I know. Some of you are thinking, “isn’t that the same thing?” Some of you may already know what I’m going to be talking about but here goes anyway.
Healthspan is how well you live during your lifespan. Lifespan is basically how old you get before you die. And, just to clarify, the “well” part of healthspan doesn’t mean the foods you get to eat because you just want them. It means being able to live in your own home, get around on your own, be active, and be independent. Be as healthy as possible. I don’t know about you guys but I think I prefer that to being able to eat all of the fried chicken I want. I prefer it to spending the last 20 years of my life taking buckets of pills and going in and out of the hospital, then to spend the last five or so years having my bum wiped by someone else or not even knowing that that’s happening because my mind has gone. I know that nothing is ever guaranteed. It’s not a guarantee that if I eat healthier and live my life healthier that something won’t happen to interfere with my ideal healthspan but why not increase the odds that it won’t? Instead of increasing the odds that it will.
Blue Zones. Have you heard of these? If you haven’t, check out this website here. There are nine things that most healthy centarians have in common (by-the-way, notice the emphasis on “healthy”) and one of those is that they only eat meat about five times a
month. The rest of the time, they eat plant-based. But, that’s only one of the nine commonalities but still very significant. Many of these centarians are enjoying their lives still without worry of being reliant on family or strangers all the time.
When I hear someone say “Life is too short to not eat what I want”, it hurts that they haven’t considered that eating those things might land them in a hospital or care center for a good chunk of their later lives. How is that living? Maybe it is for them. It is their right to choose. I hope you will choose to have a larger healthspan to go with a longer lifespan. Everything we put into our bodies makes a difference to one or both. I mean, I eat all the veggies and fruits and nuts and seeds and legumes that I want — it’s perspective and it’s changing what we want.
After Thought: A lot of us don’t want to think that anything will happen to us. We like to think that we’ll be okay or not be okay because it’s not in our control. That’s not true. There is a lot that we can control, that we can affect. We can even affect our DNA. Make some conscious choices today. Choose to eat at least one healthy meal without animal protein. Take it one step, one day at a time.
Hart Health 