15 Extra Hours in This Life Aren’t Worth 6,750 Steps
As one who has reached the age in which prolonging one’s life seems a primary concern, I am exasperated by the vacillation of medical authorities on just what will do that and what won’t.
I grew up believing, as I was told, that if I ate my vegetables and drank milk every day I would be strong and healthy. I have been healthy most of my life although as a boy I ate a Snickers almost every day, and since achieving manhood I have probably drunk more than one beer every day.
Lately, however, I have read that too much milk is not good for you, and on the other hand, beer in moderate amounts will make you not only healthier but also happier.
In recent years I have almost given up beer for wine, which I drink almost every day. That change came after I read in the paper that the French have fewer heart attacks than we do because they drink a lot of wine. On the other hand, I have read that the Japanese have fewer heart attacks because they eat a lot of rice. I do not like rice and I am not going to eat it in large amounts to avoid a heart attack. Wine, OK; rice, no.
Recently the brilliant medical essayist Lewis Thomas said that television has reduced the rate of heart attacks in America. That’s because television advertises all kinds of medicines that contain aspirin, which is said to have a salutary effect on the cardiovascular system. I’d take an aspirin every day but I’m told it abrades the stomach.
If you read the medical news in the paper thoroughly, as I used to, you can find a lot of curious theories, based on scientific research, that almost everything they once thought was good for you is actually bad for you, and vice versa.
For the past several years I have been strung out by the controversy over cholesterol. I don’t even know for sure what cholesterol is (I think it’s waxy), but for many years, from reading the paper, I believed that it was bad for you.
I took to avoiding cholesterol whenever I could. Our refrigerator is crammed to this day with products whose labels testify to their freedom from it, or at least to its minuscule presence.
Now I have recently read in the paper about new findings that the absence of cholesterol can give you profound psychic problems. “These studies throw into a cocked hat the whole proposition that every American should lower his cholesterol level,” said a scientist involved in this latest discovery.
The psychic problems may include personality changes so severe that they can even lead to violent death by causing anger, irritability, aggressiveness and increased risk-taking, including suicide.
In other words, if you don’t get your cholesterol, you can go crazy.
On the other hand, these experts say, if you have any kind of heart trouble, you have to cut down on cholesterol or it may kill you.
I have reached the point where I am not going to worry about what I ought to ingest to prolong my life. I am beginning to question all the accepted rules. As I have previously noted, I recently had lunch with a retired colleague who looked extremely fit. I asked him what he was doing to maintain his health. He said he had asked his doctor what difference it would make if he gave up fats, sweets, alcohol and red meat. The doctor said, “It will probably add three months to your life.”
He and I agreed that those last three months would probably not be too much fun anyway, so why give up what you enjoy merely to live three miserable months longer?
I also read recently that every step you climb will add eight seconds to your life. I used take the elevator up one floor at The Times (27 steps) to reach the garage level. I began climbing the steps instead of taking the elevator. Then I figured that if I climbed one flight every weekday for a 50-week year, that would add 56,160 seconds, or 936 minutes, or 15 hours to my life.
I decided that adding 15 hours to my life was not worth having to climb 6,750 steps. I decided to throw those hours in with the three months I might add by giving up everything I enjoy eating and drinking. (The question now is moot because I no longer go into The Times every day.)
From now on I’m not reading any of the medical news. Like the French, I’m just going to go on drinking wine and taking one day at a time. I believe our reason for being here is to stay alive, enjoy and see what happens next.
As for cholesterol, I’m keeping it low; I’d rather be crazy than dead.
