Some may consider it mere conjecture to favour the view that longevity of the lands people in the distant past also meant healthy living. The reality in our times, however, is the all-too-familiar and all-too-clear scenario of a great number of people in the senior citizen category being bugged by a multitude of health issues, euphemistically described by the medical practitioners as age-related problems. The diverse features of aged people of the past enjoying healthy living on one side and their counterparts of nowadays suffering from you-name-it-they-have-it disorders/diseases/disabilities on the other side also go hand-in-hand with two other concomitant features namely a) a land with no hospitals/ trained doctors/allopathic drugs in distant past and b) surfeit of super-speciality hospitals/ high-profile doctors/drugs for remedying any and every disease and disorder nowadays. The culture of faith in divinity and trust in the power of praying to be free form suffering must have served people of past generations well in total contrast to people of our times, urbanites in particular, marked by faith in doctors and trust in the curative power of modern drugs, unmindful of their often deadly side-effects, giving rise to the idiom If there are no side effects, there are no main effects too.

One is at a loss to make out any meaning considering the conflicting points of longevity alongside very low life expectancy of people belonging to past generations and shortened life span alongside high life expectancy of people in our times. Maybe, the principle of survival of the fit-test among the former and hitech medicare at the disposal of the latter may be of some help in resolving the conflict.

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The parameters reckoned in determining life expectancy of given population and the method used in its estimation may both be flawed, given the accepted reality of those relatively small number of people who survived pestilence in the days gone by did live upto old age while a significant number of people nowadays live to wear senior citizen badge, thanks to easy access to medicare, never mind the cost. One is on strong grounds to argue that society of the past was marked by a mindset of relying on divinity for overall well-being to a much greater extent than society of our times. That took the former to places of worship to be mentally poised instead of being poisoned by medicines, particularly prescribed by medical practitioners with pedestrian knowledge.

Present generation has unwittingly got itself into the whirl of increased pace of life marked by fast foods, fast automobiles, fast communication and fast everything else leaving limited, if not zero, scope for pursuit of spirituality, adding to modern handicaps of polluted air, adulterated foods and lifes stresses. In short, the healthy elderly of the past were well served by their own choice of uncomplicated life and spirituality, both acting as a synergy as per finding of a recent study. Also, the government of our times tom-toming about the harmful consequences of smoking and consuming alcoholic drinks while playing into the hands of lobbies of tobacco and liquor is sham. The society is worse off for it.

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Spirituality for longevity - Star of Mysore