Why Live Healthy, When We're All Going to Die Anyway?

There have already been quite a few responses to @naturalmedicine’s question, “do we live healthy lives to avoid or postpone death?” and I'm probably not going to add much new to the discussion, but I'll share some thoughts for my entry.

When you hear about people who lived a long life, you might assume a healthy lifestyle played a part, but this isn't always the case. I had a great aunt who lived well into her 90s. She smoked most of her life and had her saliva glands removed during an operation to treat throat cancer. Her brother (my grandfather) died in his early 70s of a heart attack. He was vegetarian and, as far as I know, didn't smoke. For long as I could remember, my aunt was frail and not very active. She was in an assisted home, then a nursing home. I never met my grandfather, but from what I'm told he was fairly active until the end. The heart attack was a shock to the family.

My other grandparents both died shortly before their 80th birthdays. They smoked for years and my Grampy stopped after his first heart attack in his 50s. My Nanny only stopped when she was too infirm to get out and buy her cigarettes and everyone refused to buy them for her. She’d suffered a stroke and continued to smoke. She basically drowned in the fluid of her own lungs, as they deteriorated. Her last days were spent drugged up to the eyeballs on pain relief. My Grampy’s body just broke down and I believe cause of death was multiple things. He had prostate cancer, but I don't think that was the final cause of death.

Then I recently heard of a homesteading couple in their 90s who were still fully active and managing their homestead. They were happy and healthy.

So do I try to live a healthy lifestyle to prolong my life? No. I don't think we have that much control over our lives. I haven't always been particularly healthy either. Not bad, but not really trying that hard. I've always had home cooked dinners, but haven't particularly avoided take outs now and again, especially when life got busy. I've never been a big user of chemicals in the household, but in recent years I avoid them much more.

The change that made the biggest difference for me was fazing refined sugars out of my life (I do have them occasionally, but not often). I've never been overweight, so it wasn't for that reason I did it, but since doing so I don't get sick very often and when I do, I usually just feel a bit out of sorts for a day or two. This, for me, is the reason to live a healthy. I would rather have a life that is as active and pain free as possible, for the time I'm here. If I live to 90 I'd rather not be sick and infirm. If I go sooner, so be it. I'd much prefer my grandfather’s way of going after an active life than a long, drawn out illness.

Many people only make changes after they've spent so long in pain and sickness that they've had enough. The chances are it won't help them to live any longer, but at least they'll get some more enjoyment from the life they have left. I have a friend (who I hope will one day tell her story) who has lyme disease. In her words, she reached a point some years ago where she could barely string a sentence together. The medical system couldn't help her any more, so she changed her diet, stopped eating gluten and started detoxing heavy metals. She still has bad days, but many more good days now. Her biggest breakthrough, even in just over the year I've known her, has been kefir. She has terrible chemical sensitivity and lots of things out and about would bring on migraines, but recently, she's not been reacting as much. She's a great example that it's not always too late to make a change.

So I'm going to keep trying to live as healthier life as I can. With the amount of toxins we can no longer avoid in our modern lives, I don't know if it will keep me from getting sick, but it's worth a try, especially if it has already made a difference.

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