Dealing with Anxiety, Irrational Fear of Aging and the Dying Process

[Admiral Benbow]

One thing I like about this forum, is people are so open and willing to discuss difficult topics like declining health. We all know death is inevitable and it is 100% certain it will happen to us.

I first encountered this forum last february after my blood test revealed high fasting glucose at around the diabetic range 130, and high trigs 210 and high bp 150/83. Since then I've been trying to optimize my health, changing my diet, and doing more blood tests.
However, the odd thing is no matter how much testing I do, or see improvements like all my biomarkers and A1C's being now optimal (4.8,5.1) I still have anxiety about disease progression and dying painfully. This could partly be because of my last two fasting glucose tests being 134, 128 mg/DL and I'm not sure why they are high if all other biomarkers are optimal. However I think it goes deeper than that, I think it is because the more I read, and the more videos of health I watch, the more I know there are many bad things out there that can kill me. In other words, the fragility of life is more real now.

I don't fear death in itself per se, as I strongly believe in the afterlife, but I fear the dying process. Things like 5 years on dialysis at the end of life, blindness, neuropathy, retinopathy, amputation, parkinsons, alzheimers, cancer etc, and how to pay for it, and how it will affect my spouse and family. I fear dying with a disease on the street, in the snow, cold and alone.

Dr. Attia says the four horsemen of chronic disease are: 1. atherosclerotic disease 2. cancer 3. neurodegenerative disease 4.metabolic disease

I know if I live long enough one of these will get me unless I die tragically or am a victim of homicide. So I guess my question is, knowing you are dying daily, and knowing you could die horribily from one of the aforementioned diseases, how do you prepare for a 'good death?' For example peacefully dying in your bed from 'natural causes'? How do you prepare for not seeing it coming? As I don't want to see it coming. How do you play the odds? For example, how do you say tonight it's ok to have a couple of pints of beer and travel to Ibiza? I can eat that piece of birthday cake? How do you balance health against other risky behaviour like say skydiving? or cage diving with sharks?

I sometimes wish I didn't have any lipid blood tests because then I wouldn't know I had to fix anything, but I know that is irrational thinking. I know as a guy 42 years old health and safety are important, but to be honest I miss the years of my late teens early 20's where I didn't know about these things and felt invicible and had all the time in the world to do stuff. Am I having subconsciously a mid life crisis or questioning which is adding to my anxiety over health? I wonder.

Let me know your thoughts folks.

 

[Thomas DUK]

Hi @Admiral Benbow you're certainly not the only one who thinks about this stuff. When I finished Uni I worked in care homes for a while. Lots of the people I was looking after were less than four times my age and thinking about that was the first time life felt really short. In a way I was pretty lucky, because I had lots of folks dealing with imminent death all around me to talk to about it, in a roundabout way. I asked a generally cheerful old bird aged 103 what her secret was and she said "hard work and a good laugh"...

Often easier said than done, it's true. Especially when these kind of thoughts creep in. But people have been thinking about this stuff for a long time, and there's a lot of good wisdom out there for those moments. What it always seems to come back to is practising gratitude, prayer, and meditation. There is also some good stuff to be found in Michael Pollen's book, 'How to Change Your Mind' on this subject.

 

[EmmaL76]

Well this is one subject I feel adequately qualified to post in for a change. My health anxiety took over my entire life for a while. I was really heathy (to my knowledge ) when diagnosed. My diagnosis was a bit unusual and I ended up haven’t multiple tests for cancer. At some point it got to much and I had a breakdown. Lots of things had been going on and I couldn’t cope. I ended up moving doctors as even the thought of walking in the building after that broke me out in a sweat. I would dread test and results even more. I would google absolutely everything and my I watch information was scrutinised on the daily. My biggest fear was heart health. I have a serious amount of palpitations and have avoided getting these checked out for years. However after 2 years of stressing about my health I just started to get better, I really started working out again and my diet is good so I got to a metal place which meant I finally went for the heart check. The consultant heard a murmur and that feeling came back over me, the spiralling dread. He ordered an echo, I went for the echo and I was brave. I was told I have a leaking heart valve but it just needs keeping and eye on. 2 years ago, this would of been enough to send my anxiety into another stratosphere… but you know what, I haven’t really given it a thought. I would of never ever thought that was possible for me. I know I’m gonna die one day, but i do not want the people I love and they people who love me to remember what I was back then. I actually get a lot of satisfaction when I think of how far I’ve come. What I’m saying is, what your feeling now is probably only temporary. It’s kind of all part of the transition period from what we were to what we are now. The brain likes to make sense of and question everything until it comes to a comfortable place. For some that happens straight away others it takes longer but you will find your comfy place.

 

[Vonny]

I worry that my luck is going to run out @Admiral Benbow. I had breast cancer 13 years ago and they caught it so early that I only had to have an op and radiotherapy, no chemo. I broke my ankle in 3 places and was warned I may not fully recover...now I walk 8 miles a day pain free. I was diagnosed with diabetes with hba1c of 76 and brought it down to below diabetic levels in 6 months. Is this luck sustainable? My fear is that it's not.

I've just put my 96 year old dad into a care home as he had got to the stage where he couldn't cope alone at home even with a robust package of care in place. Luckily he has some savings to spend on care, and a house we can sell to fund the next few years. But he is desperately unhappy, even though he understands why this is happening to him and accepts that this is necessary

For myself, I'm just in the process of drawing up a living will, as I don't want my son to go through what I'm going through. My close friends and sister (all in their 60s and early 70s, one has Parkinsons and one MS) all have money set aside to go to Switzerland in the hope they can hit the fine line between knowing when the time is right and losing the capacity to actually travel there.

I hope that @EmmaL76 says, that you can find your "comfy place" soon, and sorry that this post is so gloomy, but it's a very real subject which we all too frequently ignore x