UPDATED: August 18, 2025
Welcome to the Healthy Living Is Good Medicine Newsletter, a totally free, health education publication covering a wide variety of topics, with original articles intended to help people lead healthier and more fulfilling lives.
I truly believe that our good health is our most precious possession, and a healthy population is our nation's most valuable natural resource. This article focuses upon a topic that was originally covered in a two-part series. Since then, the Posts have been extensively updated with new information
Increasing Our Health-Span
In contrast to lifespan, which is how long we live, regardless of the quality of our life, health-span refers specifically to that part of our life during which we are able to enjoy being in generally good health.
Let’s first take a look at the medical and social interventions that are commonly available for enhancing people’s health-span:
Next, we’ll explore the science-based lifestyle interventions that are known to contribute to people’s health-span:
You will find a lot of worthwhile information in both of the updated articles, and I’ve included many more links for those of you who want to do a deeper dive into any of the subjects that are covered.
My personal approach to healthy aging and increasing my own health-span began with making incremental changes to my relationship with food. We all eat, and most of us focus on how it tastes, rather than how good it is for us.
For an in-depth look at the nutritional principles behind a healthy diet, plus how to make preparing healthy meals really easy, and a hundred recipes to inspire your culinary creativity, check out my recently updated eBook, “Rx for Healthy Eating,” available from Barnes & Noble, the Google Play Bookstore, and Amazon’s Kindle Store. The book costs less than a burger and fries, and comes with free updates. Unlike fast food, it could actually prevent a heart attack.
Changing Our Lifestyle
It never ceases to amaze me when people aren’t willing to do what’s needed to increase their health-span. Changing one’s lifestyle for the better isn’t easy, but it can be accomplished by taking it one small step at a time. The fact that you’re reading this now suggests that you care about your health. I hope you are willing to do what it takes to maintain it you’re healthy, and to improve it if you’re not.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier to take a pill that would increase our health and make us live longer? Of course it would, but there is no magic pill that can do that. However, a combination of healthy living and appropriate medications for conditions that don’t respond to lifestyle interventions can extend our health-span, and possibly our lifespan.
There’s no better time than right now to invest in your health-span. Too bad it’s so easy to come up with excuses for not changing your life, but what you put off doing today can come back to bite you tomorrow. Dr. McCormick has put together an excellent compilation of ways to improve your health-span, which I highly recommend:
Learn what you need to do, and then, just do it. No more excuses!
May you live long and prosper!
― ― ―
This Post can be updated at any time. Please check back here again to find the most up-to-date information.
You can find many more articles about Healthy Living in my Post Archive.
Please share my Website Link with others via your social media accounts. You can help your friends and followers become healthier by suggesting that they subscribe to my totally free Newsletter.