Today is Thursday, December 14, 2012. My stats today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes of lifting weights and 45 minutes of walking = 2.5 miles for a Decenber total of 29.8 miles. My weight was 163.2 pounds.
QUOTE from Michael Korda, author of Another Life: A Memoir of Other People: "One way to keep your momentum going is to have constantly greater goals."
My THOUGHTS today have to do with age, health and health care. In this morning's paper there was an article entitled WE LIVE LONGER, WITH MORE PAIN AND ILLNESS. The main points were these: In the last 100 years medical progress has made huge progress by fighting killer infectious diseases and doing unbelievable surgeries. But as a result we now lead longer and sicker lives, with health problems that cause us years of pain, disability and mental stress. And nations face huge financial and social costs from rising numbers of people living with disease and injury.
Malnutrition has dropped but the effects of excessive eating are taking its place. Smoking and drinking have ovetaken hunger to become the second and third leading health risks, with blood pressure just behind. More than 3 million deaths globally were attributable in 2010 to excess body weight, more than 3 times as many as malnutrition. So the major health problems now are diseases and conditions that don't kill, but make us ill. We now live longer with more health problems that cause pain, impair mobility, and prevent us seeing, hearing and thinking clearly.
What should we do? I guess the answer is to eat less, lose weight, stop smoking, drink less beer (Pete says you don't have to stop) and booze, and do some exercise. That would help our Medicare financial situation a great deal. I know one thing for sure: If people lost weight we would have fewer hip and knee surgeries, a lot less high blood pressure problems, a lot less diabetes, fewer heart attacks, fewer strokes, people would sleep better and not snore so much (it would make your spouse happier and we'd have fewer marital problems). And best of all Medicare would be solvent for many more years than presently predicted.
This summer we were in Denmark for our granddaughter's high school graduation. Denmark has universal government run health care. When talking to a 75 year-old lady who needed back surgery she told me that the doctors wouldn't perform surgery until she quit smoking. The doctors said they weren't going to spend the taxpayers money for somebody who is a smoker. I applaud the Danish doctors for their decision. By the way, she quit smoking and had surgery.However, I don't see that happening in the U.S. Our doctors would do the surgery, send the bill to Medicare and get their money.
HUMOR today for Seniors: I wish the buck stopped here, I could sure use a few.
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