Here’s a new, nutty discussion from British health care authorities, who are having the devil of a time getting people to reduce their heavy drinking and overeating habits, to say nothing of near total failure to successfully encourage adequate amounts of healthful exercise among the citizenry.
Well, not to worry you British folks, because following good health guidelines may be just another way to add to your health woes. In a new ‘damned if you do or if you don’t’ analysis, we learn that healthier life styles may ‘just add more years of bad health’ to one’s life.
This could be a mixed gift for the profligate. Will overindulgent Brits, greatly relieved at the news, eschew lives of (apparently) pointless moderation and virtue? Perhaps, if it means nothing better than extending one’s misery and decrepitude. The possible policy implications are even more perverse.
Given the emerging pattern of British health care for its ageing, I can imagine that in lieu of recommendations for moderate drinking, exercise, and weight control, British citizens will simply, from now on, receive strong suggestions from British Health Services on their optimal eternal exit dates, and be expected to take care of it in a timely and considerate manner. They are already well on their way there.
And in some possible universe (not this one), this makes perfect sense.
