Health Optimization: Survive or Thrive?
Apr 28, 2020By: Molly King
With the spread of COVID-19, many among us have shifted from “living my best life” to survival mode. Contrary to popular belief, surviving and thriving are not mutually exclusive. In fact, optimizing your health increases your chance of surviving an infection from this virus, and any future viruses that will surely plague (pun fully intended) the world as they have for centuries.
COVID-19 Risk
Let’s address the issue at the forefront of everyone’s mind before we dive into the real reasons you should be interested in health optimization: risk of developing COVID-19.
Having underlying health conditions drastically increases your risk of contracting a severe or deadly case of COVID-19.
94% of deaths related to COVID-19 occur in people with underlying health conditions.
8.3% of people with COVID-19 are admitted to intensive care, require intubation, or die from complications related to the virus. This rate more than doubles to 19.3% in people with one comorbidity and is 3.5x higher in people with two or more comorbidities.
The most common comorbidities found in people with COVID-19 are:
- Obesity
Interestingly enough, all of the above comorbidities are modifiable diseases linked to lifestyle, including the fourth listed and overarching risk factor: obesity. Beyond COVID-19, modifiable lifestyle diseases are linked to increased risk of other chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, etc.) and death. By encouraging people to take an active approach to health optimization, we can decrease the risk of them developing the above comorbidities. As a result, they are at a lower risk of dying from any disease, including COVID-19.
Age and COVID-19
But what about age? Being older than 65 and living in nursing homes or long term care facilities are some of the most prominent risk factors for developing and dying from COVID-19!
I encourage you to look at this from a state of overall health.
Yes, elderly people are more likely to contract COVID-19, but they are also typically more unhealthy than their younger counterparts. Most Americans 65+ have at least one of the comorbidities listed above. For example, 40% of adults age 40-59 have cardiovascular disease. This number jumps to 70-75% of people age 60-79, and 79-86% of those age 80+.
In addition, people don’t usually live in nursing homes by choice – typically it becomes a necessity when aging adults are too unwell to safely remain in their homes or require assistance to take care of themselves. Looking at it from this perspecitve, it becomes clear that overall health, rather than age, is the real risk factor.
Living Your Best Life
Most people invest in their wealth throughout their life to ensure a comfortable lifestyle come retirement, but what about their health? Investing in your health ensures that you will be disease-free, mobile, and active enough to enjoy your golden years. Like investing in your retirement portfolio, health optimization should begin early in life to maximize your return on investment. Your choices in your youth dictate if you spend your retirement moving between your easy chair and the doctor’s office or the golf course and hiking trail!
Wealth Health
One barrier that many people claim prevents them from taking part in activities that optimize their health and prevent disease is finances. Yes, gym memberships, preventative healthcare, and healthy foods cost money – but so does being sick! While investing in being healthy has an upfront cost, it is much lower than the unexpected costs a major health event has. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
A Penny Saved is a Dollar Earned
The average severe heart attack will cost the patient $1 million in direct (hospital bills, prescriptions, etc.) and indirect (lost time from work, lower productivity, etc.) costs. If you spread this out over twenty years, it comes out to $50,000/year. What if you had taken those twenty years and invested a small portion of that money into health optimization, thus preventing the heart attack from ever occurring? Not only are you saving yourself the pain and suffering of a major health event, but you are keeping hundreds of thousands of dollars in your pocket.
Let’s take a look at health insurance. The average health insurance premium is $440/month for an individual and $1168/month for a family. Unfortunately, this does not include your deductible, copays, or co-insurance – those are an additional expense! If you are a healthy person who does not need medical care often (i.e. no chronic disease), this money is not being used to provide you with health services. Instead, it is straight profit to your insurance company. What if you invested some of that money in activities that make you healthy? If you have no chronic health concerns, consider a high deductible, low premium, “catastrophic” plan, and utilize your savings to invest in healthy food, fitness, and cash-pay (typically lower cost) preventative health services.
The time to switch the mindset from one of disease treatment to health optimization is now! Enhancing your health through positive lifestyle behaviors increases the length and quality of your life, reduces your likelihood of developing chronic disease, decreases your vulnerability to novel infectious disease (like COVID-19), and saves your healthcare dollars!
If you have any questions or comments, please email Dr. Molly at [email protected].
