Healthy Rant

Professor J,

As you know this post is a day late due to my mom's ongoing health issues. The other day while we were  visiting her, the cardiologist basically told her that her condition (actually there are several) is incurable and the rest of her life will be about managing her pain and breathlessness and trying to give her the best quality of life possible. But he felt the need to share all the information and possible treatments, which included various things up to and including a heart transplant. As he said those two words he looked at me in a way that said "she's 73 and that's not really an option." We understood each other perfectly.

Now that most people seem to have come to terms with the idea of the Affordable Health Care Act as a reality we all have to decide what kind of managed health care we want. As you've pointed out before we don't have "health care" we have "sick care." If we are all going to be in it together then we are going to need better education and communication about all the facets of living a healthy life style. People cannot  do whatever they want and then expect for the rest of us to pick up the tab for drastic procedures at the other end of the road for illnesses and conditions that are related to life style choices.
Change is possible, but comes with education, a desire to do what is necessary, and the realization that we are personally responsible for much of our own health. It might take more than one generation.

Here's what this looks like in my family. My mom's conditions are diabetes, emphysema, congestive heart failure, COPD, and panic attacks. She doesn't smoke any more but did for 30 years. Her life long diet was a typical American one. The idea of exercise was a joke. Only hippies or monks did yoga or meditation. There was a pill for every disorder.

I did a bit better avoiding lots of the pitfalls by observing the kind of life I didn't want. But change was hard and took a long time. It takes quite a bit of concerted effort to decide you aren't going to go on a diet, but eat a completely different way instead. It means investigating, learning, trying, and eventually embracing a new and different way of doing things. Eliminating things like soda and trying to avoid most processed food is hard in the beginning for those of us raised on a steady diet of Coke and Twinkies.

My kids, both in their twenties, are way ahead of where I was at their age. My son gave up red meat at 13 and hasn't eaten a burger in nearly 10 years. His current target is eliminating candy and most other sugars from his diet. My daughter is a pescetarian foregoing poultry as well as beef and pork. Neither of them drink soda (by itself ;)). They cannot imagine a life that wouldn't include lots of physical activity and my daughter even teaches yoga to her kindergarten class. 

Our lifestyle changes didn't happen overnight; new attitudes had to be formulated over time. But once everyone recognizes how much better they feel the changes stick on their own. I have every hope that once we are all in the healthcare boat together, we'll have a little peer pressure in society to help us make better decisions. Might sugar and fried foods go the way of cigarettes? If my kids are any indication, the answer is yes. They are already judging people by what's in their grocery cart.

We've come a long way, baby.