WELLNESS - A Perspective

Summary
Wellness is not a transient thing it is a lifetime's program. The
aliments we associate with aging are by-and-large not "natural" to us,
but are the result of a lifetime's exposure to nutritional
deficiencies.

Deficiencies which cannot be effectively corrected whilst living on
the accepted Western diet (organic or commercial) nor cured by Medical
intervention.

However, intervention by a suitable nutritional supplementation
regime (the earlier in life the better) can prevent the conditions we
ascribe to old age, and to some degree reverse conditions already
apparent.
Now read on........

At one level Wellness can be though of as present good health,
vitality and mental well-being. However, I prefer to extend this to see
Wellness as an investment in future health and quality of life, in
retirement in one's senior years.
It has become conventional wisdom to believe that the debilitating
conditions we associate with aging (these are well enough known, maybe
through personal family experience, to need me to elaborate here) are a
normal condition and nothing can be done about it apart from palliative
care, to manage symptoms and give the best quality-of-life possible in
the circumstance.

This is not, in fact, the case and I will return to this subject later.
The WHO (World Health Organisation) tracks the effect of health in
the elderly and publishes a statistic - called The Disability Adjusted
Life Expectancy (DALE. The interpretation of this term is strictly - a
complex function - but in simple terms can be thought of as defining
the population's "healthy" life expectation, as distinct from the
normal Life Expectancy figure, often used as a measure of national
health.

The term is illustrated diagrammatically above. The zone on the left
labled "A" can be considered as the expectation of healthy life span-
the zone on the right, marked "C", indicating of course death. The
shaded zone marked "B" is usually called the Disability Zone - A period
of life where health is impaired to the extent that independent living
is no longer possible and daily care is required from family or
increasingly institutional care - in Aged Care Facilities.
In the Western countries the average DALE is around 72 years this is in
contrast to the normal life expectancy of around 80 years. This implies
that on average around 8 years of life coping with serious disability
is to be expected.
So is the degeneration with age a natural consequence of the design of the human body? The answer would appears to be clearly no.
Both archaeological and anthropological research shows that the
primitive hunter gatherer societies from which we spring do not exhibit
anything like the same degree of health problems as the people age.
Sure these societies experienced high levels of deaths from infection
and trauma - but for the survivors old age did not being the health
problems we experience (until- that is they are exposed to the Western
diet
).

The diagram above gives an illustration of what has happened.
Although representing the Netherlands - this can be taken as typical of
Western Societies. This diagram shows (in orange) the effect of
lifestyle factors (diet, environment) on life expectancy - this study attributes
something in the region of 8 years to (preventable) lifestyle factors.
But until relatively recently the lifestyle effects have been masked by
the impact of infective diseases in earlier years. Now over the last
few decades Public Health solutions have swept these away exposing the
effects of these lifestyle issues.
This study has been fairly neutral in predicting the future effects
of our lifestyle - it does not suggest that improvements are possible
nor that we may in fact be continuing to exacerbate the problem.
Certainly it has been commented that we are treating our children as
guinea pigs and current children are unlikely to live as long as their parents - for the first time ever
So what's wrong? Basically we are not genetically adapted to our
staple foods (wheat, potatoes, beans etc). The potential for our health
problem has existed for millennium since the first settlements with
farming and domestication of crops and animals).
Compounded by industrial age food processing (milling of flour and
rice, canning. preserving etc) then in more recent years - intensive
farming practices - selection of crops for appearance, transportability & shelf life rather than nutrition, green harvesting, increased
processing.
The underlying problem being the need to feed an increasingly
urbanised population - which requires the transportation of food to the
urban centres from increasing distances (even half way round the world)
with disaterous consequences to actual nutrition. And of course the
chronic decline in nutrition and its effects have been hidden until the
last few decades by the high level of deaths from infectious diseases.
The effects of centuries if not millennium of degradation of our diet
is now exposed.
It can be argued that the situation we are now in is a direct result
of our path to civilisation and culture - and is the price we have to
pay for the enhanced lifestyle we now have. Is this situation
inevitable?
It is clearly not feasible to return to the hunter gather diet we
are genetically adapted to - it would just not be practical to produce
and deliver enough such food to meet the demands of our population. Nor
given our sedentary life style could we actually eat enough such food
to gain the nutrition our ancestors did.
However, dietary intervention is possible - the nutritional deficiencies can be made up by suitable nutritional supplementation.

the diagram above illustrates the results on an on-going (now in its
13th year) longitudinal study into intervention with a glyconutrient
based supplementation regime. The study is conducted by Gilbert R.
Kaats, Ph.D. and shows that the decline in the biomarkers of vitality
(aging) can be arrested and even reversed by dietary intervention.
This diagram uses a somewhat relaxed form of the DALE - one which
recognises health impacts on life without actually defining total
dependency. This measurement accommodates still independent people,
maybe suffering from chronic pain, depression, maybe not too mobile, or
able to hold down a full time job. This condition is reached on average
some 10 years earlier than the full blown DALE. The upper line (green)
shows the trend line determined from testing thousands of volunteers
over a 13 year period. These results suggests that early intervention
has the potential to add many years of quality life and counter the
health problems associated with ageing. This research is continuing and
additional analysis of available data being undertaken.
The above dissertation is my own interpretation of the information I
have considered. You may or may not agree with my assessment - just
leave your comments. The evidence suggests starting
intervention early, 40s & 50s, gives the best results - I left it a
little late - still better late than never - what about you?