How Far Can You Fall and Still Survive?
Experts warn of boom in tick population
Your laziness could take a chunk out of your longevity: About 30 percent of people surveyed would rather croak early than take a daily pill to protect their hearts, new research from the University of California at San Francisco and the University of North Carolina found.
And we’re not talking about a piddling couple of days, either. The average amount of time these participants were willing to lop off their lives was 3 months—even if their hypothetical pill was free and without side effects.
What’s more, 8 percent of these people would rather check out 2 years early than pop a daily pill.
The reason for this reluctance might have to do with the difference between prevention versus treatment.
“One would assume that taking pills to relieve some sort of discomfort would be less burdensome than taking pills to prevent some adverse event that might happen in the future,” says study author Robert Hutchins, M.D., M.P.H.
Taking a pill for prevention is a hassle—you need to remember when to take it and when to get it refilled. Factor in yucky or hard-to-swallow meds, and suddenly popping a pill becomes an even bigger annoyance, says Dr. Hutchins.
If you’re one of the guys who’d rather kick it early than take a daily pill, a happy compromise is to take a proactive stance now so you might not have to depend on meds—say, low-dose aspirin or statins—later on.
That means working on what’s called your “modifiable risk factors,” the things that can affect your heart disease risk that you can change. Your diet, weight, and activity level falls squarely in this group.
“If everyone got 30 to 45 minutes of cardiac exercise 6 days a week, ate more healthy food, and quit smoking, people would, in general, live longer,” says Dr. Hutchins.
But if your risk of heart disease creeps up, that’s when those prevention pills may become a doctor-backed necessity. Take out some of the mental work by downloading a pill reminder app like MediSafe Meds & Pill Reminder (free, Android and iOS). Or sign up from a service from your pharmacy where your meds will arrive pre-sorted by day and time, says Dr. Hutchins.
(My eye drops cost a whopping $4 per month. Added bonus!)
