An elephant in the room: poor diet and lifestyle can lead to medical issues

I have to buy my own health insurance, pay my own premiums. One of my biggest gripes is that there aren't separate risk pools for people who try to take care of themselves. We're all lumped together, for better or worse.

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I like the way you used "elephant" and "poor diet" in the same thought.
MountainDude said:
Your input is exactly the main reason that people don' eat healthy and get sick early in life. They justify their bad diet and lifestyle with a few examples from their lives. This is a very inaccurate argument.
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Agreed.

My dad's cousin died when he was 93. Healthy as a horse until shortly before his death. I used to joke, "Thank goodness he stopped smoking when he was 90!" That's hardly a reason to think cigarettes will help keep you alive.
 
In the end, we're all terminal. But there is a relationship between healthspan and lifespan. This concept is explained in Peter Attia's book linked upthread. You don't have to be miserable and die early.

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What it says to me when someone is unfit and overweight is “I don’t care enough about my family to stay in shape to protect and take care of them.”
 
Tarheelpilot said:
This is why I never considered freight or long haul international as a viable career path. I have had jobs where I routinely worked nights. I always felt like crap. No matter how long I was on the schedule I never felt rested like I do sleeping at night. I still have to fly the occasional red eye and it takes a day or so to recover.

I do my share of the nights but I avoid it as much as possible.
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According to the sleep experts there is no realistic solution to the night shift problem, other than avoidance. Some of the other circadian disrupters can be alleviated by managing lightness/darkness artificially.
 
MountainDude said:
This seems to be a taboo topic, but I want to bring it up as it may inspire and help some people.

Too often I see pilots losing their medical due to a chronic disease or cancer. These are mostly preventable (or can be delayed by many years) with healthy diet and lifestyle (genetics plays a minor role). Diet and lifestyle are especially important in mental, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, cognitive and metabolic health, all of which are important for pilots.

The hardest part of this issue is that if you wait until you develop a disease, it's kind of too late. You really have to implement dietary and lifestyle changes as early as possible. Saying "it's not going to happen to me" has not worked for the vast majority of American adults.

Here are some general guidelines I wrote up for those interested:

Generally healthy diet and lifestyle

Here are some dietary and lifestyle changes you can make to reduce the risk of developing a chronic disease or cancer. Diet: Eat several typ...
goodnewtimes.blogspot.com goodnewtimes.blogspot.com

Happy to hear your feedback.
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Sounds kind of preachy to me. If you wanna have a talk about my physical condition maybe we should also have a talk about your spiritual condition. Oh, but that is none of my business is it? What about your finances? How much debt load are you carrying? You know you shouldn’t have above 25% debt to equity ratio. Do you carry any balances on your credit cards because you know that interest rate is insanely high. Oh, but again, that’s really none of my business.
 
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MountainDude said:
Your input is exactly the main reason that people don' eat healthy and get sick early in life. They justify their bad diet and lifestyle with a few examples from their lives. This is a very inaccurate argument. The article I wrote is based on very large and long-standing epidemiological studies. The recommendations will not work for everyone, but they will overall work for the population. When you are 30-40, you don't know if you are one of the lucky ones that can drink and smoke and still not get sick.
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Why do you care about the physical condition of other people.? You live your life. I’ll live mine. My father was an athlete all of his life. Spent all of his time on the tennis courts, at the gym. He lived to the age of 94. Died of complications due to Alzheimer’s. But because his heart and lungs were in such good shape. He spent the better part of the last 15 of years of his life in a dementia ward. Absolutely huge amounts of resources. Both family and governmental were consumed because his body didn’t know when to quit when his mind did.
Give me a quick heart attack over that any day.
 
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Keep in mind that from a national health perspective, living longer just adds more cost to the system. I remember a paper years ago that showed cigarette smokers had a lower lifetime health care cost, primarily because of their lower life expectancy. And that even includes the fact that smokers do have high medical costs during their shorter lifespan compared to an otherwise healthy individual.
 
Morgan3820 said:
Sounds kind of preachy to me. If you wanna have a talk about my physical condition maybe we should also have a talk about your spiritual condition. Oh, but that is none of my business is it? What about your finances? How much debt load are you carrying? You know you shouldn’t have above 25% debt to equity ratio. Do you carry any balances on your credit cards because you know that interest rate is insanely high. Oh, but again, that’s really none of my business.
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I offer a free advice to minimize the risk of losing your pilot's license due to a chronic illness. My advice is based on decades of scientific research.
I am sorry you have interpreted that as preaching. I am not asking anything of you.
 
dbahn said:
According to the sleep experts there is no realistic solution to the night shift problem, other than avoidance.
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Probably true.

I am quite convinced that the best thing I've ever done for my health was to retire. I'm finally getting around 8 hours of sleep at night, and I'm not tossing and turning with worry over some problem at work. The relief from work-related stress has been wonderful.

And it's also a stress relief to have lots of time to enjoy as I choose, without being so rigidly tied to a clock and calendar. Bad weather keeps me from going fishing or flying today? No biggie, I'll go tomorrow or the next day. Every day is a vacation.

It took me at least a year to decompress once I retired. There was a nagging feeling for a long time that I should be somewhere or working on something or frantically worried about some problem. It's finally faded away and I'm sincerely enjoying life.

Doctors should prescribe early retirement for all their patients. :)
 
Morgan3820 said:
Why do you care about the physical condition of other people.?
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Because our government has seen fit to make taxpayers foot the bill for a lot of people's health care, especially the demographic that doesn't seem to take an interest in their own health.

Is there a correlation between exploding health care costs and widespread preventable chronic diseases? My gut says yes.
 
Walboy said:
Because our government has seen fit to make taxpayers foot the bill for a lot of people's health care, especially the demographic that doesn't seem to take an interest in their own health.

Is there a correlation between exploding health care costs and widespread preventable chronic diseases? My gut says yes.
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The government sees fit for taxpayers to pay for bicycle paths, yet most don't ride a bicycle. The taxpayer pays for the airport that I fly out of, yet most people have never flown in a small plane.I could go on.

The younger people die the less money society spends. Fewer government subsidised nursing homes. Shorter stays in assisted living. If you die before taking social security, the government keeps all of the participants payments. If every one lived to 110 it would bankrupt the country.

Try again with actual reasoning.
 
MountainDude said:
I offer a free advice to minimize the risk of losing your pilot's license due to a chronic illness. My advice is based on decades of scientific research.
I am sorry you have interpreted that as preaching. I am not asking anything of you.
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“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
_C.S. Lewis.
 
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The way I see it, there's about four options, and you have only a very small chance of guessing correctly which one you will end up with:

1. Eat garbage, die early
2. Eat garbage, die late
3. Eat whatever is currently touted as healthy, die early
4. Eat whatever is currently touted as healthy, die late

None of those sound like fun to me, so I'm going for the option where I eat food that tastes good, including steaks, barbeque, and cheesecake to go with my vegetables, do physical exercise that I enjoy to keep me fit, and get the best sleep I can. Enjoying my meals and my life is more important to me than living a year or five longer.
 
SkyChaser said:
None of those sound like fun to me, so I'm going for the option where I eat food that tastes good, including steaks, barbeque, and cheesecake to go with my vegetables, do physical exercise that I enjoy to keep me fit, and get the best sleep I can.
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"Calories are scientific measurements of how good food tastes. *



* or something to that effect - Dave Barry.
 
SkyChaser said:
The way I see it, there's about four options, and you have only a very small chance of guessing correctly which one you will end up with:

1. Eat garbage, die early
2. Eat garbage, die late
3. Eat whatever is currently touted as healthy, die early
4. Eat whatever is currently touted as healthy, die late

None of those sound like fun to me, so I'm going for the option where I eat food that tastes good, including steaks, barbeque, and cheesecake to go with my vegetables, do physical exercise that I enjoy to keep me fit, and get the best sleep I can. Enjoying my meals and my life is more important to me than living a year or five longer.
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:cheers:


For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’
Matthew 11

Even Jesus threw up his hands over this discussion. And that was 2000 years ago, so I guess this thread will run for a while.....

So when are you and that fella of yours coming to dinner again? I'll thaw the steaks.
 
One benefit of the new MOSAIC rules coming out is that I may not have to watch my weight so closely ;)

1320 lbs is a tough line to stay under sometimes!
 
Morgan3820 said:
The government sees fit for taxpayers to pay for bicycle paths, yet most don't ride a bicycle. The taxpayer pays for the airport that I fly out of, yet most people have never flown in a small plane.I could go on.

The younger people die the less money society spends. Fewer government subsidised nursing homes. Shorter stays in assisted living. If you die before taking social security, the government keeps all of the participants payments. If every one lived to 110 it would bankrupt the country.

Try again with actual reasoning.
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You consider your strawman actual reasoning?
 
I agree with making proper sleep a priority but the fact is, some people have problems with getting quality sleep. I work with people who sleep at work in the middle of the day because they can’t get to sleep at night. For me, it’s not an issue.

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ateamer said:
What it says to me when someone is unfit and overweight is “I don’t care enough about my family to stay in shape to protect and take care of them.”
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Maybe they are fat because they have a medical issue. not because they lack willpower. the idea that they are at fault is very judgmental and outdated.
 
But obesity is one of the few conditions that you can manage by NOT doing something, i.e. eating more than you need.

But Ozempic and similar meds are competing with that strategy.
 
Let's throw a monkey wrench into the mix i.e. Willie Nelson is 90 ... :dunno:
 
wellknow said:
Maybe they are fat because they have a medical issue. not because they lack willpower. the idea that they are at fault is very judgmental and outdated.
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Sure, it’s probably a medical problem. One that has grown to pandemic levels and is spread by products loaded with sugar, white flour and ingredients that use the entire alphabet for each one and get washed down with Big Gulps. Definitely medical.
 
kyleb said:
I’d guess the odds are better than 10:1 that obesity is a result of lifestyle choices, rather than a medical issue.
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they used to put diabetics in mental institutions before they discovered insulin. but it’s real east to judge other folks.
 
When I'm in the grocery store and I see an obese person's basket filled with fresh veggies and fruit, I might consider their problem to be medical. When I see their basket filled with Little Debbies, Oreos, cases of soda, and bags of chips, I might consider otherwise.
 
Eating: When traveling, especially when traveling using hotels vs condos, we of course have to eat out. I consider this to be vacation and a bit of a splurge, and mostly enjoy eating what I like. When at home we go weeks and sometimes months without eating out. For the most part the thrill of eating out is gone for me. Prices have gone up while quality has gone way down.

Sleep: When I was working, I got about 7.5hrs of sleep a night, but I considered it suboptimal. I always was rudely awakened by the alarm at 5:30am. In retirement, I'm now a follower of the sun. I adjust my wakeup time to roughly match sunrise, and adjust my bedtime during the year to be ~ 8hrs before sunrise. This works very well for me, I find I gently wake up most mornings about 15min before the alarm sounds. Waking up as the bedroom gradually lightens as the sun rises is fantastic. My wife laughts at my "follow the sun" sleep routine, but it seems natural and beneficial to me.

Exercise: While working, I got in about 5hrs of exercise a week. Suboptimal, but better than many. In retirement I've been bitten hard by bicycling, and am cycling 100-150mi a week, which equates to 7-10hrs of exercise a week. I've dropped 20 pounds from before, and feel a hell of a lot better.
 
wellknow said:
such toxicity in the otherwise happy pilots chatboard.
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Maybe so. Just noting what I see when I grocery shop. It is interesting to coorelate a person's body type to what is in the basket, and unfortunately there IS correlation.
 
Half Fast said:
Probably true.

I am quite convinced that the best thing I've ever done for my health was to retire. I'm finally getting around 8 hours of sleep at night, and I'm not tossing and turning with worry over some problem at work. The relief from work-related stress has been wonderful.

And it's also a stress relief to have lots of time to enjoy as I choose, without being so rigidly tied to a clock and calendar. Bad weather keeps me from going fishing or flying today? No biggie, I'll go tomorrow or the next day. Every day is a vacation.

It took me at least a year to decompress once I retired. There was a nagging feeling for a long time that I should be somewhere or working on something or frantically worried about some problem. It's finally faded away and I'm sincerely enjoying life.

Doctors should prescribe early retirement for all their patients. :)
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It is good to be retired.
 
After reading that linked article... It's really preachy. There's more than one way to skin a cat and if I don't eat my seaweed today it doesn't mean you'll live longer. You can keep the avocado ice cream too.
 
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