Sunday, August 17, 2008 Lim: Living haealthy By Melanie T. Lim Wide Awake
ONE would imagine that with all the medical breakthroughs in the last century, we would be living healthier lives—-at least, healthier lives than our parents.
But guess who has the worst routine medical lab test results? It’s not the tired 80-year old senior citizens. It’s the 40-year fast-talking urban professionals—-the generation who has grown up with the purchasing power to fill their bodies with sinfully delicious but fatally destructive gastronomical delights.
People may be living longer today, but for how long?
This streak of longevity is happening to the generation of our parents and grandparents—-born and raised in the era when junk food, industrial waste and self-indulgence were non-existent.
How many parents feed their children junk food on a regular basis? Many. Why? Because food from fast food joints are fast, cheap and delicious. And with all the money that fast food conglomerates spend on advertising, our children are programmed to love junk food from birth.
While people may be living longer today, we have to ask ourselves if longevity also translates to quality.
We may be able to prolong life with medication and machinery but is that the kind of life you aspire for yourself—-one maintained by medication and machinery? When you lie on a hospital bed for months or years brain dead, I don’t really see that as living.
I don’t want to be alive but comatose. I want to be alive and able to converse and commune with the living. I want to be alive and still be able to contribute and bring meaning.
Many people tell me that we will live longer because of modern medicine. This may be true but modern medicine should not be justification to fill our bodies with booze, fat, sugar, preservatives and pesticides.
Modern medicine may make us live longer. But it won’t necessarily make us healthier. And in some cases, modern medicine can also bring us to the grave faster.
I do not want to live long. I want to live only for as long as I am able to make a contribution to this world. I pray constantly for good health, a life lived well and a death that is quick and merciful.
Environmental hazards and unhealthy lifestyles are fast eroding the gains made by medical breakthroughs in the last century. People have to wake up to the realization that one cannot live on the fast lane without paying a steep price. Reckless lifestyles lead to fatal ramifications.
And while it may be too late for me, I write with the hope that those who are younger can be wiser. Change your lifestyles now while you have the chance. You don’t want to be 30 one day and wheelchair-bound. And modern medicine can keep you alive this way for the next fifty years.
People may be living longer today, but for how long? People may be living longer today, but are they living the lives they want?
I think that most people will agree with me when I say that we don’t just aspire to live long lives. We aspire to live long, healthy and productive lives. And possibly, healthier lives than our parents.
