Having someone else around to call an ambulance for you when you're having a heart attack can have a large effect on the outcome.
Having someone else around to nag you into going to the doctor when you otherwise might not go, etc.
Having someone else around to nag you into going to the doctor when you otherwise might not go, etc.
I went to the ER three times last year because of these pains (and one time several years before that). The last three or four times it happened since then I just stayed at home and tried to relax. But it scares the hell out of me that one of these times it could be more than that, and I'll choose not to go to the ER and that'll be the one that kills me.
It wasn't always just chest pain either, I had other symptoms, like a weak left arm, lightheaded, short of breath, pain in other areas of my body as well, heart beating really fast, etc. Common heart attack symptoms, and now I don't know if I should go or not when it happens again. Even my girlfriend is skeptical when I tell her I'm feeling this way now.
The one thing I can say is that the worry itself seems to make things about a million times worse. I've made a big effort to remove stress from my life and it seems to have helped. With my medicine, I had to explain to my doctor that "10% chance of side effect X" doesn't mean that it's very unlikely that the side effect I'm having is from the medicine -- rather that he should expect that 10% of his patients taking the medicine will get that side effect from it. Amazing, but he'd never realised that before. Now he's a lot more cooperative about choosing medicine that doesn't cause serious problems :-).
I think a big part, though, is that having a belief that you are healthy makes a big difference in how you interpret problems with your body. For me, once I got things checked out I reasoned that the chance that they've made a mistake is quite small. So while I may have a symptom it does not necessarily follow that I have a serious problem. Getting it checked out is important, but once you have, then worrying is only likely to make you ill. So far that's worked well for me. YMMV.
(But as you say -- still scary as hell if you think about it too much...)
I am not eating healthy enough or exercising anywhere near enough still to feel confident enough that I'm healthy. I need to course correct for that. Work really hasn't helped lately. A lot of late nights and stress, and my willpower goes to shit when I'm stressed.
Also, while I hesitate to recommend calling EMS out unnecessarily, you may refuse transport to the hospital even if you've called 911 for a possible emergency, in the U.S. Paramedics can do an EKG, and while hospitals can additionally use bloodwork to rule out tissue death, you could make the choice to refuse further medical treatment once the paramedics have seen no signs of a heart attack.
I went to a cardiologist a few years ago, but basically he had me do a stress test and an EKG, said 'you're fine', told me to exercise 7 days a week!? for a year (like no day off, no guidance on how intense it should be, just that comment), and wanted me to see him again a year later. It didn't leave a good taste in my mouth and I didn't go back.
They did a bunch of EKGs during my episodes at the ER and they all came back normal, so I think I just need to do the stress test, for now. I had an echocardiogram done when I first went to the hospital for this a few years ago, and that was normal also.
BUT, that $1300 really caught me by surprise because about five years ago I had gone to the same hospital, for the same thing, and let myself be admitted to stay overnight for more tests, and that only cost me $450 ($150 copay and $300 for a doctor that visited during that).
And yeah, that's one reason why I hesitate to go to ER now. Having to pay about $4000 for a few ER visits and a few extra tests afterwards that all came back negative was not my idea of a fun way to spend money that summer (fun fact, I also had to pay $4000 in car repairs that same summer. It was a fun summer).
This was my first thought as well when I saw the study. The study doesn't really indicate if deaths are do to this factor or to other longer term factors. I wonder how much of the study (and it might not be much) can be explained by not having someone around to call 911. Or if you are living alone not having something like life alert. Additionally, something like life alert does not always help. Falls is a major issue for older populations, and if you are knocked out because of a fall (or fall because you passed out) having someone to call an ambulance is critical.
So, Apple Watch or similar tech?
I expect vitals monitoring to become more commonplace. It doesn't help with your second example, though.
The misery of the one who cares for you at that moment being a smartwatch is enough to cut years off ones life.
More realistically, I can imagine that about a homecare worker.
about the latter... I know doctors don't like when people inflates tiny issues but I've seen a few people die because they didn't listen to naggers around them
Finding parity is quite difficult, particularly when you already take good care of yourself.
Sure, it's possible for someone with bad personal habits to be a negative influence on someone who struggles to maintain their own good habits, but two people with generally good habits can easily create positive feedback that allows them both to improve.
My wife and I have actually driven each other to be better than either of us alone ever were. We're fitter and healthier than we ever were, and it's largely because on nights I don't want to go the gym she does - we act as each-others champions.
Also, it's surprising to find out the things you don't about yourself until you see it through another person's eyes.
Statistically speaking, 75%+ of the adults in the US are overweight. That is the pool being drawn from.
So when you're not in the overweight majority, and have no interest in cohabitating with an overweight person who presumably lives a lifestyle contributing to being overweight, you already have just 25% or less of the population to pick from.
Now you need to find within that fraction someone you actually like as a person, who doesn't have any of the other unhealthy habits unrelated to being overweight you want nothing to do with.
Your biases seem to be driving your views more than your supposed rationality, at least on this issue.
There are plenty of obvious reasons people likely to die young would end up alone. It's natural to not be attracted to people likely to die young, it's a behavior our evolution has selected for.
We're not attracted to sick-looking people, for example.
That's cool if you set your standards extraordinarily high and you can't find someone because of it, but don't blame evolution, realize you set those standards.
I'm pointing out obvious reasons people who die prematurely would also be alone, pointing out obvious flaws with the article's unscientific claims.
People who are sick are less attractive to the opposite sex, this is a deeply-rooted evolutionary trait. I'm saying this in reference to one of many obvious reasons people destined to die early also are alone. Few want to date or live with seriously ill people. They're arguably not dying young because they're alone, they're alone because they're sick and likely to die young.
I made no such claim that evolution explains my personal choices on this topic as it pertains to my life, no sir, I proudly own those 100%.
My argument is that "evolutionary attraction" isn't actually a phenomena. Our interests have swung wildly from valuing huge to tiny and from pale to tan all due to cultural shifts, not because of an innate inbuilt evolutionary mechanism - there was no filtering of genes due to these features. Heroin chic was a thing, and that's downright sickly.