people may ponder daily, but it is a vital issue none-the-less.  When planning for the future, especially for things like pensions, estimates may have to be made on this critical question.

I’ve decided How Long Will I Live

I have decided that I want to be on this earth as long as I can be healthy, and no longer.  This is not to say that I wouldn’t like to try to live forever, and see new changes taking place in the world, but I’d want to be fit enough to enjoy the extra years, not stuck in a hospital or care-home bed.

Can I control how long will I live?

Only a part of my life is actually in my control.  I do not generally test my longevity by standing in front of a speeding bus, to see what will happen. Therefore I control my life by protecting myself as much as fate will allow.  I also realize that life is not forever, and it should be appreciated, and respected as a privilege.  I control as much of my life as I can, and when I choose to do it in a healthy way, I may increase my longevity, barring other unforeseen incidents.

Genetic Factors in how long will I live

There are two big factors involved in determining the answer to How long will I live?  These major factors are genetic backgrounds, and my lifestyle. My genetics are predetermined, so I cannot alter them, for example the genetic predisposition for disease a specific disease might be in my genes.

Lifestyle factors in how long will I live

The lifestyle factors in how long will I live is all mine.  I can choose to live a healthy life and possibly live longer.  Alternatively I can forget about risks to my life, and live day to day.  It is impossible to predict what may happen to us, but I want to at least have a chance to live a long and healthy life.  There are five factors which influence longevity that I can control, and although I have not mastered them all, it is something that I think about each day, and try to improve upon.

Five factors which influence how long will I live

Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is a major factor, and involves three of these other five factors.  Smoking, exercise, and stress, can all affect blood pressure, so by controlling these other factors in a positive way, you will be making a huge difference in your blood pressure.  Genetic predisposition to heart disease does affect your blood pressure, but if it is monitored carefully, you have every chance of living a long life.

Controlling Stress

This is sometimes like taming a wild bull, but it is necessary, in order to maintain a somewhat normal blood pressure.  A positive outlook helps, surround yourself with friends and family, and be sure to give of yourself.  Giving in any form, even a smile, can help you to control your stress, and lower your blood pressure at the same time.  When your body feels gratification, you relax, and the blood flows freely.  If you only find fault, you will be tense, and have higher blood pressure, so do a nice deed today!

Smoking Cigarettes

Stop smoking and you can possibly add years to your life, and get rid of some wrinkles at the same time.  Smoking constricts the blood vessels, causing high blood pressure, and can also cause lung cancer, stroke, and heart disease.  It is not easy to quit, but it would definitely be worth your life in doing so.

Exercise

The most important thing about this category is to find some type of cardiovascular exercise that you can, and will do.  Finding something that is not a chore to do is the key.  If it doesn’t seem like exercising, you will not mind doing it, and it will definitely help your heart to tick longer.

Healthy Diet

As with exercising, make your diet one that you can enjoy.  If you eliminate everything that you like, you will crave it more, and forget your healthy diet all together.  If you try to eat a balanced meal every day, and smaller portions, there is no need to go overboard.  With your healthy diet and exercise combined, you may add years to your life, and both of these things will improve your blood pressure automatically.

What Is The Answer To How Long Will I Live?

The question “How long will I live?” can be influenced, but not totally controlled by my lifestyle choices.  Many of the factors above affect each other, and by controlling one, I make a positive adjustment to the others without even thinking.  Because our lives are never stable, and are ever changing, I forget about when I will probably die, because there is just too much living to do.  However, by paying attention to the factors I’ve outlined such as respecting my body, and giving as much as I can to others, I plan to live as long as I can.  If you do not think about and plan to have a long life, you probably will not care to pay too much attention to making preparations to ensure that you live a healthy as well as long life. But I would like to be at least, prepared for a long ride, and positively control what I am able to control, in this exciting life of surprise and wonder.

It’s been in use for a few years to mean a man who thinks he’s living the good life but will end up in an early grave and I thought it might be time to recap.

According to an article in The Sunday Times, lots of men don’t become mature adults because they don’t have to. They earn good money, live alone or with friends, own the latest gadgets and take exotic holidays out of season. Although they are 58% more likely to die before they reach 50 than men who settle down with a partner, many continue to enjoy their lifestyle until middle age without seeing the drawbacks.

It catches up with them though. Numerous studies show that single men suffer more heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer and even flu. They spend more time in hospital and take longer to recover than married men and have shorter life expectancies.

Women on the other hand, seem to do better and live longer on their own!

You probably need to be over 70 to appreciate Sherwin B Nuland’s book, The Art of Aging but it does contain a novel tactic to help people give up smoking. (The Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being)

As a doctor, Nuland finds he has more success persuading people to quit by appealing to their vanity than he does by warning them about their health.

When he meets a smoker for the first time he asks them why they smoke so much and they ask him how he can tell. He explains they look 10 years older than their age would suggest.

He can recognize a heavy smoker by the lines on their face which are impossible to miss in women over 50 when you know what to look for and a bit harder to detect in men. Apparently, thin lines appear at the corners of the mouth and gradually stretch to the area below the nostrils, eventually reaching the cheeks and corners of the eyes.

Getting people to realize that smoking makes them look older may be an effective way to help people give up smoking.

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In old age, good friends and relatives could even make the difference between life and death. They help us do things we can no longer do for ourselves and prevent the tragedy of loneliness which is psychologically distressing and affects our recovery from serious illness.

The problem is that most of us didn’t grow up in families which modeled gentle and effective communication and it wasn’t on the curriculum at school.

I think it will be difficult to break habitual ways of relating to other people when we reach old age. It’s something we need to start improving now.

‘Loving What Is’, by Byron Katie is a good place to start. It’s basically a simple list of questions to ask ourselves whenever we have a problem in a relationship. It helps you see things from other angles – getting beyond blame or thinking the other person is ‘wrong’.

I’m lucky enough to live amongst people who use and value Byron Katie’s ideas but some of my friends found the style of the book off-putting at first. We laugh about it now because those who struggled at the beginning have become the most dedicated at “doing the work” she advocates.

One friend had the book for a year and couldn’t stand it. Then, when she couldn’t resolve difficulties with her boyfriend, she stayed awake all night reading it. The next day she ended her relationship cleanly and took charge of her life.

I love it when there is something easy we can do now as a kind of insurance policy for old age and it starts paying dividends straight away. Byron Katie’s book showed me how to understand others rather than simply judging them and to recognize that I also do the things I don’t like in others. I practice what I learned as much as possible and maybe by the time I’m 90 I’ll be an expert rather than a miserable old woman.

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

She may even be in the 50% of her age group who live longer than that, especially as she gave birth at 39 and a significant number of women who live to be 100 gave birth when they were around 40.

The newspapers she reads say life expectancy is 80 or 81 and I couldn’t convince her that the published figure is life expectancy at birth. By the time you’re old enough to read the newspaper your life expectancy has already increased, so although it’s the simplest statistic for journalists to quote, it isn’t the most meaningful for their readers.

Now I’m delighted to report that my mom has changed her attitude. After years of telling people she doesn’t need anything for her birthday, this year she wrote a list.

Since her 80th birthday she stopped wanting anything new because she was sure the things she already had would last long enough. She hadn’t got to the point of not buying green bananas, but she didn’t think she had a future.

This year she asked for new dresses, a frying pan and new lights. She’s even talking about getting a new kitchen. After 6 years of making do with what she’s got her things are wearing out. So she’s decided I might be right about life expectancy and it’s time to start living as though she could reach 90 or beyond.

It’s a much more positive outlook. She’s thinking about living rather than dying and embracing new experiences. We went to the beach for her birthday and she seemed to enjoy herself more than she has in years.

The problem is that we respond to many situations as though they are life threatening when they’re not and when that happens too often our nervous systems don’t have time to recover. This can exhaust our adrenal glands and lead to stress related illnesses.

There is a solution, but whereas the fight, flight or freeze response is automatic Herbert Benson from Harvard University found that its counterbalance – the relaxation response – requires practice.

Simple techniques, such as deep breathing, trigger this response so it’s easier than you may realise to de-stress even if you are busy. The hardest part is realising that something so easy can make such a big difference to your well-being and remembering to put the techniques into practice.

If you have children, Linda Lantieri’s recent book, “Building Emotional Intelligence” has techniques you can share with them. There is a CD at the back of the book with exercises guided by Daniel Goleman to get you started.

It’s not just happening in poor countries. The UK has a National Health Service which promises to provide free and equal health care for all, yet healthcare providers are admitting that age rationing occurs. And the same dilemmas are being faced elsewhere.

Age discrimination is happening unintentionally. When you want to do as much good as possible with the resources you have, someone over 85 misses out on treatment that would extend their life because it would buy them less extra time than it would for a younger person.

I just watched a documentary called ‘The Price of Life’ in which a woman was given a drug which dramatically reduced the effects of her cancer. Her daily life went from being almost unbearable to being positively enjoyable. Since the drug was already working for her it was likely to increase her life expectancy if she continued taking it.

But it was part of a drug trial and she was not allowed to continue receiving the treatment when the experiment finished. Even though the drug trial had been successful it was considered too expensive for the NHS to provide. After long deliberation the NHS can now prescribe the drug, but in the time they took to decide, the woman was put on less effective drugs and died after suffering complications.

We can eat healthily, take exercise and not smoke, but when we live longer we still might get sick. Then even if there is a cure our life could be determined by a cost-benefit analysis which decides we’re not worth the expense.

Suddenly, comprehensive health insurance looks very attractive.

“I met a woman today whose parent’s both died before they were 65. Both her parents worked hard all their lives and only started to look after their health when they were already suffering from illness. They both had high blood pressure.

My new friend had changed her own life as a result of her parent’s premature death. She exercises regularly and has her cholesterol tested regularly. She has found that she has a hereditary tendency to high cholesterol, but is managing to keep her cholesterol lower by regular exercise and paying attention to her diet.

She is hoping that taking this effort now will mean that she is able to enjoy not only her children, but also her grandchildren, which is something her parents were unable to do.”

I congratulate her on taking the tests and facing up to the results.

Smoke Alarm

When Did You Check Your Smoke Alarm??

Your home may have a smoke alarm, but how often do you test it? If it is battery operated it might be time to make sure it still works. When I was looking at national statistics last week I couldn’t find much useful information, but I did find out that 400 people die in fires in homes in the UK every year and you are twice as likely to die in a fire if there isn’t a working smoke alarm.

I went out and bought a new battery for my alarm. Then the next day my neighbour came round saying she nearly burned her apartment down in the night. She likes cooked breakfast cereal but doesn’t have time to boil it in the morning, so she prepares it at night and reheats it when she gets up. Except this time she forgot to turn it off.

Thankfully her little boy woke her up at 3 am saying he didn’t like all the smoke.

It took a while before it dawned on her that she could have killed her family and then she went into shock. She needed reassuring that we all have lapses of concentration when we’re tired, that’s why we have safeguards. The most worrying thing wasn’t that she made a mistake it was that her alarm didn’t go off. Most homes are fitted with smoke alarms. Make sure yours works, and if not buy a new one now.

Get a second Smoke Alarm

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Previously, if I was up a nearby mountain without a phone and someone’s breathing stopped, my training was to give them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and shout for help. I would have been afraid to leave them because they might die while I went off looking for assistance.

Now I would run for help because records prove that in my area people are rarely far away in an emergency. Even though the old resuscitation method would extend the survival time, they are more likely to live if I left them to fetch the mountain rescue team.

It’s an unlikely scenario for me, but there were lots of practical tips that made the course worthwhile, such as putting a number 1, 2 or 3 next to names in your mobile phone so the emergency services know who to call first if you are unconscious after an accident.

The course also made me think how many hidden benefits there could be from other organisations sharing the information they have on their databases. I was impressed by the way First Aid courses can use statistics to change their methods and to get their message across to a class. Our local police also make use of statistics when people are caught speeding. They show hard hitting evidence of the number of pedestrians killed by people driving three miles above the speed limit.

Such statistics help us make more informed decisions. If we could compare which hospitals and doctors have the best recovery rates for operations and which procedures are the most reliable it could have a bigger impact on life expectancy than waiting for scientific breakthroughs.

There is an amazing article about ‘What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are?’