A few readers responded to my recent post Is Eating Organic Food Worth the Money? by saying that you can’t put a price on your health. I’ve seen a similar argument come up time and time again in my MonaVie article (For those who don’t know, MonaVie is a juice that people have suggested may give great health benefits – at a price of $32-$40 a bottle – which they get a cut of). It sounds like a pretty straight-forward argument. Shouldn’t our most primary goal be self preservation – to keep breathing, keep healthy? I’m not so sure… and I have spent 18 months writing Lazy Man and Health. I think that as usual, the devil is in the details.
What is healthy?
That is a loaded question. You ask 20 people you’ll probably get 20 different answers. In general many of us know the “eat right and exercise” routine. It’s a good start, and I think if more Americans followed that along with “stop smoking”, we’d see our collective health get a whole lot better. It is my opinion (and perhaps your doctor’s) that unless you are doing things, it doesn’t really make sense to look into other things. You can still eat right without necessarily eating organic. You can still exercise even if you don’t belong to a gym. Oh and don’t forget to take care of your teeth, reducing plaque in your mouth can help your heart.
Money can buy you good health
If you have an extreme amount of money, you can buy yourself a good measure of health. My wife has admitted to looking at Gwen Stefani in the past and thought, “Wow is she in shape!” I’ve looked at Brad Pitt’s six pack and thought the same thing. However, I’m quick to point out that it’s part of their job to look that way. They can pay for a personal trainer, nutritionalist, personal chef, and Jamba Lights with Whey Protein Boosts at Jamba Juice. I think the average person has to really think if they can afford these things. It is my opinion that many can not (with the exception of the Jamba Juice, but that has it’s own Latte Factor).
In addition to the above there are a whole host of things that you could do with a big enough budget. One could buy an water ionizer. Some professional sports players have hyperbaric medicine chambers in their home. Perhaps that could help one’s health. There are probably about another 100 things mentioned in Ray Kurzweil’s Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. A successful inventor like Ray Kurzweil can afford the pile treatments and tests he mentions.
Is there a limit to how healthy I can be?
Perhaps they are even subject to the law of dimishining returns. For instance, as I’ve been working to do 100 pushups, I’ve found that I made great gains in the beginning, but gains have gotten harder to come by. I’d be exstatic if I could run a 6-minute mile. However, I would have no desire to put in the incredible amount of exra work to run a 5-minute mile (if it’s even possible for my body physically).
Medical Bills: The Leading Cause of Bankruptcy
It may surprise you, but medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy from this Harvard Study. I see two paths you can go with this. You can spend your money trying to prevent everything that might physically happen to you. Or you can take reasonable preventative measures and continue to grow your money for the day that you might need it. If you go with the 100% prevention plan, you better hope you’ve got all your bases 100% covered. If something heriditary slips in that you couldn’t prevent, you probably won’t have the funds to get by it. If you take the more balance approached, you might prevent all but a few maladies, but still have the money for treatment later down the line. I can’t say what’s right for you, but I will choose the balanced approach, that leaves money for treatment down the line.
Measuring Cost-Benefit
Like any purchase decision, I think you have to run a little cost-benefit analysis. If I’m already eating lots of good fruit, am I going to get value by spending $5,600 a year for a family of four to drink MonaVie? However, if a doctor says that a enteric-coated baby aspirin can prevent me from getting a heart-attack or a stroke, that’s something I’m going to pick up immediately.
I’ve put a price on my health and it’s very high. Part of that price is investing and amassing enough wealth for treatment tomorrow as it is for today.
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk