Dr. J on winning the health lottery
Contributor: “Dr. J”Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.
It seems Florida just joined the big Powerball lottery. Looks like a new round of lottery fever will heat up the already hot state!
I remember when Florida had its first lottery in 1986. “I’m so lucky,” was itsfirst advertising slogan! I always liked that one!
“You Could Win Millions! You Never Know,” came a little later. I think by this time, I knew.
“Remember, when you play, we all Win,” was big when the lottery sold itself by saying they gave money to education. Sure they did, That’s why now our local county holds the equivalent of a car wash to raise money to help its schools.
“Think Big, Florida,” is the latest one. I’m sure the lottery is going to empty a lot of wallets of people who don’t have that much money in them to start with, but the lure of those big bucks is just too hard for many to resist.
Sometimes playing is fun, but you’re not likely to win
I’ve never played the lottery! Well, OK, I did once in Helen, Georgia, on a road trip to see the colors of the fall leaves.
It was at a small country store, and the numbers were on poker chips in a basket, held up by “Granny“ from “The Beverly Hillbillies”, while I reached in blindly to pick out the chips! Who could resist that? No I didn’t win, but in that case it really was all about playing the game!
Do you have any idea the of the odds on winning a lottery, or any other gambling venture? Just look at the hotels in Vegas. You don’t think they were paid for by a government bailout, do you?
The odds to be the winner of the big Powerball lottery are one in 198 million! Just for reference purposes, the odds of dying in a freak fireworks accident: one in 954,786. Of being attacked by a shark: one in eight million. Perhaps something a little more common, the odds of being hit by an asteroid impact: one in 500,000 (possibly a little less)!
Hitting the jackpot in the health lottery
So do you play a lottery? Don’t think so, huh? How about the health and fitness lottery? You are playing that one every day.
Every time you make a smart choice with your health and fitness decisions, you are improving your odds of living a long and healthy life. Every time you make an unhealthy choice, tear up another losing ticket!
The choices you make will have a direct effect on your morbidity (incidence of disease) and mortality (incidence of death) as you move forward in your life. If you continue to make poor choices and acquire the chronic diseases that these behaviors bring, you will enter a declining spiral in your ability to make the positive changes that will allow you to have an active and healthy life expectancy into your later years.
So what is your decision with your life lottery?
The good news is, if you play it smart, your chances of winning are pretty good. If you don’t your chances of losing are guaranteed! (Or 197,999,999 in 198,000,000 if that makes you feel luckier.)
(Send your questions for Dr. J to calorielab@gmail.com or leave a comment. If your question is used by Dr. J, CalorieLab will send you a $25 Dining Dough restaurant certificate — limited to U.S. residents. More Dr. J posts can be read in our archives.)
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Good point about our health being like a crap-shoot :) Play your cards right! Great message.
My mom loves the lottery. I don’t think shes even won 3 dollars before. Ha, I dont see her stopping any time soon though :)
Ah, when I was young and reckless, I played the health lottery in all the wrong ways: too many wild nights up til dawn, too little sleep and vegetables.
It’s funny how I cannot imagine playing a state-sponsored lottery, but had no problem with risking my health in a real-life one.
Rupal!
She won the “lottery” with you :-)
Merry!
I think I remember you in the purple haze :-)
Great analogy!
It’s amazing how people overestimate the odds of winning a lottery, but totally underestimate the odds of risky choices impacting their health.
We are not very rational creatures!
“The good news is, if you play it smart, your chances of winning are pretty good. If you don’t your chances of losing are guaranteed!” Yes!
Awesome!
I will buy the first copy of Dr. J’s Analogies! Will you sign it for me?
Crabby!
Thanks!! We may not be rational. but we have rationalizations down pat!
Mark!
I’ll sign anything but a check :-)
Like Merry, I took some stupid risks with my health when I was younger.
The nice thing about our amazing bodies is that the respond very well to corrective action.
Nice remind that I still gamble sometimes (though not too excessively).
Thanks.
Thanks for the reminder, Dr. J.
You can actually do things to improve your odds on the health lottery.
Ruth!
The regenerative powers of the body continue to amaze me! It does have it’s limits, however!
Dr. Hubbard!
You have learned to play the health lottery quite well I believe!
I love this analogy! Such a great way to think about healthy and/or unhealthy choices!
That’s a good way to look at taking care of your health Dr. J! I like it! :)
Jolene!
Thank you for that, and for setting a good example in being a winning lottery ticket in your life!!
Kami!
Thanks! With your upcoming book, I have a good feeling about your odds!
Sometimes the body cannot be corrected because of our lottery picks, however, as long as you’ve got your mind, you can always change it (your mind, I mean).
As an older person I sometimes find myself wishing that I’d paid more attention to being healthier or more active when I was younger though that would not have corrected the illness with which I was born (btw, thanks for that link, DJ. I bookmarked it.) And now that I’m older, I wish young people would listen to me when I tell them things that I know from my own growing up..things they should change now in order to live longer or live better.
I guess this is one of the paradox(es) of living. Believing you know everything as a youth yet not really knowing enough, and knowing much more when you are older yet finding that knowledge is like water under the bridge of flailing health as you age or find yourself immersed in disease.
I’ve heard state lotteries described as a tax on stupidity.
It’s crap-shoot no matter what. Yes, we can increase the odds with good choices – and we should. Still, it’s a crap shoot; the surfaces we cook on, the clothes we wear on our skin all day, the carpet we walk on, etc. Ooops did I just use the word Teflon? Didn’t mean to.
Yes, minimize the risks with the food we eat and increase the odds. Life is certainly a lottery. My lucky numbers are……
Pod!
Perspective is such a powerful tool! I wish more younger people would listen to you also! I have a feeling, however, that you are reaching many more people than you realize. With the power, and reach of the Internet, your words really do have a life of their own. I’m sure the wisdom you write goes through more minds than you will ever know of, and even stays in a few of them. We can only hope :-)
Steve!
So I guess you don’t want to buy my sure to win lottery ticket? Half price? :-)
Roy!
Of course you are right. Still we are motivated to play the game well, my friend, n’est-ce pas? Hope your numbers kick it!
Great analogy! Gotta do what you can to improve your odds, especially if you have a family history of some disease. You have to take control of what you can.
Super good! So true that everything we do is going to affect our health in SOME manner. We’ve got a choice in it to some extent and we can really improve our health a lot by “playing our cards right” :)
Sahar!
It’s very important to be aware of personal health areas where we need to pay special attention!
Thanks Sagan!!
I hate gambling. Either with my money or with my health! Especially because we have so much control over our health. I really do think you should make Dr. J t-shirts – I’d buy one with this slogan!
Charlotte!
Thanks so much!! I was in Vegas playing Blackjack! I started with $20 dollars. 30 minutes later I had 20 dollars plus a stomachache! Didn’t ever gamble again.
Rhizophora!
Good message! Now if more people would only listen, they would have more money, and be healthier :-)
Very true. I found it was easy to ignore this in my twenties, when I felt invincible regardless of my choices. Now, in my thirties, I take my health more seriously and make better choices.
Vered!
Same with me! It was fun to be immortal and bulletproof though. Wait, I’m a doctor….:-)