Health Matters

  If all deaths with pre-existing underlying health conditions are ruled out, then the recent virus pandemic, would have had virtually no impact.  Those who invariably died, were those who were dying already -- in long term care centers, nursing homes, 55+ complexes, etc.  That's where they go to die as comfortably as possible -- and it is miraculous when they do recover from their latest health crisis.  It will be one thing or another until that fatal time.

Obviously, it makes greater sense than ever, not to get into that condition of ill-health and the unrelenting downward spiral -- that offers no hope for recovery -- only to keep one alive at the lowest level of functioning for as long as possible.  I think most people would prefer not to live their lives in that prolonged declining state -- especially if that is purchased at the cost of all the vibrant and viable lives being sacrificed -- for the dying.

So it is not surprising when a nation that has the most people living longer with essentially terminal conditions and prognoses, has the highest mortalities of such people.  They would have long perished under more subsistence cultures and societies -- as part of the normal life expectancy.  So it should come as no surprise, that those who are healthier, have a much greater prognosis for continuing vibrancy and robustness -- which is the possibility and inevitability of health in the 21st century -- and not simply living longer lives in continuing and accelerating deterioration.

Those outcomes are not automatic -- nor random, but what each individual does to make themselves better and more fit to take on anything they may have to face in life.  Of course, the great advantage goes to those who remain and attain greater health -- and not simply more comprehensive health care coverage.  That won't offset the increasingly poor underlying health -- because that is not the doctor's job.  Their province is just to treat one's sickness -- and not to achieve optimal health, which is a possibility just now stirring in people's minds as an actual possibility for the future.

Especially for us 70 or older, who really have nothing to lose by diverging from those norms -- in which people continue to get worse with age, as the age-related diseases, including death. I think it would be preferable to live 30 healthy, vibrant, robust years, and then die suddenly by not waking up one day, than to die slowly and obviously over the whole 30 years -- and dragging everybody else into the grave with them -- but that's just me, and I don't presume to speak for others, and how they think they have a right to everybody else's life as well.

I spent the first half of my life around world-class athletes and performers, and then my second half around the senior, disabled and dying -- and wondered if there could be an Olympics just for being as healthy as one can be at 100 -- as the finish line, and that was all that was required to achieve the title of First Citizen (to reach 100 without looking like 100).  That to me, is the milestone we have to achieve before it is meaningful to speak of increasing life spans any further -- as a few astute in other arenas of life also recognize.

That achievement would not be simply a random event, but a very deliberate one -- and after initially breached, would then become the template for everyone else -- as what we have to do to live a healthy life, as long as possible.  That should make uncommon good sense to everybody -- and not just the people peddling panaceas for every conceivable condition. 

Usually, if one thing improves one health, it works for many other symptoms as well.  That is one's underlying health condition -- which can be favorable, as well as unfavorable, and eventually hopeless and terminal -- if not reversed.  Unlike time, health can go either way -- to get better, or only to get worse -- depending on the health model and paradigm.  It's not too early in the 21st century, to note a trend to improving health -- with age, rather than just the familiar deterioration from here on out.

Obviously, the problem has been the invariable accumulation of toxins and waste products, rather than a healthy life's rejuvenation and renewal processes -- in eliminating and even recycling those resources.  Such people seem to have a fountain of youth within them -- so that when one day they pass, there are no regrets for a life not fully lived.  They always did their best -- for however long that was to be.  But eventually, even they too will pass -- because that is the nature and reality of life.  Unfortunately, many have not come to grips with those realities -- but demand that they should live forever -- even in an induced coma until a cure for whatever ails them, can be found.

However, more often than not, they could have cured themselves -- by mastering their understanding of the factors that have gone into their condition, and entertaining the alternatives -- diet, exercise, and lifestyle, and not just the ones that don't work, and don't make a difference -- but are highly marketed, and repeated.  Mere repetition, is not proof of any truth.  It needs to be proved in the actuality of each life.  That is not the anecdotal, but the real -- the actual individual experience, and outcome.

That those outcomes are not equal -- should tell us something, and not that we can just mandate that all races should finish in a tie -- no matter how much we have to handicap all participants to ensure that result.  Much effort and all the resources can be diverted to approximate that effect -- or one can examine more closely, why each experienced a different result, and what they could have done differently -- for a different result.  That is the real world most of us live in -- and not the bureaucratic one of one-size-fits-all, no matter how badly.

That is the world of greater discrimination -- and not less, or none.  The ability to tell those differences, is our highest achievement, and not simply repeating what one is instructed to do unvaryingly -- despite none of the desired results and favorable outcomes.  If that doesn't change, then everybody just gets wiped out -- indiscriminately.  However, when 99% of the people do survive, then one wants to be among that majority, rather than the dying -- though at that point, it seldom matters, and makes a huge difference.  One percent of the population can always be expected to die -- with or without any complicating factors.

The reality is that nobody lives forever -- but most people live long enough to achieve whatever they set out in life to accomplish.  Far fewer still, can reinvent their lives to sustain themselves longer -- for another generation.  If they can, then they rightfully should live forever.  They've certainly earned it.  That means relearning everything at least every generation -- because what limited previous generations, was not that they had perfect knowledge -- but an imperfect one.  That is no reason to quit and give up -- and resolve never to change again, because that has dire consequences.

Many have not changed -- for the last 50 years, but continue to think they are at the forefront of the consciousness revolution.  All they think they need is one more reunion and revival -- to keep their lives going.  But life is not like that -- endlessly repeating itself.  It moves on -- with or without you.  Each can simply do their best -- if they are so disposed, or their worst, if they are so disposed.  But in any case, the outcomes will not be the same -- but differ according to merit.  Good ideas are rewarded, while bad ideas are punished -- and extinguished.  They don't work no matter how lavishly funded.  That which works, takes on a life of its own, no longer requiring our nurturance, but carrying us towards a great future -- if we simply let it.

That is the familiar rise and fall of civilizations -- which have a life of its own -- greater than the sum of its parts.  Underneath it all, is the unifying theme that there is a reason things happen -- or don't.  Finding that out, is what science is -- and not just what authorities say is the truth that should never be questioned, even if they have to censor and suppress all the alternatives themselves.  There have always been people like that.

The Ultimate Exercise Machine (Exercising at Home)

The shutdown of gyms and other exercising venues, is an excellent opportunity to rethink "exercise" -- and all it can be, and not simply focus on what marketing strategies will sell best -- whether they actually deliver those promises or not.  If they indeed worked, we wouldn't have so many people living longer lives -- but in poor health, making them vulnerable to whatever the "disease" and "fear" merchants can conjure.

Health is the best defense against any disease -- or disaster.  That is simply being the best one can be -- and beyond that, is out of our hands -- and that is important to realize also.  It is like that old wisdom, "Let me change what I can, and accept what I can't change, and most importantly, know the difference."  Most spend all their time and energy trying to change what can't be changed, while doing nothing or little, to what they could make a huge difference in their lives -- and so they come to accept the futility and despair of doing nothing that really matters, while protesting constantly that things shouldn't be as they are.

Far more fruitful and practical, is to accept things as they are -- and figure out a way to work with those millions of years of evolutionary wisdom -- and fully embodying and exemplifying those possibilities, rather than expecting and demanding perfection without any effort and expense on their part.  Nothing has ever worked that way.  Even the lowliest of insects, must work tirelessly from dawn to dusk -- or dusk to dawn -- just to survive another day.  That is the advantage of being higher up on the evolutionary scale -- that one no longer has to toil every moment of their lives, just to secure enough food to sustain them one more day.

Instead, they are well-designed to store up excess reserves -- for more difficult and challenging times, and emerge unscathed, and even ahead of when things became difficult.  That is the value of culture -- which propels each subsequent generation to begin on a higher level, and not revert each time to merely subsistence concerns -- beginning with just eating enough.  And thus humankind, has long exceeded those thresholds, and even become a curse to those who cannot manage abundance and success well -- but can only think to undo those advantages, and begin all over again, as the only way they know to live in a world of greater prosperity.  We know such individuals as "dysfunctional," because despite their seeming great advantage, always find a way to undermine themselves.

These are people who cannot handle success -- but are doomed to repeat failure repeatedly, and prefer it as all they know.  Meanwhile, the best and the brightest have moved on -- regrettably having to leave them behind, or they will drag down the rest -- if empowered and enabled.  Such people, thus empowered, will then turn on their enablers -- and no amount of compassion can change that -- however much they demand that the rest cannot move on without them.  That is the "dysfunctional relationship."

But it always begins with one -- exercising and actualizing their own fullest possibilities as the greatest antidote to whatever ills and misfortunes befall them -- and whether they risk it all on the proper outcomes, or simply lie in wait for their ultimate demise -- and thinking there is nothing they can do about it but trust in others to do it all for them.  Such a life -- and society -- doesn't work that well, because there is no limit to how much all the others can sacrifice for one who will not do anything for themselves -- or others, but increase their incessant and insatiable demands.  There is no limit for how much others can do for them, while always dismissing offhand, what they can do for themselves -- first and always.

That is the genesis of a healthier culture -- than the less perfect societies of the past, each seeks to improve upon -- as their own categorical imperative, or supreme commandment of life.  In that respect, the individual is the world -- as the highest manifestation of it -- and not just as a theoretical model, of what ought to be instead.  That is the evolution of understanding that makes greater achievements possible.

In order to make that leap to the next (higher) level, the understanding of what one is doing, first has to be stripped of all presumptions and beliefs -- that those are the only things possible.  The work, or action that is measured, is what is going on inside the body, and not its apparent manifestations that is more likely to be counterproductive, and even injurious -- as the practitioners of every activity ultimately experience.  If that were a therapy or course of improvement, it would not be crippling, debilitating, inevitably, abandoned -- when needed most -- which is the truth of such fitness modalities.

When things work, they work, and don't require unlimited and increasing commitment and devotion to produce those favorable results.  It is simply an indication that it doesn't work -- and a different approach and understanding needs to be looked for.  That is self-evident truth that is manifested in every life -- and not needing a double-blind study to prove -- all in the names of "science" -- which is always rigidly controlled to defend the self-invested status quo, who like it that way.

For all the rest, they should begin each day with a systematic program of stretches and movements just to get functioning properly -- and not that personal records have to be achieved in every effort.  Ideally, the greatest gains are made in going from total incapacitation, to the flawless execution of even the simplest movement -- which in olden times, would be that focus on breathing or heart rate -- which is unnecessary, because it is an autonomic function, and therefore, always appropriate to a more conscious and deliberate effort and movement -- that is only possible with the correct breathing and circulatory support, but the breathing alone, cannot ensure -- just as heart rate alone, will not ensure a world record, or personal best.

One implies the other, but not vice-versa.  In fact, one is automatic, or autonomic; it takes places regardless of conscious effort.  Otherwise, one can't properly do anything else -- because they are too focused on the breath, but the proper performance of any other conscious and deliberate movement, includes the proper breathing.  Nothing else is possible.

The most basic of human movements is to lift oneself off the ground -- as well as lowering oneself down to that level as easily and gracefully as possible.  That is the great teaching of yoga that is always overlooked -- and often eliminated from the practice altogether, as though everything else was more important.  If an athlete cannot raise themselves off the ground, they are "finished," because they won't be going to the next round.  The contest is over.  That is simply the elemental truth in every activity, much less competition.  We don't need more funding and double-blind studies to "prove" the truth of that obviousness.  It is evident to any body still functioning -- and can tell that difference.

In fact, some performers get off the ground so easily and gracefully, that one would never know that it wasn't part of their program; they just made it look that way.  It doesn't matter, as long as one can still get up -- and continue -- often, even better than before.  That's all part of the game -- what it takes to get there.  Whatever it takes.

That is even more basic than walking -- or any other claim to the most basic activity that can be exercised.  It is no shame to go from the most debilitated condition to one's most able and functional -- and in fact, the ability to do so, indicates one's vitality and viability.  They are undoubtedly, still in the game.  On the other hand, one's inability to change position, does not bode well for their future prospects.

In yoga, that action is manifested in going from the Child's Pose to Tabletop posture, to the Downward Facing Dog, from which they can move into the Forward Fold by walking their hands back toward their feet (rather than vice-versa as usually taught), and then shrug their way to a fully upright position -- as weightlifters do to lift the heaviest weights.  They have to lead that movement with their shoulders -- and not at the waist, which is the improper form, foretelling years of back pain.  Early posture exercises was mainly about this control of the shoulders -- leading the way, and as such, preventing the rounding of the back characteristic of back pain, poor posture, and the look of infirmity.

Prior to the 1950s, that's what fitness classes largely consisted of -- classes for attaining the perfect posture -- as a healthy and robust-looking person bound for success.  It's never to late to begin -- and maintain for the rest of one's life.  That says it all -- and is always a worthy beginning to each day.