How Long Will You Live review: Cork doc provides proper advice to improve your life
Carrie Roberts and Dr Phil Kieran on How Long Will You Live.
“I thought I’d be dead sooner,” Waterford-based Carrie Roberts says in the first episode of the new series of How Long Will You Live.
Presenter Dr Phil Kieran — a Cork-based doctor — has just revealed Carrie’s life expectancy based on some rigorous medical and fitness testing she has undergone. It’s considerably lower than the average life expectancy for a woman.
But Carrie — a busy youth worker and mum of two teens — expected it to be even lower. Her dad had died at 63, she explains.
“I was just assuming I’d be that young as well.”
And straightaway we’re rooting for Carrie, for this woman who doesn’t have high hopes for herself in the life and health stakes. We want her to push through that ceiling. It helps that she’s so relatable.
She could be us — or our sister or best friend — with her busy lifestyle, the background grief for her dad and the way she describes her life since turning 40.
She admits to having neglected herself.
“The kids are older. It’s not that they don’t need me anymore but their needs are different… I don’t know who Carrie is without my children.”
Dr Phil is sleuth-like as he sets about uncovering what’s going on inside Carrie’s body “from her heart to the various markers in the blood and finally her bone density”.
Tests show an abnormality in the electrical tracing of her heart. What’s the story with that? We’re with Carrie as she goes for echocardiogram to figure out what’s up.
“The test was a bit scary. I got a bit emotional at one point. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed,” she confides.
We’re there when she puffs and pants her way through resistance training and cardio work.
“The first time wasn’t too bad. The second time got harder. The third time I was wrecked.”
We know what she means. And we cheer when the upswing in her health profile happens.
But this is a show that has us in it for ourselves too — and for what we might learn. For this viewer, dietician Aveen Bannon telling Carrie her diet was “a little beige” had me doing a mental colour-check on that day’s meals (enough fruit/veggies?).
By spotlighting the less-than-perfect lifestyle of another, How Long Will You Live holds a mirror up to our own. But it doesn’t leave us there. The key message is there’s room for improvement.
Seeing someone else grit their teeth and push through the pain for a worthwhile health gain is inspiring. It means there’s hope for us — and that’s always good.
