Why living longer isn't the goal

Living longer is not the goal. Living better is, because the extra years most people are gaining are sick years, not good ones.

In this solo episode, Coach Allan digs into the Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet Public Health, which found the gap between lifespan and healthspan grew from 8.8 years in 1990 to 10.7 years by 2023. That is nearly eleven years, about 15% of a life, spent sick and incapable at the end. He opens with a story from Puerto Vallarta, where an earthquake left a man in his early seventies stuck on the third floor because he did not have the leg strength to walk down the stairs, and had to tell his wife to go on without him. The earthquake did not cause that. It revealed it. Allan then walks through his own earthquake moment, a stage 3 kidney cancer diagnosis and the immunotherapy he is still going through, the five levers that actually close the gap, and why the retirement-account model of health is the wrong one.

Time Stamps:

00:00 Lifespan versus healthspan, and the gap between them

05:58 Why the United States has the widest gap

10:02 Strength and stamina as non-negotiables

13:17 Purpose and relationships as the foundational why

17:23 Health deposits are not a retirement account

20:02 The Long Life Readiness Quiz

Links:

Long Life Readiness Quiz (free, takes a couple of minutes): https://40plusfitness.com/gap

The Wellness Roadmap by Allan Misner: https://amzn.to/3U1xEdn