As a doctor (with all my knowledge) and experience,

I will say both are important.

The quality of life is definitely more important than longevity as an independent factor is very important too.

And as I say that in this day and age, I Can take any youngish person up to healthy wonder years, up to 85 years where-

• They will not only maintain the quality of life,

• But they will achieve that longevity of 85 years or more.

Quality of life is absolutely important

There is no question about it.

­Suppose you are paralyzed,

• You cannot move,

• You get a stroke,

• You get paralyzed,

• Your half of the body is paralyzed,

• And stroke affecting the left side of the brain paralysis.

• You cannot even speak anything,

• You are lying in the bed,

• You cannot do anything yourself,

• Somebody has to feed you,

• Somebody has to bathe you,

• Somebody has to clean you,

• Somebody has to help you pass urine,

• You are constantly prone to pneumonia and infections,

And really cannot do much lying unless you have been turned around frequently in the bed or (you will develop sores). So without support, the so -called quality of life is very poor.

Another situation is-

When our mothers and mother- in- laws in their 60s start developing knee pain.

• They cannot really walk around.

• They also start losing quality of life.

• Quality of life means they cannot live their life to full extent.

• If your mobility is affected you cannot really walk.

• You cannot climb stairs.

• You cannot walk more than a half kilometre.

• You cannot go shopping with your family members and your knee hurts.

• And slowly, slowly you kind of just stop going out with your family members so with time the pain is so much and arthritis is so much, you cannot really walk from one room to another.

• Life span is less than 2 years.

• It is very difficult.

For that obviously total knee replacement is a very dramatic treatment.

Another way to define the quality of life

We need everything for quality of life.

• We need our physical health.

• We need our mental health.

• We need our self-esteem.

• We need our family life and social life.

• We need resources for day-to-day living.

I mean day-to-day living needs money,

• needs home,

• needs food,

• and needs whatever the definition of entertainment is.

• We need approval from our near and dear ones.

• We need to enjoy our work

• We need to enjoy our holidays.

So all these defines our quality of life.

Consider a scenario where most of us, who remain poor, get used to that kind of quality of life

And we learn to manage it.

But if we have been in an upper middle class family and suddenly we become very poor then we can be very, very miserable.

In our life

We lost our mother last year!

She was 95.

For the last 2-3 years, she has been asking us to let her go because her quality of life was very poor.

She was lying in the bed all the time and she was very forgetful and although I will spend the whole day with her and she will ask me 20 times how many children I have.

It was painful for me.

But she was losing muscle mass,

She was eating less and less

And the time came when she literally stopped eating. So, at that time we as a family all got together.

Myself as a physician have to make a decision to let go of my mother.

It was a very painful decision.

Everybody cried, but we had to let her go because there was no sense prolonging our mother’s life and she has lived a good life.

So, with all these examples, you should understand quality of life definitely matters.

Longevity is important as long as we maintain the quality of life also.

Just to prolong life for the sake of prolonging physical existence, is not really effective.