fit for life (TM)

Would you like to have an influence on how you die?

We do not choose when we live but we can decide what we do with the time we have.

we all would like to live a full, healthy and less stressful life.  I believe that: the choice is yours.  There is ample data supporting the idea that we can have a profound influence on not only the quality of our life but ultimately how we die.

I begin with a recent excerpt from the NY Times Well blog by Tara Parker-Pope, and written by Gretchen Reynolds, published an article titled: Can Touching Your Toes Test Your Arteries? 

The article suggests that there is “a relationship” between our arterial flexibility and how flexible we are in our lower back, hamstring and calf muscles.  Unfortunately, the test used in this study is not something you should try at home as it can be unhealthy, even dangerous for your back.

(I wish the researcher had designed a better experiment and I question the value of his conclusions and ideas based upon his methodology and thus unfortunately his hypothesis seems very flawed.)

That said there’s an important take away that I think was missed in this:

we all have a lot more control over how we influence the quality and length of our demise.  In essence:  We can choose how we die.

While it’s true that we could be killed, injured or be the victim of random violence or disease, there’s less likelihood of this than us simply growing old and dying. 

Here are ways that each of us will probably go (data is from the CDC website)

Leading Causes of Death
(Data are for the U.S.)

Number of deaths for leading causes of death
- Heart disease: 631,636
- Cancer: 559,888
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
- Diabetes: 72,449
- Alzheimer’s disease: 72,432
- Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
- Septicemia: 34,234

what should be clear is here is that there is that 6 of the top 10 causes of death are directly effected by how well we take care of our physical and mental health throughout our lives.  In addition,  over 80% of the leading causes of death are conditions that most cases are directly effected by changes in lifestyle and exercise.

More importantly: 

If you want the quality of your experience to improve every day, no matter how long you live, if you did nothing else but improved your physical health you’d feel and live better.  If you get stuck on the “how” to do this then stick around and ask questions.  This is the purpose of this website and blog.