A CALL TO SHIFT THE ILLNESS CENTERED PARADIGM IN AMERICA

     Birthdays arrive the same day every year. At fifty, we laugh, celebrate our stature as “almost over the hill”; and cheerily accept, and imply that whoohoo, we have arrived and are on our way down. Wow  !!………no wonder death is so welcome with seniors. After 35-50 years of accelerating decline, of simulating winters with decades of our unhealthy choices, I would want to be taken out back and shot as well ! The last five years has been explosive in research about aging: it is critical that everyone in America become educated.
As a society, we have made it easy for people to become unhealthy: it is socially acceptable to become sedentary: you are simply ‘not athletic’; your honorable commitment to your sedentary job excuses you from hunting and foraging (otherwise known as exercise); your parents had diabetes, so it is in your genes, and therefore o.k. for you to be diabetic as well.
As a society, we may be appalled at the high cost of health care, but we don’t see the connection between the outrageous checks we write each month to maintain our wellness coverage, and the cost to our ourselves, and our society of supporting the epidemic of commitments made to illness lifestyles.
As an individual who understands my nature, my evolution, and works hard to incorporate good science to optimize my own health, and quality of longevity, I am committed to seeing a cultural change in this country that shifts responsibility for illness back to the individuals whose personal choices are making them ill, and making me pay for their illness.
TransformAging is my vision for a cultural movement that seeks to establish ‘wellness is the only option’ education as part of core curriculum from elementary schools thru graduate schools. I think you should understand how to feed yourself, and how to care for your amazing body before your graduate high school. There is simply too little cultural pressure in this society against individuals who consistently make illness choices. 
Whether you like it or not, the way you choose to live your life, on a daily basis, determines your state of health. Repeat bad choices over and over again, day in, and day out, and your body, and brain will just make healthy adaptations to the environment that you are creating. These healthy adaptations take the form of deadly diseases, because your choices are telling your system to shut down and die: again, whether that is your intent or not, is irrelevant.
It is a proven fact that 70% of all premature death and aging is lifestyle related. Individuals who refuse to make wellness choices should be penalized by the society: their health insurance premiums should be ten times what mine are.
Obese adults, obese children should be taxed for taxing the society, driving up everyone’s costs because they choose to overeat, because they have a dollar in their pocket, an overabundant recreational (not nutritional)food supply; and they choose not to hunt or forage(exercise). In evolution, nature does kill off animals, and human animals that make these choices: but in the meantime, why are the wellness committed individuals paying the way for illness committed individuals to make these choices that work against our very nature ?
We have a huge medical and pharmaceutical industry that exists solely because we all support an individuals’ right to make choices: even unhealthy ones. Picking up the tab for someone else’s unhealthy choices is going too far, and it has got to stop.  It is up to this generation of boomers to stand up, and start to shift the paradigm from illness centered aging to wellness centered aging.
Health insurance premiums must reflect our focus on wellness: if you continue to be inactive, or obese , year after year, despite all the awareness, and education that passively surrounds you: your health premiums should go up. If your actively engage in growing younger, and making the time to signal your brain and body that it is springtime, a time to grow, no matter what your age: you should have lower premiums.
It is pathetic that we have the highest standard of living, and the highest incidence of illness and disability over fifty years of age, fifty percent of which could be eliminated by making lifestyle choices that are true to our true nature.