You guys really need to get off your duffs and do something about your health while you can. Of course you can just go on ignoring it and leave your wife a widow at an early age. Do you have a good insurance policy to take care of her when you're gone?
Get with the program guys your bodies are telling you what's wrong. Listen up to what they are saying.
Bill is right!
A couple of years ago I found myself in the ER with shortness of breath, dizziness, and a pain in my lower chest, or the middle of my diaphragm. I had had this kind of pain before, particularly after eating (and I tend to eat quickly) so I put it down as gas. However, being 59 and 25 lbs overweight I was treated like a heart attack patient. It turned out that, though I did have high blood pressure, they found nothing conclusive about my heart. An unpleasant and unexpected finding was that my blood glucose was over 500 (it should be 100 or less) and they stuck some insulin into me to get it down.
To make a long story short, I was diagnosed as diabetic and treatment with some scary and expensive drugs was suggested. But I chose to control it with diet, and within 6 weeks, I lost 20 lbs and got my blood glucose down into the 80 - 100 range. When next tested by a doctor was told "If you had come to me for the first time today I would not say you were diabetic." In addition, a friend of mine who is a doctor (not
my doctor) told me that acid reflux can become very serious, and it is quite likely the cause of the pain I had in my diaphram/chest area.
Oh yeah, I spent a lot of time sitting on my butt for the last 10 yrs or so (work at a home office) so exercise was not a major part of my life... and I took lots of naps, and generally felt tired most of the time.
So I take meds for my BP and got it down, but I must keep working to keeping it down. Same for my glucose level, I gotta watch my carbs, and I have started going to a gym and taking pilates classes.
I am not suggesting any particular diagnosis for anyone (I am not at all medically educated) but just telling how the results of my own sluggish lifestyle showed up and got my undivided attention pretty quickly. As Bill points out, our bodies tell us when something is wrong... and the message can be quite dramatic, especially when we fail to hear the early warning signs.
Anyway, that whole experience got my attention, and caused considerable alarm for my kids and wife, so I heartily suggest any of y'all who fall into the overweight and not-active categories, who might be reading this; take Bill's advice, get off your butts and stay alive.
We may need you in the next few years! If you are pushing up daisies, you won't be available to vote... well, not unless you are registered Democrats, I suppose.
