Take Care of Yourself - Staying Healthy in an Aging World
By Clint Patty, J.D.
Clayton Financiai
Our primary goal as your wealth partner is to work with you to develop planning strategies to ensure your wealth will last a lifetime. As technological changes allow our society to live longer, those strategies and projections are carefully monitored to track the financial health of all our clients. At the same time, it’s important to remember that while technology is allowing us to live longer, the rise of chronic diseases in an aging population will require at least as much attention to our physical health as our financial health. Consider the following facts from a recent guide published by Bayer Global entitled “80 is the New 60: Staying healthy in an aging world”:
Today, nearly a billion people on the earth are over the age of 60. By 2050, that number will rise to 2.1 billion people, or nearly 22% of the population.
The global population of people 80 and older will more than triple by 2050 to almost 450 million.
While the advances of the 20th century had the greatest effect on infectious diseases, the advances of the 21st century will need to address the problems associated with chronic conditions that are increasingly prevalent among older adults.
Studies conducted in the United States show that about 80% of people over 65 have at least one chronic condition, and 68% have two or more. Among the most common of these conditions are heart disease, lung disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
These increasingly common conditions also have an impacton the quality of life of older people. Preventing or controlling
the types of chronic diseases that afflict an aging population is key to preserving quality of life. A large part of prevention involves properly managing conditions like diabetes and hypertension through a combination of diet, exercise and currently available prescription medications.
All of this means that as technology allows us to live longer, we need to take care of ourselves for the best quality of life possible. After all, none of us wants to be the person who looks back and says, “If I’d have known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself”. While CWP will continue to monitor your financial health, we encourage everyone to work with your physician on a plan of diet and exercise to maximize your quality of life in an aging world.
