Aging and Longevity
Lifespan is the most misinterpreted statistic in the modern world. How long you live represents very little about health. It seems to be a point of boasting in the US, but our country falls behind 45 other countries in the industrialized world. When you follow the money, you will find that how long you live as a nation means nothing when it comes to maintaining health. Keeping people alive longer is great if they can enjoy their day-to-day existence, but most older people in the US spend the last five years of their lives on 5-10 medications and in an infirmed state. What I’d prefer to see as a measure of health could be best represented by how vital people are as they age, how few medicines they are on, how active are they? What is their body composition? What type of lifestyle do they lead? How is their cognition? How do they feel? I came across a fantastic article entitled “Healthspan is More Important Than Lifespan, So WHY Don’t More People Know About It?” ( publichealth.wustl.e