Longevity Guide Fixed Factors:
References To Manage Wellness

This longevity guide for fixed factors is offered as a preventative advisory to help you better manage your healthcare and wellness affairs. The cornerstone of our consumer directed healthcare and wellness culture is that no one will mind your business better than you will, if you know how. Our purpose is to show you how.

We will provide you with information and advice to help you simplify your wellness options so that you can better manage your affairs at reduced cost and in less time.

It would be terrific if we could invoke Woody Allen's rule that says “I don’t want to know when I’ll die. Just tell me where, so I can avoid the place.”

It’s not that simple, so this idea requires four things that we hope are true for most of us most of the time.

1. That you can achieve a quality, fulfilling life that you enjoy so that you want to continue it and to improve it. The basis is a positive attitude. Not always present, but always available if we seek it.

2. That you are sufficiently motivated to maintain your quality of life so that you will expend the effort to achieve it and exercise the discipline to maintain it.

3. Avoid conduct that detracts from quality lifespan. Rejecting the attractive but harmful often requires more discipline than doing the tedious.

4. If you wander from your intended regimen, exercise self-control to get back on the right track. Return to good habits as soon as you can.

The Longevity Game

A creative and fun way to help you take charge of your wellness issues can be found in “longevity games” that predict human lifespan. They seek to make individual lifespan projections based on heredity, environment and personal conduct factors that affect us. They point the way to the things we should do, the things we should avoid and the things which we can not control that affect our health and our life spans.

Because it incorporates vital “fixed factors” that we can not control, we favor “The Longevity Game”, as published by Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. We do not represent or have any association with Northwestern Mutual. To see and play Northwestern Mutual’s game, go to Longevity Game.

Northwestern’s game uses an average life expectancy of 76 years as its baseline. Lifestyle factors allow you to add to or subtract from that baseline to estimate your own life-expectancy. We cite this game primarily as a reference point to discuss the lifestyle factors that we should or should not use in seeking to improve the quality and length of our lives.

Fixed Factors:

These are facts that you can’t change. They’re genetic. You’re born with them or have already experienced them. In relation to our length of life, many healthcare authorities estimate that they may amount to about 30 percent importance in your overall personal lifespan equation. These factors include your current age, gender and your family health history.

Age:

Your current age matters. Once you have outlived the hazards of infant mortality and of youthful risk taking to reach your 30th birthday, your statistical chances of long-term survival start to improve. If you are age 30 to 39, add two years to your baseline factor. If you are 40 to 49 years old, add three years. For age 50 to 69 years old, add four years. If you are 70 years old or older, add five years.

Gender:

For as long as records have been kept on human longevity, females have averaged living longer than males. Contributing causes may be greater vocational hazards or risk-taking by males. It may be due to differences in body mass or in disposition toward stress management.

It may be because women are more attentive to their health than men are. Or, it may simply be the nature of the species. A century ago, the difference in life expectancy between women and men was only about two years. Now, it’s about six years. For gender adjustments, females can add three years, but males must subtract three years.

Family Health History:

Your family health history is what it is. You can’t change or control what has already happened. But, by knowing your family medical history, you can learn from it, identify potential risks and take action to minimize such risks and better manage your healthcare affairs.

Did a grandparent or parent suffer cardiovascular or cancer problems before age 55? If so, you need to be alert for related symptoms and to get regular checkups from an early beginning. Did one or more grandparents or parents live beyond 85 years? Did all live beyond 70? Beyond 80? As for the longevity adjustment, if a grandparent reached 85, add two years. If all grandparents reached 80, add six years. If a parent died before age 50 from heart attack or stroke, subtract four years.

Application:

These are factors for adjustment from a theoretical baseline. But, they also are indicators by which you can focus your attention for your personal wellness program.

The fact a parent or grandparent died prematurely is a warning flag. It doesn’t have to be a prediction for you. An abuse in a past generation that you do not repeat can be a benefit. A health factor that an ancestor did not address but to which you give proper attention, is a winning strategy.

You have the opportunity to make offsetting adjustments through your Personal Wellness Plan and through modern healthcare services that are superior to those of 30 or 20 or even 10 years ago.

For ideas on Longevity Variable Factors, go to Variable Factors.

For ideas on Longevity Fitness Factors, go to Fitness Factors.

For ideas on Longevity Diet Factors, go to Diet Factors.

For ideas on Longevity Nutritional Factors, go to Nutritional Factors.

For ideas on Longevity Life Quality Factors, go to Life Quality Factors.

If you have questions or need additional information, go to our Contact Us Form.

WARNING: NEVER CANCEL YOUR CURRENT INSURANCE UNTIL REPLACEMENT COVERAGE IS APPROVED AND IN PLACE.

To get a Wellness Assistance Proposal and health plan quote, go to Health Plan Quotes.