Open Letter to a 27-year old – Get It Together, NOW!

Speaking as a U.S. citizen, I’m confident in saying that if lifestyles and our treatment of the ecology don’t change in our culture soon, there is a good chance that the average 27-year-old today won’t do any better than the current average life span of 77 for men, 81 for women.

The average longevity in the U.S. peaked and began to turn south several years ago after over a century of meteoric change – from an average of 47 in 1910 to around 80 today. And, by the way, that downturn started well before COVID appeared on the scene.

But that rapid change in the 20th century came from picking the low-hanging fruit – improved infant mortality, reduction/elimination of infectious diseases, better water, food, education, etc.

With that done, we now are up against a new reality and, as COVID-19 is showing us, we aren’t particularly well prepared, biologically.

Know thine enemy.

Our lifestyles, terrible farm/food industry/system, broken healthcare system, and opportunistic/exploitive pharmaceutical industry are assembling a combination of dire threats to our health and longevity going forward.

So, born in 1996 and 27 years old, what can you expect? Consider a couple of choices:

1. You can adopt the prevailing lifestyle that consists of consuming the dangerous Standard American Diet (SAD) of chemically-engineered, food-like substances (C-R-A-P, calorie-rich-and-processed), sedentary living (limited movement, Facebook, voice-activated remotes, and video games), working in a stressful work environment building somebody else’s dream and doing something outside of what you are wired up to do, all while seeking comfort and convenience.

That will put you on track for a life expectancy of 80 years or less, joining a population that is experiencing lifestyle diseases such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  The top five killers in our culture are all preventable lifestyle diseases that haven’t changed in decades. Poor diet passed smoking as the #1 cause of early death in America long ago.

You can remain ignorant of, and succumb to, the powerful profit-motivated forces in our culture that are counter to your health and longevity – named earlier – or you can take charge and be the CEO of your health.

If you choose not to take charge, you are likely to end up with an average lifespan with a poor health span.

2. You can wait for a “miracle drug” to pop out from the bio-medical field and “save you” from your marginal lifestyle and guarantee you a long healthy life with no effort.

Just a hint: nobody is coming to save you!

3. You can become a student of how your body and mind work at the cellular level and understand and appreciate the amazing, intricate, and powerful nature of the ecology you live in and the role it plays in your health and longevity. You can learn how to support the amazing 24×7 immune system that is your body and how it is impacted by what you do and don’t do to it and what you put into it and don’t put into it.

You will learn that your biology gives you only two choices – growth or decay. You can strive to appreciate the “use it or lose it” principle that is at play with your biology and thus reject a sedentary lifestyle for the duration of your life. You can become a student of nutrition. You can commit to life-long learning, understanding the importance of applying the same “use it or lose it” principle to your brain.

If I were 27 today (I’m 3x that in six weeks!) knowing what I know now, I would become a revolutionary and be a vocal (not with signs or in the streets), knowledgeable, and persuasive opponent against these forces that are teaming with other unfettered industries collectively destroying both our health and our ecosystem.

Honestly, I fear that a 27-year-old today has a slimmer chance of reaching my age because of the trend line of what we are doing to our bodies by succumbing to the corporate forces working against us and what we have already done to our own ecosystem, particularly the microbiome.

The solution is to get knowledgeable, understand what is being done around you, get outside of it, and choose to eat right, be active, and be discerning of the messages coming from the media, corporations, and the government.

Your longevity hangs in the balance.

Hi, readers! Thoughts on this topic? Love to hear from you. Leave a comment.