Ongoing war between the good, the bad and the ugly

There’s always a ‘draw’ to stories that offer us the possibility of eternal youth, or something as close as you could get to that illusion, but of course we all know that time and tide stops for no man. However a better diet, life changing developments in medicine and care, allied to a more active physical lifestyle for all ages, has meant that in the vast majority of countries across the globe, people are living a lot longer.

It is something of a catch-22 situation as the older we all live to, the more resources we will need and the bigger the drain will be on the health services, but there’s no disputing the fact that, on average, we’re all likely to be around for longer.

We still to get sucked into the great fallacy that if we follow this perfect lifestyle of no smoking, healthy eating, loads of exercise and very little by way of alcohol consumption, that we’re all on the way to the land of Tir na nÓg, where we’ll never grow old.

Finite beings we are though, and when our time is up, we have no choice but to pack our bags and hit off for that great land in the sky, so within reason it’s no harm to enjoy some of the little treats of this world, just in case the after-life doesn’t work out quite as we anticipated.

Teagasc, the farm advisory body, have now published the findings of a study on how we define old age and how we can all start looking forward to our sixties, seventies, eighties or maybe even the nineties . . . if we behave ourselves!

This is all in the context of us being told over recent times that the new period of ‘middle age’ is from 60 on, a wonderful consolation to those of us beginning to look forward rather fretfully to what is something of a ‘Becher’s Brook’ number in terms of our gallop through the racecourse of life.

The Teagasc study, carried out in conjunction with University College Cork and the Dublin Institute of Technology, roughly categorises 45 as the start of the older age period. ‘Young old age’ is from 50 to 64; ‘middle-old’ is from 65 to 74 with 75 plus slipping into the ‘oldest-old’ classification.

The study concentrated on the lifestyle habits of people in the 50+ age bracket and found three distinct categories emerging: the sensible lifestyle, the poor lifestyle and the risky lifestyle. Not surprisingly, given our Irish ways for enjoying good food, good drink and a good time, only one in four of those surveyed fell into the sensible lifestyle category where the ‘qualifiers’ ate plenty of fruit and veg; consumed low amounts of fat and alcohol and took moderate exercise.

The biggest portion of those surveyed – almost 60% – were categorised as having a poor lifestyle . . . pretty much doing everything wrong . . . apart, slightly unexpectedly, from drinking too much. They were consuming high fat quantities, taking in very little fruit and veg, and doing practically no exercise.

Members of this poor lifestyles category tended to have low educational levels, while the ‘sensible club’ members were often well educated, female, watched less television and rated their health very highly.

For those of you, probably like myself, who felt that they didn’t really slip into either category, another smaller grouping emerged in the survey – less than 20% – who were classified as having risky lifestyles. They tended to be male, be smokers, be overweight but rather curiously fell into the higher education bracket.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.