Is the health industry exploiting your desire to live forever?

Hello my Health Nut,

I hope you have enjoyed the recent posts including plenty of science, I have enjoyed creating them. This post however will take a more philosophical look at our 21st century era and how the marketing schemes may be taking advantage of a natural, innate assumption, that we will live forever. Allow me to elaborate. 

Mankind has accomplished many things since the first monkey stood up. We have built, we have destroyed, we have shared, we have stolen, we have been given the ability to talk, express and interpret emotions to name but a few. Unfortunately immortality has not been given to us.....that has not stopped us from trying now has it? I recently read a book called 'Immortality: The Quest To Live Forever and How It Drives Civilisation' by Stephen Cave [1]. Besides being a highly  recommended read, this book contained interesting ideas, one of which i feel I feel is highly adaptable and applicable to the 21st century health industry. But before I can make this claim I must lay some context and to do that I have to use a lot of ideas used in Cave's book so consider sections ('Will to immortality'; 'Immortality paradox'; 'Engineering immortality') a Cave's work.

Will to immortality

Cave identifies four main narratives to achieving immortality: staying alive (live as long as possible through health and medicine), resurrection (resurrection of the same body after death), soul (spirit or independent component of you that supersedes your existence), and legacy (to live through your reputation or biological legacy). These methods can be noted as far back as the ancient Egyptians (medicine, mummification, the ka, and belief in living through reputation) and yet still remain in some form in today's world. Consequently, it must be considered that the drive to achieve immortality - will to immortality - is intrinsic and innate.

Although it sounds relatively mystical and even far-fetched in today's scientifically focused world nothing could be more biologically enhancing than a will to persist into the future. Of course this is not simply applicable to humans, mother nature will unapologetically remove the genes of the apathetic mouse who has no desire to project himself into the future, no hiding from the snake or the owl, simply existing (not for very long). Richard Dawkin's states 'we are survival machines, but ‘we’ does not mean just people. It embraces all animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses.' This will to immortality is the very reason we exist, our ancestors had the strongest will to project themselves into the future and survive. Therefore it is in us all.

Immortality paradox

The separating factor between humans and the virus, bacteria and mice is the capacity of our highly sophisticated brains to generate great awareness of ourselves, and time. As a result we are cursed with the all too horrifying knowledge that one day, like all living things, we will die. Fact. The paradoxical aspect of this statement comes when you try to imagine being dead, go ahead and give it ago (morbid I know)..... some of you may have imagined yourself dying, others a funeral and others a limbo of nothingness. But was it nothingness? I mean after all you are still seeing from a perspective, and so you are still present as an observer right? How can you not exist if you are still around seeing things? The truth of the matter is you can't imagine not existing. Cave and Freud present this problem in eloquent quotes I wouldn't dare take credit for:

'Imagining your own death, our powerful imaginative faculties malfunction: it is not possible for the one doing the imagining to actively imagine the absence of the one doing the imagining' Stephen Cave [1]

'It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators’ Sigmund Freud  [2]

That what we can imagine we can accept, stick a folk in a toaster you get electrocuted is easy to imagine and therefore accept as a possibility. But you cannot imagine your own non-existence and therefore we have trouble accepting this possibility, we are subconsciously convinced of our own immortality, this thought has no time limit, and as a result we believe we are somehow apart of the very fabric of the universe, forever. 'All men think all men mortal, but themselves' Edward Young

Engineering immortality

As previously mentioned Cave posits four main immortality narratives, this post will focus on 'staying alive' as the relevance is clear and it is not the purpose of this post to question your beliefs (unless they concern health in anyway shape or form). 'Engineering immortality' is a method of striving to lengthen lives by identifying problems, breaking them down and solving the issues one by one. The possibility that these problems may kill us is what makes them so problematic. in the 21st century new heights have been achieved by dividing and sub-dividing problems to generate new forms of communication, accommodation, travel, medicine, and healthy habits. Breaking down the unmanageable problem of death into the utterly manageable smaller problems generating a to-do list including do cardio, eat healthy, engage in meditation or yoga. We are developing ever finer solutions to solve ever finer problems, Cave states the most comprehensive of the surviving ancient Egyptian papyruses recognises 700 afflictions and remedies, the WHO recognises over 12,000 diseases and counting.

Where you come in

This means the constant release of new activities, hobbies, chores and general habits to include in our lives. But we can't complain as healthy living has certainly extended our life-span, the overall average life-span of a male/female born in 2010) was ~90/88 years, whereas just 100 years ago being born in 1910 reduced your average predicted lifespan to ~56. Furthermore, our life expectancy is only predicted to increase (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Line graph showing cohort expectation of life in relation to year of birth with expected life expectancy for years up to 2050 [3].

But as our media has become more intricately interlaced in our personal lives distribution of the newest to-do activities has never been easier. And so, in the 21st Century we are perpetually bombarded with posts, blogs and friends online suggestions on how to live our lives. However this distribution is not the problem. The problem comes from our innate will to immortality taking over our rational thoughts and wanting to believe the latest fad/work-out programme or healthy diet will extend our lives. Although this may be true for some discoveries there is a point (I believe we are quickly approaching, if not already there) when we health nuts become all too gullible. When the the minority of health industry cease to produce and market products in our best interest. This is not to say all products and strategies nowadays are wrong, far from it. But what does need to change is the trust we associate with something in a pill, or displayed on a screen.

And so 21st Century health nut blog is forged, with the belief that the critical analysis of empirical evidence holds the truth. The next time you get a suggestion on twitter or facebook or one of your friends, listen to what they have to say, consider the source and find out for yourself if it is worth your time. And if you have no time to complete the research? Do not worry my health nut, simply get in contact with this series, we will find out for you soon enough.

Your very own health nut,

Chris 

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Main sources:

[1] Cave, S (2010) Immortality: the quest to live forever and how it drives civilization. London: UK. Biteback.

[2] Freud, S. (1915b). Zeitgemässes über Krieg und Tod. Imago, 4: 1-21; GW, 8, 324-355; Thoughts for the times on war and death. SE, 14: 273-300

[3] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_253938.pdf

The 21st Century Health Nuts

What exactly does that mean? In and among all the millions of other bloggers exists this page, my page, and that my soon-to-be loyal reader is part of the problem...

So what is a health nut? Created through the increase in accessible information a health nut is typically (but not necessarily) relatively young and is obsessed with the prolonging of life through healthy habits, whether this include diet, exercise, mindfulness the health nut covers a wide range of people. Unfortunately, this revolution has taken place so unbelievably quickly that we health nuts are unguided and lost, a heard of unique sheep without a shepherd. Or to be more accurate hundreds of thousands of shepherd are shouting 'this way, this way!' are we any less lost?

The Shepherds are of course (in this metaphor) the masses and masses of information freely accessible through the internet. Access to information today is better than it has ever been, previously reserved for the elite, we (the new thinkers) are subject to vast amounts of information, some of it interesting, some not, some of it useful, some not, some it life change, some not and the list really does go on and on. 21st century health nuts (health nut's) are cursed by something that the world has never before experienced; abundance of information. So who the hell do we believe, follow, or trust? The answer has to be ourselves, especially when it comes to your health.

All this information access is far from bad, it is incredible! The progresses that have, are and are going to happen as a result of instant communication/publication/organization is beyond anything that could have been predicted a mere 100 years ago. However, we are left with a bit of a paradox. We must have more information to support our own healthy habits and yet, more information does not necessarily mean more truth. We are left with pages and pages of unsupported 'facts' telling us what to eat, what to do, when to do it and how much to do. As a result of this dramatic increase in information access we are being forced to evolve, our relatively archaic minds are being bombarded with information. It is time for the sheep to learn that the shepherd does not always have the sheeps best interest at heart.

This page will be dedicated to researching these potential truths/myths shoved on our screens daily. Does the most recent work out really cut your fat and produce muscle? is it healthy to eat pills containing 20+ fruit? and what about that cancer cure going about that is being pasted on social media and not the news, fact or the hopeful dreams of those in fear? happiness....can it be achieved through a how to book? And so I implore you to read this and decide for yourself whether or not this is worth your time. The research will be mine, the conclusions will be mine, the decision? Now that's all you my health nut.

Your very own health nut

Chris