Why Your Time Here May Be Shorter Than You Think.

How to deal with the risk of rare events that might take your life at a younger age.

You are playing a game of high-stakes poker with your life.

You probably just don’t know it.

The truth is there is only one certainty.

That over a long enough time horizon all survival drops to zero.

Of that, we can be certain.

And pretty much only that.

For most other aspects of our lives, we have to look at things probabilistically.

• Heart disease is the biggest killer globally.

• The majority of early heart disease is preventable.

These two statistics, held side by side, constantly stop me in my tracks when I think about them.

They have also motivated me to devote much of my life to implementing the prevention side of that equation.

By following the most evidence-based formula that maximally reduces risk, you can be confident that you are stacking the odds in your favour.

Statistically, you can be confident that you have done all that is known and is reasonable to reduce your risk.

But that risk is never zero.

There is ALWAYS a small risk that you will die of a cardiovascular event at a young age.

And.

There is ALWAYS a risk you might die from an entirely unrelated event, e.g. a car crash, fall or an unexpected illness at a younger age.

How do I approach this issue?

I take a risk-based approach to these situations when possible.

I wear a seat belt when I am in a car.

I do not take excessive risks when in the mountains or exploring outdoors.

I seek medical attention if I develop strange symptoms that worry me.

These cumulative actions only reduce my risk.

They do not eliminate it.

Risk is ever-present.

Two stories recently drew my attention to this dilemma of risk.

The first is of Dr Michael Mosley, the BBC physician presenter who popularised a fasting-based diet and generally advocated for sound health-based approaches to cardiovascular health.

As most of you will be aware, he sadly died on the Greek Island of Symi last week.

At the time of writing, it appears he was walking in hot weather in challenging terrain and was found dead adjacent to a beachside bar.

The cause of his death is still unknown, but it seems he may have tripped and fallen when dehydrated or succumbed to heat exhaustion mere feet from civilisation.

He was 67 years of age.

Here is someone who ‘followed all the rules’ from a health perspective but died well short of his statistical life expectancy.

He may have made some sub-par decisions to walk on that terrain in that heat, but for someone of reasonable fitness, you cannot say it was an absolutely reckless decision.

He died, you may say.

But that doesn’t mean the same decision made 50 times over would have resulted in the same outcome.

He Gambled. And Lost.

I have certainly made WAY riskier decisions in my life with no adverse outcomes.

But that doesn’t mean I was right either.

It just means I was lucky.

And Dr Mosley was unlucky.

You can do everything right, but fate can strike you down at any time.

The second story, which highlights the challenge of risk, is that of the war journalist and writer Sebastian Junger.

In 2020, when spending time in a small cabin in the woods with his wife, his pancreatic artery ruptured, and he almost bled to death.

He survived. By the skin of his teeth.

The cause of this arterial rupture was very likely an aneurysm that had grown over time and ruptured. It may have even been present from birth.

These aneurysms are rare.

They can be seen on CT scans but are usually detected as incidental findings.

Here is something that is potentially fatal and that you could detect with a scan.

But let’s be honest, the utility of screening at a population level for such rare anomalies would be pretty futile.

But Here’s The Thing.

Sebastian Junger is a man who has spent years in active war zones, putting himself at incredible risk of death.

And yet.

It was a rare pancreatic aneurysm that nearly killed him at age 58 while sitting in a cabin with his wife in upstate New York.

He did pretty much EVERYTHING to set the odds against himself as a younger man and got away with it.

And then, out of nowhere, something like this nearly kills him about 20 to 30 years short of his expected lifespan.

Unlike Dr Mosley, Sebastian Junger played a very high-stakes game and won.

But fate still found him and nearly took his life.

Why Bother?

The reality is that you can make lots of risky decisions and not suffer the consequences, but life may transpire to strike you down in other ways.

Or not.

You can do everything right from a risk perspective, tilt the odds as much as possible in your favour, and still have a negative outcome.

There are no guarantees.

Only odds.

The only certainty is that SOMETHING will come for you in the end.

And the end may be far sooner than you think.

Which is why you have to look at today and the next few days, weeks, months and years as a HUGE BONUS.

Always remember, there is an endless list of dead people who would give anything to have the opportunity to spend today exactly as you will spend it.

Too often, the goal of extending lifespan and health span and optimising our final years distracts us from the opportunity of how we spend the next few years.

Which will hopefully not be our last.

But we have no guarantee that they won’t be.

It’s easy to say we should live each day as if it were our last, but in practice, this rarely works.

We should, however, live this next five to ten-year chapter of our lives as if it were our last.

Because it might be.

Changing the time horizon to a multiyear period means we still have to focus on earning a living and doing all the adult things that we would normally do, like paying taxes and updating our house insurance.

But…

If you only had 5 to 10 years left, how would you live out those years differently from how you were otherwise likely to spend them?

Because, in reality, some of you (myself included) who are reading this article may not be here in 5 to 10 years.

How would knowing that change your decisions for the next ten years?

That is how I try and frame the big decisions in my life.

Sure, I would like to live until age 90 with a good quality of life.

But I have no guarantees that I will reach that age.

I have to live my life with a plan that I will but also the consideration that I won’t.

And when I view my life through that lens it makes big decisions far easier for me.

Our time here is limited.

Regardless of what decisions we make.

But we do get to choose how we spend our time.

And that, more than an unexpected fall or ruptured aneurysm, scares me even more.

Because maybe there is nothing I can do about the fall or the aneurysm, but there is a LOT I can do about my decisions for the next 5 to 10 years.

All I can do is make the best decisions.

And enjoy the journey that goes with them.

The rest…

I just have to leave to chance.