Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
One of the things I hated most at school was sport. To misquote Winston Churchill, ‘Some people are born with a dislike of sport, some achieve a dislike of sport, and some have a dislike of sport thrust upon them’. I wasn’t born to hate sport, and I don’t think I was particularly susceptible to complete cr*pness, but I wasn’t very good at any school sport. I learned swimming at a club.
I discovered fairly early that I’m right-handed. That’s easy. When I started to draw or paint I automatically reached for the crayon or brush with my right hand. I learned to distinguish right from left by reaching for an imaginary pencil, and the hand that reached out was the right hand, because that’s the hand I write with. Of course, I hadn’t understood the vagaries of English spelling yet.
My chances of sporting excellence
I soon noticed that I automatically went to kick a ball with my left foot, and that there was a significant gap between the kick I had in my mind and the actual result. I was also somewhat overweight, and my short-sightedness was as yet undiagnosed. So my chances of sporting excellence were slim
My P.E. teachers, without exception, were only interested with the talented players, so I was always relegated to the make-up-the-numbers brigade, and left to wallow in my incompetence while the stars got all the attention.
It’s a delusional state
So, that and my well-documented attitude problem meant that I gave up sport and took up smoking as soon as I left school. I don’t know why I didn’t start earlier. I smoked about 30 a day for about 25 years, and was completely happy as a smoker. But it’s a delusional state.
I remember having earnest conversations with fellow students about smoking. We would discuss in all seriousness which we would give up last out of these three things – sleeping, eating, and smoking. And we would all quite clearly keep on smoking well beyond the other two. What young idiots we were!
That’s what lifts are for
I also remember having conversations with myself before I gave up smoking where I would justify not being able to climb stairs without stopping to catch my breath, because that’s what lifts are for. I also remember wondering what I would do if I witnessed an accident and had to get help, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to run, or even walk very fast to find the nearest house. This was before the age of mobile phones, of course.
Finally, I came to a point in my life where I stopped avoiding things and started looking forward. Some people who were close to me died around then too. When I realised that I wanted to improve the odds of becoming an old person in reasonable shape rather than dying too young, I recognised that things would have to change. And eventually they did.
A sure-fire way to shorten your life
This week I’ve been hearing that at least a third of the adult population is right now at risk of giving themselves Type 2 Diabetes, because their blood sugar is at the very top of the acceptable range. This is a huge rise in the last ten years. Up to ten per cent of these will go on each year to become diabetic. The NHS already spends ten per cent of its total resources on treating Type 2 Diabetes. In the words of one health expert, this will ‘wreck the NHS’ if it’s not reversed.
Type 2 Diabetes is to a great extent preventable. It’s largely the product of lazy living. Eating processed food and slouching on the sofa putting on weight seems to be a comfortable and easy way to live, but it’s actually a sure-fire way to shorten your life. People used to counter the arguments against smoking by saying they knew someone very old who still smoked. It’s a false argument, because it doesn’t take into account all those smokers who died before getting old.
Because you become short of breath!
I was listening to the radio, and I was struck by an interview with a woman who had just been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. She was not a sporty type, and she had a condition that affected her heart and lungs, so she worried about walking because she became short of breath. I was surprised when the doctor also present said – ‘You should be walking because you become short of breath! Walking regularly will help to improve your condition. Not walking will make it worse.’
My experience since giving up smoking and taking up exercise is entirely positive. The exercise I take gives me more energy. Every day I spend being able to breathe properly and be active reminds me of how I might be if I still had those old habits. I was lucky because I hadn’t passed any of those lines that would have meant actual bodily harm, and I’ve been able to climb out of those dangerous waters.
Exercise and good food will always improve our lives
Medical people say that whatever stage or state we are in, exercise and good food will always improve our lives. We need to realise that our attitudes and habits have got to change, or we’ll end up with more and more people being looked after by fewer and fewer people. I don’t want to imagine the consequences of that, but I have no idea how we can turn things round, apart from individual by individual.
We’re heading towards a situation where lots of people work really hard to shorten their lives and then expect medicine to repair the damage, when it’s supposed to be engaged in preventing and curing illness and disability. We can’t afford both.
As Andy Dufresne says in the Shawshank Redemption – ‘Get busy living, or get busy dying’.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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