Poor health will cost you money
The Secret: Good Health Can Save you Money; Bad Health Won’t and may ultimately define your future lifestyle.
Eat your fruits and vegetables! Isn’t that what our mothers always said! Whether caused by our 21st century processed foods, sedentary ways, changes in our environments, or pure genetic inheritance, the incidence of diabetes and its later complications have become rampant throughout the civilised world. This disease has been a concern for years for health care associations and providers, medical professionals, and governments.
Diabetic symptoms and the disease is not easily understood. There has been a concentrated effort by the media and numerous global organisations, such as the Diabetes Association here in Bermuda, to disseminate information while encouraging citizens to achieve an higher quality of life through better health habits.
What is diabetes? According to the Canadian Diabetes Association website, diabetes is a disease in which your body cannot properly store and use fuel for energy. Glucose (your body fuel) comes from foods such as breads, cereals, pasta, rice, potatoes, fruits and some vegetables. Insulin which is made by a gland in your body called the pancreas, helps your body break glucose down into usable body fuel.
Diabetes can be classified into two types:
Type 1 — Your body makes far too little or no insulin at all: insulin deficient.
Type 2 — Your body cannot properly use the insulin it that is does make: insulin resistant.
When there is little or no insulin available to covert the glucose to energy, glucose instead can build up in your blood to higher levels than normal. When this happens, you may feel:
[bul] constantly tired ;
[bul] be more thirsty than usual;
[bul] have frequent urination;
[bul] be hungry often;
[bul] experience mood swings;
[bul] lose weight fairly rapidly;
[bul] have blurry vision; and
[bul] be more susceptible to frequent infections, such as bacterial, fungus and yeast.
Over the long term, untreated high blood glucose levels can lead to kidney failure, heart disease, blindness, amputation, circulation problems and other major related health problems.
Treating diabetes costs money. Whether the treatment is provided through the generosity of charitable clinics, paid for as part of a group health insurance plan, or borne totally by the individual, it is a cost to society. Consider the following taken from a ten-year ago study of diabetes in Australia and the United States (1997). One can only conjecture what the increase in cost is today.
Individuals with diabetes problems:
[bul] Cost 75% more per year ( $10,071) than a healthy individual - $2,669.
[bul] Lose almost nine days of work each year compared to 1.7 days for those without diabetes
[bul] Are hospitalised more often
[bul] Use one or more medications to treat complications
[bul] Are susceptible to the major cause of blindness in individuals under age 60
[bul] 1 out of 100 individuals with diabetes will end up having an amputation!
Very grim but realistic statistics, and probably not what you’d like to be reading with your late morning coffee on a weekend!
Is it a cost that we can avoid? There is good news.
Looking at this disease from a personal perspective, if your extended family has had a tendency toward diabetes in later age, chances are that you are going to fit right into the family pattern. Keep in mind that some diagnoses of diabetes, if discovered early, and treated using preventative treatments may be minimised or almost completely controlled. If you are able to condition yourself to manage your lifestyle healthier when you are younger, you will avoid the high costs of medical care when you are older. Be cautioned that each individual health situation is different, however, and you should always seek advice from your family physician.
The first mental hurdle in taking care of your health is that because most health care costs for employees today are covered by your health plan at work, therefore no one thinks about the total cost later.
But consider what would happen if you lost your health insurance, simply cannot afford the extra medications. Those real costs will be very, very real when you have to pay for them out-of-pocket.
As you know, I always focus on achieving financial security. If you feel that you may have a health problem such as onset diabetes, translate this health thing into real dollars ... by considering the alternatives.
Spend the money (you are wasting on food you don’t need to survive) on a terrific trip; save the money (you are wasting on food you don’t need to survive) to accumulate investments; splurge on a new career enhancing outfit to fit your new smaller healthier image, or the negative: deal with the higher cost of a significantly lower quality of life later.
It isn’t just about budgeting, and investing now, the main impetus and message is that if you focus on your overall financial, mental, physical, and emotional profile, you will feel better, attain more, and reach goals that you have set for your life.
The Bermuda Diabetes Association was the recipient of the pledges earned by the participants (895 walkers and 325 runners) of the recent road walk/race held recently at Lindo’s Market in Devonshire and Warwick.
Popular interest was so high that a walking club formed in January with 42 members, some of whom initially could not walk more than half a mile. Forty one members successfully finished the entire 4 mile walk!
One extraordinary individual success story needs to be highlighted — a loss of 81 pounds (original weight 390) and determined motivation for a further 50 pound reduction in weight has been set.
Giorgio Zanol, a long time runner with 43 marathons to his credit, and Lindos Market enjoy raising the awareness of living a healthy lifestyle. Mr. Zanol will be participating for charity again in May, this time in Italy on a 100 kilometre run, just for fun.
The article expresses the opinion of the author alone. Under no circumstances is the content of this article to be taken as specific investment or financial planning advice, nor as a recommendation to buy/ sell any investment product.
