"I'm Alive Therefore I'm Healthy" -- Where Does This Presumption Come From?

[MetabolicTrash]

Why is it that when some people enter a subject of health/diet/etc. choices, one of the go to rebuttals/statements tends to be, "I'm still alive," or something of that nature?

Other variants: "I've lived this long!" "My diet/etc. is fine, thank you very much." "Everyone has their problems/issues! It doesn't matter!" "Go to hell/go %$@! yourself!"

It seems a fair amount of people presume that them being alive and not suffering from any known, immediately terminal disease means they're healthy or shouldn't/couldn't make changes. This is something I see come up when weighing in or discussing health topics/etc. (like PUFA, food choices, mental health and etc.). I don't enter any topics with egotism or such, but still tend to get this kind of response when bringing up topics of such. I also notice some people get really defensive when health/diet/consideration of well-being/anything in this regard is spoken of/questioned, even if done so in a not-directly judgmental way (i.e., pointing out subjects like PUFAs in one who uses eats corn oil daily). I mean live and let live, I get it, but this seems like a fairly considerable point in this "health epidemic" business.

Are a lot of people just unwilling to scrape more than just the surface of health/well-being discussions? Why is this? It seems so apathetic toward well-being and etc.

People just seem to refuse (not all, but a decent amount) to consider health/diet/etc. as important, trusting the fact that they're still alive currently as a basis on their health, regardless of any factors. Is this denial? Not caring about one's health? A sign of one on the road to bad health? I'm not speaking from a place of ill-will or malice or etc. -- just genuinely curious. Even when I ate way more unhealthy/had less healthy habits, I always tended to have more of an open-minded approach to health -- others seem like they've shut that door down and prefer to only do what they've always done with little to no room for change. It's like anger, denial, apathy, confusion, reluctance & ego, all mixed in altering forms. Maybe I just see it this way since I've always cared about health more even if it implies I'm a health nut/orthorexic/hypochondriac/etc.

Any others notice this in a handful of people? Almost like some are perfect examples of being close-minded/ignorant/reckless in ways that shows in their actions.

Again I don't blame people specifically as nobody is perfect -- but why so dead set on things and reluctant to make changes/consider?

 

[lampofred]

They are scared. If you tell people that they have been poisoning themselves their whole lives by eating PUFA instead of butter, it's painful for them to accept that, especially because they actually thought they were doing the right thing. It's powerful cognitive dissonance to know that the harder you worked (endurance exercise, fasting, etc.) and the more you listened to authority (high PUFA, low sugar, low salt, high water intake), the more you were actually harming yourself. So it's easier to just be defensive/aggressive and ignore all the evidence that doesn't fit your preexisting world view.

I still struggle with this a lot myself actually. Not in terms of PUFA but in terms of many other things we are told are good for us but are actually the opposite.

 

[Cirion]

Denial is probably the biggest part honestly. Most of my relatives think "getting old" just comes with disease no matter what you do, so no point, just take your drugs that your doctor prescribes. Part of this is probably the long engrained belief that genetics determine health and nothing else, so if you'e unhealthy, not much you can do about it if you ascribe to this belief. A coworker of mine has this attitude. Although, maybe I may be getting through to him, we had a long discussion about magnesium the other day haha. He found that putting magnesium oil on his cramping muscles makes the cramping go away so he was sold on the importance of magnesium.