{"id":77982,"date":"2018-04-22T02:22:23","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T09:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/natural-causes"},"modified":"2018-04-22T02:22:23","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T09:22:23","slug":"natural-causes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/natural-causes","title":{"rendered":"Natural Causes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/natural-causes.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOld age isn\u2019t a battle,\u201d she says, quoting Philip Roth, \u201cold age is a massacre.\u201d In the past few years, she has given up on screenings and scans. Not that she is lazy or suicidal. But at 76, she considers herself old enough to die. All the self-help books aimed at her age group tell her otherwise; they talk of \u201cactive ageing\u201d, \u201cproductive ageing\u201d, \u201canti-ageing\u201d, even \u201creverse-ageing\u201d, with a long life promised to anyone who makes an effort, regardless of factors such as genetics or poverty. But to her, ageing is \u201can accumulation of disabilities\u201d, which no amount of physical activity or rigorous self-denial can prevent. If she has symptoms, she\u2019ll have them investigated. But when a doctor tells her there could be an undetected problem of some kind, she won\u2019t play along.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>A great iconoclast has written a polemic about ageing that sends up New Age platitudes and is full of scepticism of the wellness industry.<\/p>\n<p>Blake Morrison<\/p>\n<p>Thu 12 Apr 2018 02.30 EDT Last modified on Fri 13 Apr 2018 19.10 EDT.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2018\/apr\/12\/natural-causes-by-barbara-ehrenreich-review\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2018\/apr\/12\/natural-causes...ich-review<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cOld age isn\u2019t a battle,\u201d she says, quoting Philip Roth, \u201cold age is a massacre.\u201d In the past few years, she has given up on screenings and scans. Not that she is lazy or suicidal. But at 76, she considers herself old enough to die. All the self-help books aimed at her age group tell [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}