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The Health and Fitness Express contains
the random and organised thoughts of John Miller |
It never ceases to amaze me the continued call on public funds to fund
the rising cost of medical services because of the increasing age
profile of the community.
There are a few things that come to mind here.
1. What's old? I asked Adolf, at 83 our second oldest member
whether he thought he was old. He gave an emphatic 'NO'.
2. Getting older is not a cause of poor health. Being older doesn't mean
you have to be in poorer health than you were when you were younger. OK,
there will be a bit of wear and tear, that's normal, but chronic poor
health, is by and large preventable. Certainly it doesn't mean that once
you get old you can expect to be sickly all the time. The fact that some
older people are sicker than some younger people has got nothing to do
with age. I keep telling people that the older they are the longer
they've had to train!
3. Why have succeeding governments sought to accept such a large public
responsibility for individual poor health, when most of the poor health
around is privately generated and privately preventable? This seems a
bizarre proposition. I support the public role for the support of some
poor health. Of course the best thing governments have done to improve
health over the last 100 years is to improve sanitation.
The main generators of health problems at any age are lack of vigorous
physical activity, an inappropriate diet and an inability to manage the
stress of one's internal environment. To attribute the blame for poor
health on getting older is drawing a particularly long bow.
We live in the golden age, where more and more people are being blessed
with the conditions of life that foster and support the ability to grow
older. Good government, technology and affluence have enabled this to
happen, quite apart from what we do for ourselves. If people never had
it so good in Harold Wilson's England, they've certainly got it better
in the Australia that's been handed down through the generations of
governments from Mr Menzies to Mr Howard.
Let's not spoil our old age by being unhealthy.
John Miller
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