Lesson #1 for Keep.Health.
“Life is all about the choices we make!”
“Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction is approaching. Fight it.”
from the rule book for Eclipse Phase, a role-playing game
What are you willing to do to maximize your health and wellness? Would you be more likely to do so if you knew you’d increase your healthspan?
For example, if you commit ten hours a month to improve your health and that gets you an extra five years of health in your life, would you do it?
Although we don’t know the ratio of time and money spent to healthspan and life extension, we intuitively know that some investment will lead to a worthwhile benefit. However, unless we focus on making the lifestyle changes to achieve that benefit, we just continue with our normal lives and miss out on it.
So, how much time and money would you commit each month to increase the number of healthy years in your life? That’s a big question. Take time to think about it and write down your answer..
How much is an extra year of good health worth to you?
An extra five years?
An extra ten years?
When you’ve decided how much time and money you’d commit, scroll down to read more…
Tim Peterson, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis produced this chart showing average healthspan vs lifespan in the United States.
Figure 1: average healthspan vs. average lifespan in the US (in years)
In today’s culture, few people realize they have the opportunity to add 10+ years to their healthspan. Most people fatalistically proceed through their lives until their bodies wear out.
Valter Longo, PhD, a renowned professor of biological sciences and director of the Longevity Center at the University of Southern California thinks the opportunity is even bigger to increase both healthspan and lifespan. He states that “If we can learn from the past and match it to the science and clinical data, it’s not unreasonable to think we could add 20 or 30 years.”
So, are you willing to focus by making time and allocating resources to improve your health?
Print out our Keep Health personal commitment sheet and then write down your time and money commitment. Put it somewhere you’ll see it as a frequent reminder.