WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE: LONG LIFE OR HEALTHY LIFE?

What is your desire: long life or healthy life? That question may sound ridiculous and I know most if not everybody reading this article would answer “both” to the question. All of us desire to both live long and live healthy. However, based on personal observation of people and their attitude to health and healthy lifestyle, their supreme desire is just to live long and not live healthy. Why did I say that? I said that for two reasons.

First, the way many of us live, we consciously or unconsciously throw caution to the wind when it comes to our diet and lifestyle – the two most important ingredients of healthy living. It is not until we sense or actually have a health challenge that we begin to reconsider what we feed our body,

how we feed our body and the manner in which we live our lives on a day to day basis.

Secondly, in the midst of health challenge, our major pre-occupation is not how to regain vibrant health and maintain it but how not to die. The fear of death is one of the reasons why many of us comply strictly with the prescriptions given to us by the doctors and not the fear of losing our health again. I said that because we habitually retreat to our “old” and “normal” lifestyle the moment our health challenge is under control. The Ebola virus outbreak of 2014 in our country Nigeria is a typical example of what I’ve just said.

How many organizations, institutions (including hospitals and clinics), families and individuals still engage in regular hand washing – the simplest, easiest and cheapest way to stop the contamination and spread of bacteria? Let’s ask ourselves, “How many of the people who have been diagnosed and treated for diabetes have completely done away with carbonated drinks and processed fruit juices? How many of the people who have been diagnosed for early signs of osteoporosis or arthritis have abandoned their sedentary lifestyles

to engage in conscious regular movements of their bones and joints via simple exercise such as walking? How many people after visiting the hospital and taken medications for bacterial infection resulting in diarrhea, syphilis or cholera have resolved to maintain cleanliness and good personal hygiene? How many people have reduced their salt intake or taken steps to find alternative to food seasonings containing monosodium glutamate (MSG)

after being treated for or have shown signs of a cardiovascular (hypertensive) disease?” The list goes on and on. How many of us who now enjoy some form of relief from a particular health challenge is doing anything serious in terms of our diet and lifestyle to keep that health challenge away permanently?

My point is this, it’s not the number of years in our lives that counts but the quality of life in those years. Who wants to live to seventy years if he can’t recognize his closest family members because of dementia? Who looks forward to eighty years suffering severe joint or back pain because of arthritis?

We often misplace the priority when it comes to evaluating our approach to healthcare: we put long life before healthy life. Come to think of it, it seems most people dying nowadays do not die of old age anymore. What do you think is killing people the most nowadays? You know the answer as well as I do: ill health.

Let me ask you again, “What is your desire: long life or healthy life?” I hope this piece of information will help you refocus your priority when it comes to healthcare. Always remember that it’s much easier to maintain health than it is to try to regain it after it has been lost.