Individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for their ill health in old age, according to a report aimed at challenging the belief that physical decline is either inevitable or primarily the responsibility of the state.
The report, launched at the Smart Ageing Summit in Oxford last week, argues that individuals have far greater control over their longevity than is commonly understood. The authors call on the government to take legislative action on alcohol comparable to restrictions on smoking.
Still, at least that will differentiate us from hte Americans. Here you’ll *only* be allowed to drink in the street.
The report’s recommendations include avoiding processed foods, abstaining entirely from alcohol, prioritising sleep, not eating after 6.30pm, and cultivating what it calls “a not-meat mindset”.
Kill me now…
Nah, kill them instead.
I also note that the evil witch is trying to bring back the assisted killing bill back
Very clear thinking there BiND!
“All right buddy, drop the knife and fork. We know you’re eating in there and it’s 6:31PM. You’re nicked!”
Mindless fanaticism is a far greater threat to wellbeing than processed food and alcohol!
Another “report” where the author(s) need to be told, quite firmly, to “fuck right off”.
So, you don’t actually live longer, it just seems like it
I call on the government to take action against the authors of the report – by reopening or redesigning alternative detention provisions to the secure facilities closed in the Thatcher era and ensuring everyone involved with it is detained for an indefinite period, for their safety as well as that of the wider community.
It’s always Thatcher’s fault!
Iceman – I thought Thatcher for the most part was great but closing the asylums equivalents in retrospect was a disaster – How much better would it be if people like the authors of this report had such facilities where they could be detained indefinitely? Indeed I’d probably advocate anyone voting Green be sectioned.
I’m not disagreeing, I only thought it was “interesting” that Thatcher was being called out in a way the leftists normally would
‘individuals have far greater control over their longevity’ and that cannot be allowed comrade! You must live and die as the state decrees for the greater good.
Also bollocks. Having gone through the available models (my 360 degree health review one year turned out to be a stats nerd GP) after accounting for genetics and upbringing my ability to influence my own demise changed by just 2 years. Pour me another …
I don’t think I have every read many things more truly dispiriting than this:
Dressed and groomed, we start our active day at about 9.00. Her focus is the garden, mine (at present) this Report.
Nonetheless, I hope to grow more vegetables next year… I take regular exercise, walk/run (three miles or so) on
alternate days, with a half-hour indoor exercise routine (stretching, lifting, and so on, together with a session on my
new exercise bike) on the non-running days, and a rest on Sundays, when I pick up the litter in the lane by our home
(and greet neighbours). We entertain family and friends, probably about twice a week, for whom I cook (vegan meals,
of course). But I have now (almost) given up the evening meal altogether (unless we have guests), and ‘almost-fast’
from 2.00 pm until the next morning, except for a cup of green tea at about 4.00 pm, and a light snack-supper at 6.00.
It works for me. My BMI (Body-Mass Index) is now respectable.
Our evenings start with the TV weather and news at 6.00 pm; we do a large jig-saw together (in turn) and watch some
of our favourite programmes, or a film, until 10.00, avoiding the late news. Then, it’s bed-time; we read for about an
hour (no blue light in the bedroom!); then lie down to sleep. I do some gentle exercise, tapping, foot-stretching, nasal
breathing; then tape my lips together, turn over into my sleeping posture, while meditating on my ‘gratitude exercise’
by making an alphabetical list of reasons to be thankful – ‘Andrew (my brother), air, avocados; babies, bay trees,
broccoli; children, cherries, carrots’ – until I fall asleep, usually well before ‘Wendy (my wife), water, weather’. If we
wake in the night, we find a spoonful of Nytol (available from chemists) sends us off to sleep again. As you see, we
take our S-MEDs, without fail. Sundays are special days: I wear my watch on the right wrist to stimulate my brain,
and do the weekly chores (sharpen the kitchen knives, pick up litter). I firmly believe we need to combine routine
with change.‘
But I would like to thank ‘Sir Christopher Ball’ and congratulate him. I don’t think anyone has proven to be more evil than Murphy (and I work with a charity that runs courses in Cat B prisons) within 15 minutes of me encountering them until he managed it – trebles all round!
Why is it vegans are so obnoxious in general and do we need to make it illegal?
That’s why his wife is shagging the postman.
It really is the banality of evil. That poor deluded girl dies thanks to her vegan diet but this old cunt, benefitting without doubt from a no-nonsense meaty diet for his first 20 odd years at least, is still plaguing us at 91.
They aren’t living, they are existing. It’s sad that they don’t realise the difference!
What an absolutely miserable existence.
Hey, give him credit, he gets friends and family to come round twice a week for vegan meals. And presumably not particularly scintillating conversation. That’s impressive.
But it’s okay, he has some excitement in his week.
Sundays are special days: I wear my watch on the right wrist to stimulate my brain
Wait, what? I thought I had a boring lifestyle.
Wendy (his wife) must be so relieved at that point.
Pretty sure she has taped her lips together also when he is around. Aforementioned postman probably only left with a badly eroded stump after she’s broken free.
Even if it was true they only add extra years at the end. And everybody gets ill with something in the end, those last two years, however postponed, are always spent with some unpleasant condition.
Although a lot of us are going to die in the civil war or otherwise enriched.
And everybody gets ill with something in the end, those last two years, however postponed, are always spent with some unpleasant condition.
See above – Not if the evil witch gets he way with the assisted killing bill.
“Individuals have far greater control over their longevity than is commonly understood” and therefore the State must take legislative action to rectify that. Dreamt up by the sort of brain that requires me to renew my driving licence on reaching 70 for everyone’s safety and simultaneously creates a law that states that if the DVLA doesn’t get around to doing it for 6 months it doesn’t matter, I just have to tell anyone who asks “It’s OK it’s being dealt with”…
Grist
As always you have nailed it – someone like an Angela Rippon (for example) who suggests you may want to consider dancing or doing some other form of exercise – no issue.
It’s the coercive element that obviously grates. And you are absolutely right – the ‘precautionary’ principle might be harder to tax but it should be considered alongside all the other
Levies that the state should place on the leftwing mindset. Totalitarianism should be made very expensive.
My knees hurt – I blame the government!
So the govt will be committing to only taxing people for the 20% they’re accepting responsibility for, right? Right?
Happiness and prosperity in this country depends on a complete sea-change in the way the chattering classes conceptualise everything.
We’re cooked, as the kids say.
Oxford again, isn’t it?
The Oxford Longevity Project calls – quite reasonably – for scientific information about longevity and the causes why some people live longer than others. The most likely reason it’s called OLP is because it acquires status thereby (*one* of the team is/was an Oxford academic). The Grauniad then fills the article with comments from people who have no connection with Oxford trumpeting their unscientific hobbyhorses.
I went to Oxford in 1964 so my failure to follow the anti-meat propagandists dictates should – in their views – have led to my premature death years ago or my current frailty so, either way, I should be unable to be competing in the 10km series starting next Wednesday.
If you actually read the article, John, the Smart Aging Summit is what’s being held in Oxford. Predictably, it’s brought together a cabal of academic food fascists. Maybe, once, it was a reputable place of learning. These days that past reputation is used to validates all sorts of scum & nonsense. Academia, now, is thoroughly discredited. Con artists & charlatans & sometimes the barking mad..
I did read the article – they are exploiting Oxford’s reputation to give a false appearance of intelligence to their propaganda. And they think if it’s called OLP then people will think it can lead a “Smart Aging Summit”
Academia is discredited by places like “City University, London” which isn’t a university and isn’t even in the City and schools in Cambridge teaching English as a second language calling themselves “… College, Cambridge”. There are still genuine academics doing genuine research but they don’t get headlines because the Long March through the Institutions started with the media..
That one triggered the Cunt Klaxon. That statement is clear proof that these are power-crazed maniacs who should be humanely beaten to death with shovels for the good of mankind.
Moderate drinking has been repeatedly and overwhelmingly positively linked with a lower risk of early death. As Chris Snowden points out, you have to drink quite a lot to get that risk up to the level of a teetotaller.
Why “humanely”?
Because we’re good people. And there’s less risk of damage to the shovels.
On a more serious note, most people can have an impact on their health as they get older. Muscle wastage with age is a thing as we age and exercise does help, as does keeping mentally active.
But that’s not the point, just because we* have chosen to socialise healthcare it does not give the prodnoses and other associated control freaks a right to take over our lives. If they don’t like the costs then switch to an insurance based system where the individual bears at east some of the cost of their lifestyle.
*By “we” I mean society in general, I know that most round these parts would probably elect for a more insurance based system given the option.
Very important to keep limber, do core strength exercises, touch your toes every day.
Every reasonably healthy adult can do that (if you can’t touch your toes, keep trying) and even a couple of minutes of stretching and planking a day can make a big difference to back pain and stiffness.
I do a damned sigh more than that every day, today was 80 minutes functional strength exercises after 10 minutes on my x-trainer, and I’ve never been able to touch my toes, and it isn’t even close.
My neanderthal proportions help, I don’t mean to brag, but I am also able to snag ice cream from the top shelf with my monkeylike hairy arms.
You must be one of those newfangled Sapiens chappies.
I touch my toes with my knuckles …
When standing fully upright?
Splendid
No (bent at the waist)
I’ve not been able to touch my toes since I was 12.
I believe in you!
just because we* have chosen to socialise healthcare it does not give the prodnoses and other associated control freaks a right to take over our lives
Reckon you’ll find that’s in reality exactly what it does mean and that tens of millions of people are just fine with it.
No, they have no *right* – some of them want the *power*
“Otherwise what are we saying?” said Sridhar. “That people who have more expensive houses have more discipline?”
Obviously they do, compared to dole scum.
I think the correlation is the other way around. More discipline tends more often to having a more expensive house.
Which is why the American “everyone should have a house” programs went wrong. They mistook the indicators for the causes.
It’s not rocket surgery, is it?
The people I know who live in expensive houses worked hard for it and were successful in their career or business. Their hobbies include mountain biking, jogging, and tennis.
People I know who live in council houses saw getting on disability as a career aspiration, don’t work, but have several kids and free cars from the government and apparently no shortage of cash for their hobbies of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana in front of a massive telly all day.
Which group is more disciplined, children?
Well, who are you going to believe, highly credentialed government scientist Professor Sridhar, or your own lying eyes?
We truly are being governed by imbeciles. Abstain from alcohol eh? I suppose they can ban it if they like, and it’ll be just like the Volstead Act in the US of A way back when.
For me? I’d just go back to making my own. Also look at the past. IPA was brewed for a reason. Good source of energy and minerals, plus, it killed the bugs. TWATS
“The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting whistle which continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen, getting-up time for office workers. Winston wrenched his body out of bed […]
‘Thirty to forty group!’ yapped a piercing female voice. ‘Thirty to forty group! Take your places, please. Thirties to forties!’
Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared.
‘Arms bending and stretching!’ she rapped out. ‘Take your time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! …’“
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. […] The eyeless crature at the other table swallowed it fanatically. passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams.”
As with most things it is mostly about striking a balance. I have a pretty varied diet, drink in moderation, exercise by gardening and swimming and have never smoked. At just shy of sixty eight I’m in pretty good shape and good health. I actually enjoy being active so I don’t have to have some kind of military disciplined routine like the one described in the OP. My brother, four years younger, has been a smoker and heavy drinker all of his adult life. Had a reasonably active job, didn’t do much other exercise apart from a bit of football many years ago. I look younger than my actual age, so I’m told, he now looks and moves as though he’s in his nineties.
On gardening, it is satisfying to grow a few veggies but I don’t go around claiming that I’m saving the planet or some other stupid self righteous bullshit.
“individuals have far greater control” v. “the government to take legislative action”
Not eating after 6:30pm? I don’t have dinner until about 9:00pm, just like those Mediterranean folk whose diet we’re encouraged to emulate.
The Spanish consider 9pm ridiculously early to be sitting down to dinner. If you book a table for 9pm at a restaurant (the earliest many of them open), you won’t find any Spaniards eating in there. Dining at midnight isn’t unknown.
I’m a morning person and usually up by 6am and on busy projects I tended to be in the office by 7am, which in Madrid meant I usual had at least 3 hours peace and quiet. The downside is I’m usually in bed by 10am.
I never could face the idea of joining the local team for dinner at midnight, even when it was meant to be the best steak house in Madrid.
A very reasonable working day I’d say
Was that the one near the bullring that sold meat from ‘retired’ Galician milkers? (Absolutely delicious ‘melt-in-the-mouth beef.).
Commies vowing to harass you all the way into your grave.
They’re mentally ill. They cannot leave us alone. For our own good.
Indeed, and I assume you are referring to this quote for those who haven’t seen it.
Also thanks to CS Lewis that I came to understand God is an Englishman.
Or at least, not French.
There’s a corollary to Jock Smith’s butcher, baker, dinner quotation. It seems to me that it is when you deal with people who have no regard to their own self-interest you’ll get no dinner.
I’m amused that the (relatively, introduced 2024) new Royal Navy fitness test – officially, slightly portentiously, the Physical Employment Standard – I have to pass each year, has gone from “walk six laps of the Astroturf wearing a heart monitor” for the forty-plus, to a multi-stage sequence of lifting, shifting, dragging and moving heavy stuff for everyone.
It’s based on “move those drums of AFFF”, “help restock the gunbay”, “drag that casualty to safety” for the weights and measures used, representing things you might have to do during a crisis aboard ship; and it’s age and gender independent. “One test to check them all, one test to try them, one test to prove them all and in the Navy bind them…”
Keeping in shape to pass that (as I’m hitting what would have been mandatory end-of-service age, except I’ve been extended five years already, and might be extended to 67!) is either going to kill me or keep me in decent health.
Where the RN has just harmonised maximum service age with State pension age, there’s a question of whether the full PES is really appropriate for sixtysomething shoreside sailors, but there’s yet to be any official word on that.
The point? If I’m doing that, then I reckon I’m doing more than many to keep myself hale and healthy: anyone telling me I can’t drink, can’t eat meat, can’t eat at all after 1830, can GTF.
No doubt in the good old days it was called Physical Imployment Standard. Abbreviated as PIS.
But they now spell Imployment with an E. Perhaps you could call it Physical Employment Standard Test, or PEST??
My dear great aunt, who smoked at least 100 expensive imported cigarettes a day from various gold and ivory monogrammed cases, was never seen without a glass of gin in her hand, a pearl necklace, and furs (hubby was rich, dahling, here’s £20 for being a good boy), and steadfastly refused all exercise other than, I suppose, that involved in making her six children, lived to 99 and was sharp as a tack until the end.
So the lesson is: be rich, smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish, and shag loads.
WOOF!
BARK!
That’s the spirit.
Individuals are responsible, therfore the atate should take that responsibility away.
Nanny knows best you know.
My principal health problem was caused by a virus picked up from an insect bite. Serves me right for wearing sandals I suppose. I don’t see how interfering with happy juice would have saved me.
This is rubbish. We are not “designed” to live much past 40. The primary purpose of all organisms is reproduction of the species. In Humans this function is achieved in late teens/early twenties with the next ten to twenty years involved in nurturing and protecting the young until they are of reproductive age.
Parents are then no longer needed and compete for resources – food, water, shelter, mates – with the new generation. Full physical development occurs around age 21, thereafter the “kill switch” operates to take us to an early death.
Our longevity in modern times is largely due to modern medicine, less deaths from accidents, exposure to elements and predators, and better nutrition.
Most diseases – cancer, diabetes, renal and cardiovascular, joint, digestive, cognitive, etc are an inevitable consequence of aging. There is no way currently to stop this.
That physical decline is considered to be the responsibility of the State is because the State teaches that, like everything else is the responsibility of the State – called Socialism and welfarism and collectivism. It’s why we are in such a mess with a £2.9 trillion debt.
Grandparents also have an evolutionary niche, providing day care to grandchildren. Therefore we generally expect to live for some time past child rearing age.
Grandmothers definitely. Not so sure about Grandads. They are still competing for pussy.
This Grandad wishes that were true in his case.
Likewise. Such things that dreams are made of…
It’s the competing for pussie suggests they are. Each reproductive encounter increases the chance of passing on ones genes. Longer one lives the more encounters, the more chance of reproducing. The greater ones share of the common gene pool.
Try this nutter on for size;
“Marlene Watson-TaraCo-founder MACROVegan, Human Ecology Project
Marlene Watson-Tarais a highly profiled and dedicated health counsellor and teacher with 45 years of experience in transforming lives.Her dietary advice draws from the fields of Macrobiotic Nutrition, her studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine and her certification in plant-based nutrition, author of Macrobiotics for all Seasons, Weight Loss Nature’s Way, Go Vegan and Macrobiome/Microbiome.
A long-time vegan, lover of animals, nature and life and passionate about human ecology. Together with her husband, Bill Tara, they created The Human Ecology Project
Their non-profit produces workbooks, educational videos and material for schools, colleges and universities as well as the general public.
Marlene has designed various successful programmes and concepts – The Natural Woman, Four Weeks to Vegan and Weight Loss Nature’s Way are just a few of her home-grown workshops. She also teaches and presents at the Oxford Literary Festival each year, where she designs and trains the chefs in her vegan menus for the gala dinners. She also trains chefs for royal families, world business leaders, and clients from the world of movies and arts.”
So many boxes, all ticked.
I love animals too. Especially in the form of beef, steak, pork, bacon, cutlets and curry.
The mind fools the eye: trains the chefs in her vagina menus for the gala dinners
All you can eat galas, presumably?
Red wine with fish?
James Bond knew that was a sign that someone couldn’t be trusted.
Light reds go well with Tuna. Swordfish goes well with more firm reds or port.
The more you have to treat the fish like steak, the better red wines go with it.
It’s like reading a rap sheet to be honest
Bit of a shame she’s not married to Boycie.
“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking, and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.”― Clement Freud
But indeed, the temperance movement is rising again.
No sex
No drugs
No wine
No women
No fun
No sin
No you
No wonder it’s tax
Genetics has absolute nothing to do with it, of course.
The claim is 80% responsibility *for their ill-health in old age*. Genetics will decide whether you have an option of living into old age (a lot of genetically-related illnesses will kill you much sooner).
Sure, my good health (in what other people call “old age”) is due to a good choice of parents rather than good behaviour – but someone has indulged in “suggestio falsi” by phrasing the claim in a way that is difficult to disprove: e.g. those who have silicosis are responsible because they chose to be coalminers, those with asbestosis are responsible because they worked as builders, those with other lung diseases are responsible because they smoked, … those with X can be blamed because they did Y …
I bet they won’t say that I am 80% responsible for my good health because I eat meat and drink a moderate quantity of cider!
If your good health in old age is 80% down to your personal choices, then surely we can cease to fret over “health inequalities”. So certain groups – ethnics, benefit junkies – have poorer health and die earlier as a result of their personal choices – not because of the stresses of racial discrimination or capitalism!
They will claim the junkies’ poor choices are the result of racial discrimination – nothing to do with alcohol being prohibited by Islam while drugs are permitted.
Oh! you said benefit junkies – that *is* a choice, but it doesn’t have nearly as much health impact that drugs do, obesity and diabetes aren’ automatic consequences..
Are you trying to imply that such people are the authors of their own misfortune?
“Devi Sridhar, professor and chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh”
Wickedpedia reports “Having received her bachelor’s degree in biology at the age of 18, … At Oxford, Sridhar completed an MPhil in medical anthropology in 2005, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in anthropology in 2006″
So, essentially a quack. As she made pretty clear during the Great Covid Hysteria. Still, she’ll warm the cockles of BiS’s heart.
Who the fuck can afford to live to 100? I’m fighting fit but will be surprised if I can afford to make it to 80.