Stressing Out About Health

I am sick of worrying about health! After living many years in other countries, I'm always struck by how obsessed Americans are about health issues. Often it's foolish and faddish; sometimes dangerous; usually stressful.

Living in a retirement community exacerbates the ever-present specter of health -- mine, yours, the country's. It doesn't matter which tv channel I watch. The commercials are geared for our aging community, so I'm bombarded with ads for caretakers, nursing homes, devices to help you sit down, get up, or an emergency service to call someone to pull you up. There are ads for problems I never knew existed. Drug commercials are sick jokes. People look happy and active, while the voice over explains the possible side effects of dizziness, sleeplessness, numbness, memory loss, and thoughts of suicide. Ask your doctor if it's right for you.

The media coverage of health care reform is definitely scary. The careers of the President, senators, congressmen and women are poised on the brink. This plan won't work; that plan is disastrous.

I had minimal or no medical insurance for most of my life since I never had a job inside the U.S. that provided health insurance. Sometimes it was frightening to know I could be financially wiped out in record time with any illness or accident. However, in retrospect, I owe my general good health to NOT having medical insurance. I didn't run to doctors for most complaints, or annual screenings of this or that body part. From years of traveling in the "less developed" world, I was used to self-diagnosis and treatment, and continued that behavior when back in the U.S.

I've been on Medicare for a couple of years now, but I still don't rush to the doctor. Undoubtedly, I've been lucky, but I've also been careful and have tried to get to know my own body and what it's trying to tell me. Medical care, and the misuse of drugs has always seemed like a dangerous swamp I definitely wanted to avoid getting mired in.

Conflicting advice on how to stay healthy or the options for treating all sorts of medical problems confounds the mind and unbalances the psyche. When I stress out over aches and pains and the "what ifs?" I catch myself and convince myself there's plenty of reason not to panic in advance. Some days that approach works better than other days. But one thing I am sure of is that the stress of worrying over getting sick is most likely the biggest killer of all.

Egyptian rulers spent most of their time, energy, and resources preparing for the afterlife. In our modern world, many people spend more time worrying about their health than enjoying it. My preference is to put my energy into living rather than worrying about dying.