"Live every day
as if it were going to be your last; for one day you're sure to be right."
Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant
The young have no fear and think they are immortal, hence
their propensity to do things that are stupid and/or dangerous. I remember that when I was at school we would
satirise the public safety films that appeared on TV and at the cinema by
making up bizarre activities and saying, in our best Alvar Lidell[1]
tones, "Never do this, it's stupid and dangerous." As we grow older
we ought to grow wiser and more cautious, but how often have you heard people remark
that age is just a number and that while physically they may be 40 or 50,
mentally they feel the same as they did when they were 18 or 20? Naturally most
people in their 40's or 50's become acutely aware of their actual age when they
attempt some physical activity that they pursued with ease three decades before,
but that does not stop those of us in that age group from still feeling relatively
young. In fact people are generally "younger" today than they were
fifty years or more ago and if that sounds odd, look around you.
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| Never do this, it's stupid and dangerous. |
Back in the days when I was a child, people of my
grand-parents' generation looked old and behaved old; their dress, their
habits, their taste in music were of their time. Nowadays there is a greater
democracy in dress and in musical tastes, in the hobbies people pursue. But as
much as we may be wearing skinny jeans and playing Grand Theft Auto while
listening to One Direction[2]
there is one inescapable fact, one immutable law of nature that we cannot avoid;
we are all getting older, although I have often remarked, somewhat flippantly,
that this is preferable to the alternative.
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| 50 in 1950... |
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| ...and today |
Thoughts of my own mortality have come to the fore in recent
months after a number of visits to the doctor and hospital. Personally I try to
avoid going to either the doctor or hospital if at all possible, you never know
what you might pick up. Some years ago I
went to my doctor, worried over some sharp pains I was experiencing in my left
arm, and although I am by no means a hypochondriac, I do sometimes fear the
worst when this sort of thing happens. Happily the doctor found no physical
problems and told me it was stress related. In answer to my question as to what
I should do, his answer was short and useless: "Eliminate the cause of
your stress," he said. As I was not in a position to give up work at the
time, his advice had to go unheeded, but proving that the physical signs were psychosomatic,
once I realised that that this was the case, the symptoms disappeared.
Since then, the removal of my wisdom teeth and a wart like
growth on my tongue apart (I admit that did give me some sleepless nights
because it could have been a lot more serious; fortunately a biopsy revealed it
to be benign), I have been relatively incident free on the health front. By the
by, one does appreciate that one is aging when one's dentist says, "You
have good teeth...for a man of your age," which gave me pause for thought
as I had never thought of myself as a man of my age before. But anyway, to the
matter in hand, which all began with a seemingly innocuous phone call from the
doctor's surgery, who were targeting "men of my age" for health MOT's.
Off I trotted, fairly confident that all would be well and that I would leave
with a ringing endorsement of my lifestyle. Now I admit that I had had a
recurrence of a somewhat delicate issue that I had been to the doctors about
before, so perhaps I was a little stressed, but whatever the reason, my blood
pressure was so high that I feared that I was going to be hospitalised there
and then! Admitting to my delicate issue
resulted in more prodding and poking from my doctor than I was especially
comfortable with, especially when she produced a latex glove and some lubricant, and I left
the surgery with instructions to make an appointment for a scan and to have a
blood test.
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| Never do this... |
Fortunately my problem cleared up (touch wood) because my
doctor told me that the next investigative step would be a lot more invasive,
and neither the scan nor the blood test had detected any abnormalities worthy
of concern (apart from a cyst on a kidney and slightly enlarged prostate - like
most men my age I would imagine) but my blood pressure remained elevated and my
cholesterol level was similarly high enough to require treatment so I was given
prescriptions to deal with both. In addition I was instructed to drink less,
stop smoking and eat more healthily. I was tempted to ask, "Will that make
me live longer?" to which the only appropriate answer is, "No, it
will just seem longer." So the consumption of alcohol has been reduced,
the smoking has stopped and I am trying to eat more healthily, although as I
have always considered my diet to be reasonably good, this healthy eating
regime largely entails trying to reduce the consumption of crisps and
chocolate, with the emphasis on trying.
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| ...or this... |
Now I am not critical of my doctor's advice, nor am I saying
that the Amlodipine and Simvastatin that I have been prescribed are not
necessary, but I am not convinced that all treatments are essential and that
the benefits many people are gaining from life-long prescriptions may well be
marginal. Take Zantac for instance, a treatment for ulcers produced by
Glaxo-SmithKline (GSK) which is prescribed for long periods of use. For purely
commercial reasons GSK began marketing Zantac to sufferers of heartburn by
condition branding their product to consumers on the basis that heartburn was a
precursor to ulcers. According to many people (including my dentist, who
explained this to me recently), a short course of antibiotics can clear up the
problem without recourse to years of taking Zantac, but of course publicising
that type of thing is not in the drug companies interests.
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| ...or this. |
Apparently around a third of the population of the England
have high blood pressure, but around 5 million in the UK are undiagnosed, which
if my doctor is to be believed, is 5 million people with increased risk of
premature death from heart attack or stroke. No doubt many of these are the
morbidly obese people I see waddling around wolfing down cheeseburgers,
guzzling super-sized soft drinks and smoking like the proverbial chimney.
When I first started taking my tablets I must confess I felt
a bit depressed about it, but having spoken to a number of my friends it would
appear that I was in something of a minority when I wasn't taking them and
everyone seems to think it is no big deal. The thing is that while it is wise
to cut out or at least cut down on the things that are bad for you and sensible
to do the things that are good for you, you can be the healthiest man on the
planet and still walk outside and get hit by a bus.
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