Health Care

Chapter 7 assignment: How long will you live?

Go to the following website, and complete the life span calculator then answer the questions below.

Life expectancy calculator:
https://www.livingto100.com/calculator/age
I went and got 87 years on my age calculator

1. How long are you expected to live?

2. Does this surprise you? Why or why not.

3. How does it feel to see a number that may predict the time of your death? Explain.

3. Go back and make some adjustments to your behaviors. For example if you are a smoker record yourself as a non-smoker. What happened to your life expectancy? Show at least three examples of parameters you changed and what happened to your life expectancy.

4. In what areas do you need to make changes in your behavior?

5. How willing are you to change current risk behaviors to ensure a healthy older age? Explain?

6. In what ways do your current health protective and health risk behaviors impact your future health? Be specific and use examples.

7. Do you think life expectancy is influenced by race/ethnicity? Explain

8. Did this assignment have any impact on your current health behaviors? Explain. Do you think this assignment will impact your future health behaviors? Explain.

9. Do you think the sharp increase in the number of older adults in the next 20 years will impact society? Please explain.

10. What did you learn about your ability to confront information that makes you feel uncomfortable? Do you think this assignment has helped you to grow as a person? Why or why not?

ANSWER

Question- Answer

My life expectancy is 87 years. I am a little surprised by this number. I somehow expected to live a little bit more. I try very hard to lead a healthy lifestyle hence the surprise. This should have been caused by the high amount of caffeine I take, and therefore, I will have to reduce the number of caffeinated drinks I take every day. Predicting my time of death is a bit uncomfortable. The topic of death and dying is not one of the most welcome topics, especially for young people. We want to think that we will live forever, most of the time. This experience, therefore, exposed me to a new shocking reality on the topic of death and the importance of being prepared.

Some of the adjustments I made that increased my life expectancy included reducing alcohol intake to zero. Quitting alcohol increased my life expectancy by a year. Taking one to two servings of caffeine instead of 3 to 4 also led to an increase in the number of years I will live on earth. Regular doctor checkups are also a positive increase towards increasing my life expectancy, and therefore this tells me I have to make some changes. The changes I need to make include taking my health more seriously and visiting the doctor for more check-ups, reducing the amount of caffeine I drink in a day, and quitting drinking altogether.

I am willing to make the changes required to increase my life expectancy. I have always wanted to have a fruitful old age and spend it with grandchildren playing around with them. It is a blessing to see ones grandchildren, and therefore I am willing to make the changes so that when I see them, I will be healthy and strong enough to play with them and also watch them grow and get their own families.

Risk behaviours such as excessive alcohol consumption lead to many diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, liver cirrhosis and other diseases. Quitting alcohol helps avoid these conditions, which increases life expectancy. Regularly visiting the doctor also increases life expectancy as in case one has a life-threatening condition, it can be caught in good time and treated. Not visiting the doctor for preventative care is risky as one is likely to be too progressed before they catch the condition.

Yes, life expectancy is influenced by race. It is easier for people of colour to have lifestyle diseases such as diabetes than Caucasian white people (Dwyer-Lindgren et al., 2017). This is because most people of colour in countries like America come from low-income neighbourhoods that cannot afford health insurance and good nutrition. This further impacts their life expectancy.

Yes, this assignment impacted my health behaviours. I had to stop drinking the caffeinated drink I was drinking after I saw my results. I will also be more actively involved in physical activities and find healthier coping habits. The increase in the number of older adults affects society in many different ways (National Institute on Aging). Society’s economic growth patterns are affected, there is a higher number of people with chronic diseases, and the country’s ability to provide resources for older adults declines.

I have learned from this assignment that some things are bound to make us uncomfortable, but it is essential to confront them. The issue of death is an uncomfortable issue that human beings have to face and make the necessary life changes to lead productive lifestyles as older adults. The assignment has helped me grow in terms of confronting uncomfortable topics.

References

Dwyer-Lindgren, L., Bertozzi-Villa, A., Stubbs, R. W., Morozoff, C., Mackenbach, J. P., van Lenthe, F. J., … & Murray, C. J. (2017). Inequalities in life expectancy among US counties, 1980 to 2014: temporal trends and key drivers. JAMA internal medicine, 177(7), 1003-1011.

National Institute on Aging. Understanding the consequences of an ageing society to inform intervention development and policy decisions. https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/aging-strategic-directions-research/goal-society-policy