Plan more, age less.
A Canadian ad from the Heart & Stroke Foundation shows two perspectives on the last 10 years of your life. Based on the choices that we make we can have either a productive last 10 years or we may end up in a nursing home. I know it is not just as simple as that, but if we start to make choices now in life, while we are younger, then we will have a bit more control over which of the two paths we may end up on.
From the CDC (Center for Disease Control) comes some very scary statistics for the years 2009 through 2012 that show the number of medications people are on. When it comes to people over the age of 65 (both males and females) the CDC showed that 89.8% were on a least one prescription medication within the previous 30 days of answering, 64.8% of this same age group answered with 3 or more, and 39.1% showed 5 or more. Looking at the same criteria for the ages of 45-64 we can see that 67.2%, 34.7%, and 16.3% showed the same prescription use, respectively. And for ages 18-44 those numbers were 38.1%, 9.6%, and 3.3%.
Just because we are getting older does not mean that we need to be taking more medications. However, for some of us we do need more medications, but often there are other things that we can do to prevent going down this path. Consider how you can prevent the last 10 years of your life being spent in a hospital bed, or a nursing home. This is where Naturopathic Medicine shines at helping to prevent disease, and getting the body back into health. Please call me to setup a consultation in this regard, 1-415-912-9934. It is, of course, never too late, or early, to start this alternative process.
Sources: Heart & Stroke Foundation (YouTube), CDC
Image: Robert Smirke (1752-1845) (Wikipedia) (Public Domain)