General Wellness

A recent news item reports that Covid has contributed to decreasing life expectancy in 2020.

Of course life expectancy will drop when a deadly disease, infecting millions of people comes on the scene. It’s not rocket science to expect that. Most of the deaths have been in people between 40 and 60 (the ones out and about more) so the average drops.

Although this is certainly true, the fact is that life expectancy in the US had already been going down the 2 years prior to Covid-19 even coming onto the scene. Since these numbers have been tracked in the early 1900s, we have had a steady increase in life expectancy, until the last few years. In addition, two years ago, kids were now no longer predicted to outlive their parents!

The fact is that, despite having the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, Americans are so unhealthy (we rank ~40th worst with respect to prevalence of chronic diseases), and we rank somewhere in the 40s with respect to life expectancy. 

42% of Americans are obese. When combined with the simply being overweight, it’s almost 75%. Worse than that, 20% of young people under 20 are obese, let alone overweight. Hypertension and Type 2 (previously called adult-onset) diabetes are diagnosed in kids even before high school, even in toddlers! Ultrasound studies on infants born to obese mothers shows the presence of cardiac arterial plaque already. Not only are we killing ourselves, we are killing our kids.

We are a sick society. We take the most drugs. We are the fattest. We are the most depressed. Pick any disease, and we are #1! An it is bankrupting our healthcare system.

There are a number of reasons for this including lack of movement/exercise, almost continuous exposure to toxic chemicals and chronic stress. But what we eat is the most important factor. I hear it all the time in the office. “My knees/back/neck…(pick your body part) hurts so I can’t exercise. That’s why I’ve put on weight”. Bullcrap. First of all, these are all excuses not to move. As I heard once “If it’s important to you, you’ll find a way. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse”. Secondly, as I like to quote, “You can’t exercise your mouth!”. It takes climbing 25 flights of stairs to burn off the same number of calories you consume from only 1 Oreo cookie. 

It’s the food!

One of the most disappointing things to me about this pandemic is that people have squandered the opportunity to work on themselves and get healthier. The “Covid 19” is no joke. People are even less healthy. Sure this pandemic has had a huge emotional toll on everyone. But we can’t just keep deteriorating. There has been a failure to appreciate that how we are living, brought this pandemic on in the first place.

The Blue Zone societies like the Okinawans and 7th Day Adventists in Loma Linda, CA, have life expectancies 10-12 years longer than the average American. In addition, those additional years are full of life and vitality, not spent on a dialysis machine or taking a handful of drugs. We need to do what is done in the Blue Zones (read the book by Dan Buettner). Most of these societies are not vegan, but they do eat a diet made up predominantly of plants. Less than only 5-10% of their calories come from animal products. The average American gets at least 3x that amount. Blue Zone societies also move all the time. They care for each other. They have purpose to their lives. 

Just like Covid contributing to lowering life expectancy, the reason those living in the Blue Zones live longer and better is not rocket science.

It starts with caring for yourself and caring for those around you. 

We have a long way to get out of this pandemic and our lives will never be the same as they were before. There is still time to work on yourselves. Physically and emotionally. 

Have a great weekend and remember to do all the things that are important to show that you care about yourself and all those around you.

WEAR A MASK. Wear a good one and wear it properly. Cover your nose. Stop touching it.
DISTANCE. The virus can only travel so far in the air.
WASH your hands and stop touching your face.
COVER YOUR EYES where appropriate.
VENTILATE. The virus dissipates quickly with good airflow and fresh air.
VACCINATE. Get whichever one you can as soon as possible. Any amount of protection is good.
GET HEALTHY. Drink more water. Move. Eat more plants.
BE COMPASSIONATE towards yourselves, all those around you, the animals and the planet.

Stay Safe and Be Well.
AC

The vaccine roll out has been problematic, disorganized, slow and asymmetric. Because public health and vaccines are controlled at the State level, there are as many vaccine distribution plans as there are States. This is frustrating for many people since, although our Constitution  states that “all men are created equal”, it certainly doesn’t seem that way. In some states, relatively young and healthy people are getting vaccinated while in others, elderly with many medical problems are still waiting. In some states, the spouses of healthcare and other essential workers are eligible for the vaccine, while in most others, they are not. There are many examples, but this is how our government was set up. State and Federal.

All that having been said, we are heading in the right direction. More people are getting vaccinated daily than are getting infected by SARS-Cov-2. The scales are slowly tipping in the right direction.

The very fact that we even have a vaccine, introduced less than a year after the virus was discovered, is pretty amazing. We have 2, very safe and very effective ones out now (Pfizer and Moderna). 95% effectiveness at preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19 is unheard of in the history of vaccines. They do have some issues, both requiring 2 doses to reach those levels of protection and their transport and storage requirements are challenging, but it’s still amazing. 

A third vaccine, from Johnson & Johnson, is also on the horizon. Although on the surface appearing less effective, only 66% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, it is still 85% effective at preventing hospitalizations and death. This far surpasses the typical flu vaccine (averaging 40-60% effectiveness). 

There are also a number of other issues to look at when comparing these vaccines. The J&J vaccine was tested later in the pandemic, at a time when there was much more disease and the more transmissible variants were already on the scene. Secondly, the J&J vaccine was tested in areas like Brazil and S. Africa, where these variants were actually the predominant one already. We don’t have all the data but one might argue that it is better to get the J&J vaccine over the others because of the ability to cover all the variants which are on a rapid rise all over the world, including here in the US. Although the Pfizer vaccine does appear to have some, but less, protection against the more aggressive variants, the Moderna vaccine, in early small studies, seems to be much less effective. 

In addition, there are some real advantages to the J&J vaccine. It is only one dose and it’s storage and transport needs are much simpler. All you need is basically a regular fridge.

In these three vaccine studies combined, there were 58,000 people who actually received the vaccine, half of all the participants. Not one of those 58,000 people died and the vast majority of those who ended up getting sick, requiring hospitalizations, were those who received the placebo.

Essentially, the vaccine saved over 100 deaths in the trials. And that is with only 58,000 people. So far, 52 million doses have been given in the US and 172 million worldwide. That’s potentially 100,000 Americans saved and 300,000 worldwide at this point in time. In addition, think of all the fewer hospitalizations, time away from work and family, illness acutely and chronically. To say that vaccination is risky and questionable is lunacy.

All of this is wonderful and we should be excited about the vaccine. Just think about how much of the misery we have experienced as a species we could have avoided if we were better at behaving responsibly, wearing masks and doing all the other things which we know are helpful.

But lamenting the past will get us nowhere. We must move forward, and vaccination, along with CONTINUED protection, vaccinated or not, is the key if we are to rid ourselves of this virus or return to some degree of pre-Covid normalcy. There will, or at least should, be a new normal. The way we were living is how we got here in the first place and we MUST change, but let’s get over this pandemic first as best as we can.

Stay Safe and BE Well

AC