Does That Sound Very Desirable?

The power to change your life is in your hands. Even worse, chronic diseases have now become epidemic. As we live longer, we have more time to accumulate noninfectious chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, asthma, and diabetes. As a nation, we spend two trillion dollars a year on care, yet 1 in 2 Americans suffer from chronic diseases that decrease quality of life and increase health costs. Estimates indicate that close to 200 million Americans alive today will have a chronic illness, and that 1 in 4 dollars will soon be spent on health care. Without basic reform, the burden and the cost of treating these chronic conditions will not be sustainable for future generations. Chronic disease can affect all Americans, and we need to focus on the steps we know will work best for us all. Without prevention of frailty with aging, the costs will literally increase exponentially. There simply will not be enough money in the United States to treat people. So what are the primary approaches to prevention that might really make a big difference and turn things around? Indeed, this current approach ignores the critical question of quality of life. Thousands are now surging into their final decades every day. Have you ever heard of sarcopenia? Do you know if there is a cure or remedy to growing frail? The people we queried were highly educated, quite successful in business, and widely read.

Wasted Time

They all cared a great deal about their health, eating properly, and keeping informed about their health by reading articles. You may be surprised to learn that not one of these people, over the course of 5 years, had heard about sarcopenia. Yet they all knew someone, such as their grandmother, who got frail, fell down one day, and never walked again. We often suggested they ask their doctors about sarcopenia. Uniformly, they reported that their doctors mostly had never heard of sarcopenia, and if they had, it was only the most general vague recollection. None of their doctors had any advice on curing or remedying this condition. So, the world is facing a growing epidemic of frailty. An epidemic that is degrading the quality and enjoyment of as many as 30–50 years of life. We have attended and spoken at several conferences of leading physicians in various areas of medical science. We visited senior centers where people ages 60–75 went for advice and recreation. We met with one center’s board of directors. None of them had any idea what we were talking about and did not want to hear any information about it.

The Fruits Are On The Top Of The Tree

We also visited a major university that had a $50 million senior wellness center, which included a wonderful gym. The medical assessment facilities capable of determining body composition, fat, and lean mass percentages were empty. A perfect facility, waiting for patients suffering from sarcopenia and desperately needing rehabilitation, was dead quiet. The medical community had not yet become fully aware of the condition. Of course, there are some doctors around the world specializing in frailty and sarcopenia research. We attended one of their annual conferences and listened to 90 presentations. Most of them dealt with treating patients toward the end of the death spiral of inactivity and resulting weakness when patients only had few years left to save. There was almost nothing discussed on preventing the death spiral from beginning in the first place. Conduct a little personal research of your own. We are sure you will find your own experience equally frightening. Just start asking friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and even your own doctors these same questions. You’ll quickly see how serious the problem is.

Its Getting To Be A Habit

He is one of the most influential individuals in terms of government health policy in the United States.1 His are the honest, underlying, rarely spoken presumptions behind the prevailing conventional wisdom on aging. Emanuel appears to be a supremely qualified expert. He has also been the recipient of dozens of honors and awards. He also is a former professor at Harvard Medical School. Emanuel spend their lives teaching and advising on a wide range of medical issues, including life extension, human dignity, and the sanctity of human life. So, what advice does this top scientist give us regarding living our lives with sarcopenia? Unfortunately, none. The data is factual and more than sobering. It is what aging inevitably is as long as we fail to adopt the remedy for sarcopenia. Emanuel first describes the horrors of aging today. In his article, he states that living into our 70s renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic. We agree with him completely that this is a fair picture of growing old for a majority today. Older years are commonly of poor quality. It is true that since 1960, increases in longevity have occurred because more people over the age of 60 are living longer. Relatively few young people die in our modern era, so even if we could save the remaining few that do, it would change overall longevity statistics only marginally. Emanuel paints the dire picture. He notes that as people age, there is a progressive erosion of functioning. Emanuel’s article mentions research conducted by Crimmins and a colleague, who found that between 1998 and 2006, the loss of functional mobility in the elderly increased. He says, Americans may live longer than their parents, but they are likely to be more incapacitated. Does that sound very desirable? In 2010, another study of the disability trends among older Americans by Crimmins and colleagues also came to the conclusion that older Americans face increased disability but offered an illuminating detail. This study pointed to a reason for the recent increase in disability, and it was not simply longer lives.