Yesterday the BBC website published an article in which Lucy Wallis takes a perfectly reasonable look at the reasons certain centenarians (and a related expert) give for living past the age of 100. A diverting read but tomorrow I'll change nothing about my life. This utter defiance of almost any incidental health related article has become a regular occurrence for me. By this point my life is like a story of "The Pseudo-Scientist Who Cried Wolf" but with me as a poor bewildered villager staring down the barrel of mortality knowing that one day something will get me. Even so I somehow doubt that it'll be the lack of oranges in my diet.
As an impassioned soldier in the age old fight against death I'm on the front lines every day, staring cars, knives, cliffs, dodgy alleyways, the highly inconvenient blood clot I currently have in my arm and Facebook (apparently) in the face and saying "No! Not today!". You see it's something we all have a vested interest in and it's patently clear that personal survival in the majority of cases is a tremendously popular thing. I mean, in a choice between £200 million or continued existence I think on balance I (as I confidently predict you will too) am going to plump for the latter.
This fear is thus a huge part of the human experience and one which low-brow tat (and indeed high brow tat) isn't afraid to exploit with outrageously repetitive effect. On a scale of 1 to "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE AN AGONISING DEATH THIS AFTERNOON UNLESS YOU READ THIS" the headline "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE" is a pretty effective one. Just look at the Daily Mail. Sun, sea, sex and survival sell and without the latter you won't be getting much of the former.
A cursory Google search of "Daily Mail chances of cancer" (although I of course didn't include the capital letters in my search -do you take me as the sort of person that types google.co.uk into Chrome?) reveals everything you need to know firstly about newspapers and secondly about your health. Within only the first three pages of my search I was treated to a wide and terrifying array of potential death traps.
Only 11 hours ago the Daily Mail told us that "drinking coffee lowers the risk of common skin cancer" but there are oh so many more things and you (as a stupid feeble minded hypochondriac) could and of course should be doing. Why aren't you currently 'going on a brisk walk'? Walking for 90 minutes a day? Breast feeding your child? Losing weight ? Eating less? On statins? Eating a high fibre diet? Getting circumcised (that's right getting circumcised)? Chewing through Aspirin like they were Smarties or eating Oranges like they were juicy, pithy, unmanageably large popcorn? Well I'm not sure why not and if not start immediately. Do you want cancer? Do you?!
For those of you that don't - so that's all of you then (now that's a demographic to target) - here's some things you should stop (remember I've retrieved these straight from the tip of the iceberg - there's a hell of a lot more). Without delay you should cease having IVF treatment, having seven cups of tea a day, taking The Pill, using sunbeds, inhaling diesel exhaust engine fumes, eating in accordance with the Atkins diet, having CT scans, delaying motherhood, snoring, taking health supplements, being a tall woman, using Facebook, drinking fruit juice, eating a meat or salt heavy diet, having a father that smoked before you were born, having the 'painful womb condition endometriosis' (stop having it immediately you fool), getting breast implants and eating a high fibre diet - yes it helps prevent cancer too but who's counting . Well these guys are so if you want to interrupt your pursuit of a successful and fulfilling life then go there.
So now that you've stopped doing everything get ready for that birthday card from the Queen! 100 here you come. Well apparently not. If you've somehow managed to dodge a heart attack, any sort of unfortunate fatal accident, having CT scans on sunbeds, eating meat whilst snoring and/or being a tall Facebook using woman then there are still many, many things that could kill you. When I say 'kill you' remember here I mean actually kill you. Like really dead. What are these things? Let's go to the experts shall we.
Well the consensus seems to be that you need live an active lifestyle, have the right genetics , live in the right environment and be chuffing lucky. At least that's the conclusion of Professor Tim Spector of Kings College London who also says that, "the science is slightly baffled by this, we still don't really understand what makes a centenarian because all of them are unique". Oh really Tim? Next you'll be saying that spending your days looking at The Daily Mail website masturbating to pictures of Pippa Middleton is a waste of time.
I think that the 100 year old somewhat remarkable Peggy Hovell has got it sussed. Never one to let age get in the way, she recently planned (but was not allowed to) take part in a charity parachute jump and says "I just love driving, I like driving fast." Her no doubt remarkable willpower, adventurousness and drive could be a possible reason for her advanced years suggests Professor Spector who says "if you have the will to do things then you have an optimistic view that you are not going to get hurt, you'll do something unexpected. If you are a bit of a pessimist and you say 'well if I do that I'm bound to break a leg and end up in hospital,' you just stay in bed all day." I guess that means that if you spend your time reading health scare articles then you are going to die earlier. What a delicious irony.
The nameless protagonist of Fight Club once put it excellently as we watched him lying on a sofa ruminating over inconsequential rubbish on TV that "this is your life and it's ending one second at a time". Many peoplelive modest, quiet lives averse to any risk or unnecessary deviation from their Darwinian path. They bat a good long innings, living life in the style of Geoffrey Boycott at the crease, staving off anything remotely dangerous with a finely honed defensive guard, surprised or tricked by nothing. They may well be happy to do this but are you? Once we're dead and gone, the method with which we lived our life or the age we achieved become no more consequential to us than they were to us before we were born. Wouldn't it be nice to know with your last breath that with the one shot you had you made the most of it? That you didn't squander it in an attempt to stave off an inevitability. Of course you don't want to die early but similarly you don't want to die with any regrets. Unnecessary indulgence is a great and glorious part of our lives and it's what makes life worth living so striking a happy balance between existence and pleasure is the name of the game.
In their own irritatingly small way I think these health related articles and the massive viewing figures they achieve are symptomatic of a larger problem. Our society's obsession with death. There are many amongst us who will go to great lengths for an entirely minimal (and only possibly possible) increase in our lifespan. If I were a woman would I rush into bearing children to 'decrease my risk of cancer'? No I don't think I would. Will I stop using Facebook or mobile phones or have my children circumcised all in the vain hope of increasing my and their lifespan by a completely vague and imperceptible amount? No I won't.
The message I think should be this. Stop worrying and get on with it. Unless of course 'get on with it' to you means stabbing yourself in the heart or testing the limits of your skull under an industrial strength vice, that much is inadvisable. You might live to one hundred and similarly you might get cancer. Some smokers get lung cancer, some don't. Even though they have a much decreased chance of getting it some non-smokers get lung cancer as well. Clearly you shouldn't be smoking or binge drinking or using sunbeds all the time or huffing diesel fumes like they were snuff and you were an 18th century gentleman of fashion and repute, but don't tell me that smokers will die 30 years younger than non-smokers. I just have to look at my currently existent 85 year old chain smoking grandfather recently bereaved of his clean-living wife to know that much. Any world in which the majority of the members of the The Rolling Stones are still alive after decades of drug use isn't one that cares about marginal tea induced increases in your chances of cancer. I'm not advising you smoke here, I'm just saying that luck, chance, chance and luck have an awfully large sway in the corporeal equation.
Who cares if The Daily Mail thinks that drinking too much tea or neglecting to give a blood sacrifice at an altar of "The People's Princess" every morning without fail is going to kill you? I definitely don't. One night getting drunk with your mates isn't going to kill you and you won't still be feeling that cheeky McDonald's you had this evening in 20 years time, so stop worrying, stop indulging the Daily Mail's readership figures and do something productive with your time. It's running out.