Lifestyle

Almost every day there is more data on the way that we behave. On NPR today they were talking about McCain's plan for health care. He wants to change tax rules so that individuals purchase their health insurance and there are more medical savings accounts. He thinks that if the consumer purchases health care directly they will utilize less of their money. We use more of other people's money than we use of our own. We want others to take care of our needs and desires.
There are two new important articles on alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment. This isn't really news, since it just adds to an ever growing body of literature. People who exercise regularly had lower levels of cognitive impairment. People with cognitive impairment who exercise experienced significant improvements in thinking.
People who take more than two alcoholic beverages per day developed Alzheimer's on average five years earlier than those who were matched for other risks.
People who smoke experience Alzheimer's about 2.3 years earlier than those who don't smoke.

The news is shocking! If we take care of ourselves we do better than if we don't.
Health care costs too much and we aren't getting our money's worth. This is very complex. For one thing Insurance companies are just ridiculous. The whole concept is ridiculous. Their profits do nothing to help take care of people. McCain's plan completely ignores the true nature of health care. Actually, so do Clinton and Obama's. We spend most of our money in the last year of life. If you really want to get our health care costs down, you need to increase the notion that it's alright to die once you are very sick. That's where we waste the most money. We keep going when there's little point. The other place we waste money is that people generally don't have enough faith in physicians - in people in general. People are fearful and want tests to prove tha the physician is right. When I tell people they have Parkinson's they want to know what test I am going to do to show that this is the case. But there is no good test for Parkinson's. I constantly see Parkinson's patients for a second, third or fourth opinion. But the accuracy of diagnosis is very high. So fear causes a lot of the cost. So does litigation, which is driven by anger.
However, most of our cost comes from chronic disease. Chronic disease like heart disease and diabetes is driven by a failure of our society to take care of ourselves. Our lifestyle. We are more obese than other countries. We are sicker. We are a sick society. People here are isolated. I see a great deal of depression. There is no community. There is no support. People are alone. So they don't take care of themselves. So they get chronic illness. So it costs a lot of money. They are alone so they are scared. They aren't happy with the life they've had, so they don't want to die.
It's all about lifestyle.