I don’t know about you, but I have yet to see anything remotely resembling health care reform in any of the proposals coming out of congress these last few months. What I do see is a waste of resources and a continuation of the same old broken health care thinking that only leads to more disease, more illness, and more expense.

The crazy thing about all the hoopla surrounding the health care debate is that the way we approach health care has to change.

Really, it HAS to change. Either we change our health care system or we are going bankrupt.

The Need for Reform

The need to overhaul the health care system is greater than you might imagine. The reason for this is twofold: demographics and cost.

The Baby Boomers are just now approaching retirement age and will create a population shift that is truly unprecedented. To get an idea of just how unprecedented, take a look at the population 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, the number of people who were over 65 years old was only 3.1 million (or 4 percent of the population); today that number is 35 million (or 12 percent of the population). That number is expected to double by the year 2030 reaching 71 million (or 20 percent of the population).

The over-sixty-five population growth is not too much of a concern until you realize that most of these boomers need some form of health care. The older we get, the more the health care expenses we have.

Money and Health

We can pretend that the current legislation will fix the health care problems, but it won’t. What both sides of the debate fail to realize is that the health of the individual is intimately tied to the amount of money that needs to be spent on the individual.

For example, it costs about $50,000 dollars to care for a diabetic throughout their lifetime. While that doesn’t sound like too much, the United States spent an estimated 132 billion dollars in 2002 to pay for diabetic expenses.

And those are just the expenses associated with diabetes and not other chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, or obesity. And it is the boomers, again, who are spending most of that money. A sixty-five-year-old with a serious chronic illness spends $1,000–$2,000 more per year on health care than a similar adult without the condition.

The total expenditures for health care in the United States for 2004 were 1.9 trillion dollars. While it is hard to grasp how large this number is, it equates to over $6,000 per person living in the United States. Currently, this spending on health care accounts for 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2014, the total expenditures on health care are expected to hit 4 trillion dollars, meaning that one out of every five dollars in the United States will be spent on health care.

Think about that. One fifth of all expenditures will be health care related.

For comparison, Canada currently spends 9.6 percent of its GDP on health care, with the United Kingdom only spending 7.7 percent; our closest competitor is Switzerland, who spends around 11 percent.

Are we healthier for all these expenditures? While this is a hard thing to measure, a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association compared the health of Americans versus the British. While our per capita expenditures are more than twice ($5,274 per capita in the US vs. $2,164 in the United Kingdom) Americans are still not as healthy as their British counterparts.

The study compiled national survey data on health and lifestyles of people aged 40 to 70 and found that US citizens aged 55 to 64 were twice as likely to be diabetic, have high blood pressure, suffer from heart disease, and have nearly double the risk of cancer.

Americans, the study concluded, also have higher rates of heart attacks, stoke, and lung disease when compared to the British. Clearly, our health care dollars are not getting us what we want: better health.

Real Health Care Reform

If we are going to truly reform health care we are going to have to create a true health care system.

How do we do this?

What if we remember that health and money are intertwined and pay people to be healthy?

While this sounds a bit crazy, we do this kind of thing all the time. Taxes are the primary influencer of people. If we want more alternative energy, we offer tax incentives. If we want companies to hire more people, we offer tax incentives to companies.

Most of our health care dollars are going to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and complications from obesity. What is amazing about all of those conditions is that they are all mostly avoidable if we eat right and exercise.

So imagine a health care system where emergency health care is free and available to anyone. If you get in an accident or otherwise injure yourself, you are taken care of. But, if you have heart disease, diabetes, or some other chronic condition, you have to pay for that.

In this system, your insurance premiums are adjusted to how healthy you are. How do we determine your health? We do this by seeing how much you weigh as compared to your height; we measure your cholesterol, your blood pressure and your blood sugar. From these measurements, we determine your insurance premium; high cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure increase your premiums.

All of these parameters of health are measurable and modifiable through simple dietary changes. In addition, we give people the tools that they need to change those parameters and get healthier.

By motivating people through their pocketbook, we can radically change the way health care is provided and reduce expenses because people will be healthier.

All this is good advice, but there is really only one thing you have to do to improve the chances that you will live longer: Look further down the road.

Looking Further

You spend your days making decisions. You decide to get out of bed, what to eat for breakfast, what clothes you are gong to wear during the day… Many of these decisions are automatic such as brushing your teeth, wearing a seatbelt, scratching your head. And each of those decisions , no matter how minor,  has an impact on your life. Some have a small impact on your life. Other decisions have more impact such as: should you move? should you marry? should you take that job?

The most important decisions you make, though, are the ones that appear to have little impact on your life when taken as a one-time event, but when repeated over a whole lifetime, have a huge impact.

Take a look:

• One cigarette means nothing to your health, but a pack of cigarettes a day for years equal cancer.
• One soda is a tasty treat, three sodas a day means a bigger chance for being overweight and having diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease…
• Driving in a car is the easy way to get to the store, walking instead of driving every day means you live longer.
• You may be too busy to call a friend back, but having good friends means you are more likely to live a longer and fuller life.
• You can’t find the time to exercise today, but exercises over a lifetime gives you energy, better sleep and can forestall diseases such as dementia, heart disease, diabetes and more.

There are more of these you can probably think of, consider adding yours to the comment section below!

Our Brains

Here is the problem: our brains are not set up to look further down the road. Are brains are set up to notice sudden and dramatic threats and adjust to them. If people took a puff from a cigarette and fell down dead, then we would avoid them. But since they kill us slowly, we seem to hardly notice the destruction because it is so slow. The same is true of sugar and other poor foods that we eat. The same is true about deciding to exercise, or take time with friends or the hundred of other healthy things we could be doing.

Humans are unique, though, in the fact that they can see further down the road, they can look at their futures.

Here is what you should commit to in order to increase your odds of staying on the earth longer:

• Eat better: I suggest Eating Below the Glycemic Index you can also try my 30 Sugar Free Days as a way to kick start a healthy eating plan.
• Exercise: Move your body around every day, sweat a little.
• Make Connections: Connect to friends, family and other social groups.
• Laugh: If you are not enjoying life, what is the point?

Take the time to develop habits that empower you and lean you towards better health, the payback is well worth the effort.

The reason why the history of health is interesting is that what people worry about has changed over time. Ask someone 200 years ago what health concerns they have and you would hear them say that they fear some sort of accident or infection. The reason why they feared accidents and infections is because most people died from infections or injuries 200 years ago.

What is remarkable when you ask that same question of people today is that, while infection is a worry for us to, it is a small concern compared to our fear of cancer or heart disease or a dementia like Alzheimer’s. This dramatic shift in our health concerns has happened in the last 100 years and I’m not sure most people are aware of it or what it means about where you turn for health care or how it should change the choices you make every day.

The Nobel Battle

For most of human history, the battle for health has been a battle over infection and sudden illness. This is a battle that modern medicine has waged well and has, for the most part, won. The introduction of wonder drugs like antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatories and more were a boon to our health and longevity. While there is a great debate about just how much these drugs have done for our health and longevity, it is pretty clear that the wonder drugs did play a role in the improvement of our health. Yes, improved sanitation and food handling have reduced infectious disease, but the drugs, too, have played an important role.

Combine the change in sanitation, the introduction of emergency medicine to deal with accidents, and powerful drugs and you change the average life expectancy from around 40 or 50 years old 100 years ago to around 78 today. Quite an accomplishment.

Out goes the era of infections and sudden diseases and in comes the modern age with new health challenges.

Enter the Era of Slow Diseases

Slow diseases are completely different from sudden diseases like infection and accidents. No longer are we terrified about getting the plague or other infectious disease, we are now mostly concerned about cancer, diabetes, heart disease. These new fears reflect the reality. Yes, there is AIDS, bird flu and other infectious diseases, but your risk of dying from one of those infectious diseases is small compared to the risk that you are going to die from a disease that slowly creeps up on you.

You currently have a 1 in 5 risk of dying from heart disease and about a one in seven chance of dying form cancer.

But these slow diseases are fundamentally different from the diseases of previous generations and require you to think and act differently.

To understand why you have to think differently, you have to remember the frog in the pot of boiling water. Many people have heard about the story of the frog in the hot water: If you put a frog in some very hot water, it will jump right out, but if you put him in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil he will die. The diseases we face are exactly like the slowly boiling water: they are slow that it is not apparent that we are in danger until it is too late.

Confusing the Role of Medicine

I  think the biggest problem people have when they have a slow disease is confusing the role of medicine and drug therapy. If you have an sudden injury, acute infection, then standard medicine is the way go. But when you have a slow disease, your approach has to be different. Yes, you can go to traditional medicine if you have something like arthritis, and they can help your pain go away, but the medicines they are giving you do nothing to address the underlying cause of the disease. You may feel better, but that feeling is not going to last, as the drugs either have side-effects that are worse than the disease, or they stop being effective.

Slow diseases require a different approach and a different attitude on your part. I’m sorry to say this to you if you don’t know it, but medicine is never going to find a cure for cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or diabetes, or heart disease or hundred of other slow-developing diseases. I know you want to believe that medicine will cure everything (and I would like to too) but these diseases do not lend themselves to being cured by a pill. The body is just too complex and the drug solution not helpful enough.

I’m not alone is saying this, even the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society would agree: you can prevent up to 70 percent of these diseases by changing your diet and your habits.

Change Your Approach

Since the chances you are going to be faced with a slow disease are much higher than an acute or sudden disease, you have to change your approach to health care. Your health is in your hands. The small little things you do every day are important. Taking the stairs instead of an elevator, choosing to avoid soda and sugars, getting enough sleep, maintaining a regular health regime… all these are important.

You cannot wait for medicine to cure the diseases you will have in the future; that help will never come. You have to pay attention to the temperature of the water around you and jump out of the pot before it starts boiling instead of waiting until tomorrow to start changing. There is no more powerful thing that you can do then to change your habits and improve your health.

While you may or may not believe in this kind of thing, I can actually tell you with almost complete accuracy how you are going to die. In fact, I can throw away the tent and the crystal ball, and even the silly hat I put on my head. All I need to tell you how you are going to die is a new report out by the Centers for Disease Control.

The report reports that there are the five leading causes of death in the United States are: Heart disease, Cancers, Stroke, Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (such as emphysema), and Diabetes. In fact, if you don’t die from some form of accident, the likelihood that you will die from one of these diseases is about 70%.

Among all of these diseases, diabetes is most likely to increase in the next few years; as this once rare disease and now is becoming epidemic.

What to do with that Information?

People say that you shouldn’t know the future because it can change things that shouldn’t be changed. But this time, armed with the knowledge of how you are going to die, you can change something that should be changed: how long you are going to live. Here is the key thing that you need to know about the most common ways that you are going to die: THEY ARE ALL PREVENTABLE!

And that is not just me saying they are preventable, but that is major associations saying that they are preventable. The American Cancer Society,
The American Heart Association (PDF), The American Diabetes Association all say that somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of these illnesses are preventable.

Think about that, not only do you know how you are probably going to die, but you also know that you can avoid a lot of pain and suffering in your life.

How to Prevent

Okay, now that you know you can prevent many of the major diseases you might get in your life, what do you need to do to make the chances that you will get those diseases much lower?

Here are the steps you need to take:

• If you smoke: stop
• If you drink alcohol, do it in moderation
• Don’t worry about coffee (unless you drink a ton) it actually contains many beneficial nutrients
• Get out and exercise
• Get out and exercise (I repeat this to make sure you understand how important it is)
• Get out and exercise (yes, it is that important)
• Don’t ever drink a soda ever again
• Follow the advice about eating in my book Sugarettes
• Get enough sleep
• Lose excess weight
• Learn how to handle or avoid stress
• Laugh more and don’t take yourself too serious

I find the best way to stay on track with all of these health suggestions is to constantly find new inspiration. Sign up to blogs (yes, even mine) or newsletters that give you information about health. Read books, talk with friends, go listen to speakers.

Everything in your life will try to convince you that it is easier to just stay on the path you are on. Get off that path and on to a better one. Eating better and exercising is work, but it is work that will pay off in huge dividends. You will have more energy, more vitality, feel better and more optimistic, and even get to stay on this planet a little longer.

Not too bad of a deal, huh?