Living and Health
Here’s a variety of health and living news items that point to the need for you to stay current, read everyday and don’t be manipulated by popular press or ideas:
1) Healthy Living is Too Expensive: It’s much cheaper for governments to continue to ignore the health risks of smoking and obesity according to a study from the Public Library of Science Medicine. According to the research, lifetime health costs for healthy living is $417,000; for smokers, $326,000; and for the obese, $371,000. The conclusion appears to be let people choose to be as healthy as they want to be and to allow self-destructive behaviors continue.
Like all things in life, a healthy lifestyle coupled with preventive health care is a personal choice. People don’t need expensive and non-productive health programs telling them to not smoke, to take 30 minutes for a walk or to get regular health exams (even the uninsured can afford one checkup a year). Healthy people have already figured this out – government is “preaching to the choir” and hence, wasting tax dollars.
Plus the one biological element that will determine how long a person lives and how healthy that person will be in his or her lifetime is genetics. So pick your parents carefully.
2) Women Have High Serum Cholesterol: High serum cholesterol is defined as a number greater than 240 mg/dlt as determined by a blood test. According to the CDC and the NCHS National Health and Nutritional exam surveys from 2005-06, women, on average, have high serum cholesterol levels twice more often than men (22% to 10%). In the “heart attack” years between 40 and 59, women have a slightly higher incidence than men (19.2% to 18.8%). The only period of life when men exceed women (13% to 11%) is between 20 and 39.
Since more men die of heart attacks than women, maybe the idea of high serum cholesterol is not much of a risk factor (by itself). Perhaps the hype around prescription drugs to lower cholesterol as a preventive measure is just another well-marketed fear tactic advanced by pharmaceuticals for no other reason than profit? If a pharmaceutical company can get a “patient” in their 50’s started with a statin (cholesterol-lowering drug) regimen, that person will be “hooked” for at least 30 years on a very expensive monthly drug habit.
3) Time to Ask for a Raise: Since 1981, the cost of living when adjusted for inflation, has risen by 140%. If you were employed full-time in 1981, and was earning $26,000 per year, today your salary would need to be around $65,000 a year to have kept pace. If you are not earning at least $60,000 a year, your buying power has dropped significantly. That explains the need for households to have multiple low-paying jobs.
Inflation will reduce the buying power of a dollar by 95% every 40 years. A dollar saved in any kind of savings program in 1968 would have the buying power of 5 cents today. The only way you stay ahead (or at least even) is by reinvesting dividends and capital gains from your investments. It is really true when financial advisors say that the only way to make “real” money is to put your money to work by investing.
With the US Government and the banking industry pushing credit debt and “spend for today” mentalities, the middle-class economic structure will soon disappear and the poor will get poorer.
Visit www.3MinuteLearning.com
GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2008 3 Minute Learning LLC
