Modern medicine has extended lifespan, but not necessarily healthspan.
There is a difference between being “alive” and being “able”. Frailty comes for all of us who live long enough. The time between your birth and death is your lifespan. The time between your birth and when you become too frail due to aging or illness is your healthspan. Modern medicine has done a great job at extending our lifespan, but less remarkably when it comes to extending our healthspan. We are good at keeping people with chronic pain, injuries, and illnesses just “healthy” enough to not be clinically dead.
People in hunter-gatherer societies tended to have a lifespan that was approximately equal to their healthspan. Whatever you died from tended to kill you pretty quickly. As soon as you become incapable, you typically died. This is not the case any longer. That’s ‘progress’ from a medical perspective. But from a human perspective we should spend more energy directed towards lengthening healthspan.
Healthspan-lengthening activities
- Something approaching a Ideal Exercise Regiment
- Controlling calorie consumption
- Avoiding Chronic Inactivity
- For individuals approaching old age - visiting Geriatricians