Kim Komando :
October 21, 2017
How many healthy years do YOU have left? Use this calculator developed by scientists to find out
© Darren Baker | Dreamstime
Let’s face it. The
older we get, the more we think about our mortality. I’m sure many of
you are wondering how long you have to live and how many years will be
healthy ones.
If you could find
out your life expectancy, would you want to know? Would you be willing
to adopt a more healthy lifestyle to add on a few more years?
Scientists
at the University of Connecticut have developed an online calculator
that can determine how many healthy years you have left.
While
you may think it’s all about you, information like this also impacts
the medical industry and society. Your health and those in your
community influence medical costs, financial planning and health support
services.
Measuring this quality of life is referred to as "healthy life expectancy" and "unhealthy
life expectancy." An unhealthy life is a severe enough form of
disablement that there’s no recovery. It’s the way you remain until
death.
Adding "healthy life expectancy" and "unhealthy life expectancy" together gets you the grand total of years you have left.
How the calculation works
Scientists
give an example of a 60-year-old man who eats healthy, exercises
regularly, sleeps at least eight hours a night and has a healthy body
mass index.
The calculator suggests he could have another 13 years of healthy living compared to someone not as healthy.
Interesting
since there’s a big difference in healthy life expectancy that’s
influenced by lifestyle choices, something each person has control over.
Influencers
Two
factors we don’t have control over are our age and gender but it still
impacts our healthy life expectancy. How long we can expect to live
obviously decreases with age. Women typically live longer and healthier
than men.
Diet, exercise and
sufficient sleep all positively impact our healthy life expectancy along
with education, income, our own mental state of our health, moderate
alcohol consumption, not smoking and not being diabetic. The more money
you make and the more education you have, the higher your healthy life
expectancy. Having a positive attitude about your health also helps.
Factors not taken into account include your level of stress, how positive your attitude is toward life and social connections.
Do you want to know?
This
is the first time a measurement tool like this has been available.
Obviously, it’s still a little early to determine the accuracy of the
calculations. It’s simply an educated prediction. Scientists, though,
have been careful to model their assumptions on actuarial sources to
make sure results are logical and consistent.
Scientists
plan to expand their studies and look into how healthy life expectancy
can help with retirement financial planning. For example, discretionary
retirement spending should happen during healthy years; basic expense
spending increases during unhealthy years.
Based on all of this information, are you curious about how many healthy years you have left? Do you want to find out?
While we’re growing older, there are ages where we peak at doing everything.
Here's the age you peak at everything, according to science
https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbyuBYOmrAt4KEdpbu871fISJmOvgA2_72XY0gaFYkJVB4xNJawZ/exec
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