The Elephant in the Room

More good news from yesterday. Dementia diagnoses experienced an unexpected drop, over the last 20 years. The study authors didn't engage in speculation as to why, except when they did;

The findings are potentially significant because they suggest that it is possible to take preventative action, such as stopping smoking and reducing cholesterol, that could help avoid the condition. “Physical health and brain health are clearly highly linked,” said Carol Brayne of Cambridge University, who co-authored the study.

You can do all those things and still be chubby, or fat or putting on weight. Which brings us to the elephant in the room. The crisis of weight.  Just as sure as this would have been prominently mentioned if the findings were negative, its only right that society's increasing weight should be mentioned as a possibility for the reduction in dementia.

That of course would also be speculative, though lower weight was surprisingly [to fat phobes] uncovered as a 'risk factor' for an increased risk of dementia-much to many people's bitterness. There's been a long term desperation to insist fatness and dementia go together like venereal disease and unguarded sexual activity. 

Not that I would dream of insisting people try to put on weight, heaven forefend such flagrant degeneracy as obstructing weight reversal. This is just a reminder that health is a complex overlapping business. Imperatives clash and choices have to be made, others eschewed as they do not suit nor make sense on an individual or even community basis.

That for me is the reason why we have no duty to be 'healthy' according to the dictates of self-serving authority. Rather than any kind of abstract libertarian-style ideal of disposal of body as one wishes. Yes, as long as it's clear that it is inherent in human agency and self realisation to-seek to maximise your function-to the best of your ability. Or pursue health as others would call it.

To me, the language of "self destruction" is nonsense, a slander healthists love to build their shady empire on. The idea that we don't care about our health. Yes we do. There's rarely such as the banal "self destructive" tag. Most placed in that category are either doing things because they feel that is what they need to do to keep going or do themselves good. Or they may be punishing themselves.

That's as self destructive as; fat people need to be brutalised to 'lose weight'. They believe they deserve it, due to their beliefs about themselves, or that it will do or produce good.

Healthists like to convince us we don't care, presenting themselves as having the solutions as long as we do whatever they demand. They claim to be the ones that truly care about your health, more than you obviously. The view that some of us wish to trash our bodies for the heck of it is not a convincing one. 

There is no rigid healthy standard as is too often asserted even by those opposing it. We need to watch the setting up of standards that may seem rational in our heads only to fail spectacularly in reality. Look how rational eat fewer calories than you use seemed before we chucked away so many years only to be left to repair the resultant mayhem.

That's why science has clinical trials, very little can be taken for granted when it comes to our ability to conceive of what is possible, versus what is.

I've not been so sure of 'healthy' since having to step back from adherence to living that way. I always had a suspicion that activity + certain dietary dictates =health was a simple reversal of, the more rewarding your life is, the more likely you are to emerge with your inborn instinct to move alive and kicking.

Few things represent the constraints of a more stressful life better than the need to disregard your urge to move due to the constraints placed on them and you.

Nor is healthism so sure of itself. I'll remind you of the thrust of much ''obesity' research' is healthy living is little use to the fat. Though these sound suspiciously emphatic, sprinkled liberally as they are with wishful thinking, drowned in bitterness sauce.

Many fat phobes fall into that trap thinking this debunks fat people's self realisation, actually, 'tis healthsim debunking healthism. If healthy living is only good for the purportedly healthy, then it does not produce the health claimed, ergo cannot be described as healthy.

Above all, we must be meaningfully ourselves.

Our bodies have their own rules.