Disease or Health? Which Will You Pay in Time and Money For?
In one week, we learned that alcohol-related deaths are up and adopting a healthy lifestyle can add about 10 years to your life free of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.
And yet, “no time” remains one of the biggest reason people don’t exercise, eat health, sleep enough, or take time to decompress.
What these show us, despite study limitations and all the other factors, is what we know: healthy lifestyle increases your chances for living longer and thriving at least almost as long. What these show us is that the true question isn’t, “When are you going to make time?”, but rather “What are you going to make time for?”
Time for Disease? Time for Living?
One way or another, the lifestyle you choose will take your time. It will take your money. The question is, where will your time and money go to?
Paying for workout videos or apps, or coaches or memberships? Paying for healthier foods, meal prep delivery services, coaching, or classes? Paying for mental health counseling or a mediation app?
Taking the time to commit even a few minutes to one or more of these things a few times a week?
Or would you rather pay in time and money to medications, doctor’s appointments, exams, blood tests, follow-up visits, hospital stays, surgeries and other treatments, hospice, home care, missed days of work,…
Consider this:
- People with diagnosed diabetes incur average medical expenditures of $16,752 per year, of which about $9,601 is attributed to diabetes.
- On average, people with diagnosed diabetes have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes.
- Health care costs for people with a chronic condition average $6,032 annually - five times higher than for those without such a condition.
- A heart attack costs $78,221 in the first 90 days.
This doesn’t include low back pain, which is the single leading cause of disability and costs Americans at least $50 billion in health care costs each year. Factoring in lost wages and decreased productivity, and that figure increases to more than $100 billion, according to the American Chiropractic Association. (I had trouble finding a per person expenditure estimate.)
Remember these the next time you think to yourself, I want to__________ but I don’t have time.
Or ponder the quote I closed Sunday’s post with: “Just because you’re not sick doesn’t mean you’re healthy” – Unknown.
If disease, getting by, health, thriving, and optimal, were on a continuum, where would you rank?
Where would you like to rank?