It sure sounds great to be Jay Gatsby, or any of his friends: You reside in a catered estate, attend stunningly lavish parties, and spend your weekdays drinking vodka gimlets and renting expensive hotel rooms in the city. However, in terms of health, a Great Gatsby lifestyle is not so great at all.
1. Excessive Alcohol
Characters in The Great Gatsby sure do enjoy their booze – you’d never guess that the story takes place during prohibition. Jay Gatsby liquors up guests during his famous parties, and attendees recover the next day with a cocktail hour that starts at noon. And what about the weekends? Why, bottles of vodka and champagne, consumed in the middle of a car journey. Lest we forget how Gatsby got rich – without an entire city’s thirst for alcohol, Gatsby would have neither the legacy nor the riches of a bootlegger.
Unfortunately, the health risks of excessive drinking are many. Chronic drinking can reduce the body’s red blood cell count, leading to anemia and fatigue. Drinking increases the risk of developing cancer and cardiovascular disease, due to alcohol’s effect on blood platelets, the liver and the esophagus. Heavy drinking has also been associated with depression, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses.
Of course, some of the biggest health risks of alcohol occur not to the drinker himself, but to the people who surround him. Alcohol is associated with violent behavior, and the lack of inhibitions that go along with drinking can lead to dangerous situations: in terms of sex, in terms of heavy machinery, and especially when motor vehicles are involved. As the characters of The Great Gatsby know all too well, alcohol and cars do not mix well.
2. Irregular Sleeping Patterns
Not having a steady job can lead to some peculiar sleeping habits – dancing until dawn, awaking at noon, taking a nap at midday. Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker are bored while lounging on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon, and these women are right to be concerned – irregular patterns of sleep, and even getting too much rest can be bad for health.
In 2002, researchers at the University of California studied the sleep patterns of over a million participants, and found that people who slept more than eight hours per night were more likely to die young. Those who slept six to seven hours led the longest lives of everyone who participated in the study. More recent studies have shown that too much sleep can contribute to obesity, depression, and chronic headaches.
Sleeping too much can also cause your body to crave more sleep. When in darkness, the brain’s pineal gland produces melatonin, leading to feelings of drowsiness. Therefore, the more time a person spends sleeping, the more melatonin her body will produce, and the desire she will have to slumber – a cycle of sleepiness which can lead to a decrease in physical activity, and an increase in chronic lifestyle diseases such as diabetes.
3. Compulsive Behavior
A compulsion is defined as an impulse that is irresistible and persistent – in mental health care, compulsions may lead a person to steal, switch on and off a light, or repeatedly cut himself. A compulsion may be innocuous, but if it is not, the lack of control experienced by a compulsive person can be dangerous.
In The Great Gatsby, a great number of characters seem to experience compulsions; Jay Gatsby in particular. Gatsby is obsessed with Daisy and feels compelled to throw party after party after party to get her attention. He lies compulsively about how he became rich, and is compulsive in his desire to spend time with Daisy, even though he knows the dangers of becoming intimate with a married woman. With the amount of shirts the man owns, it could even be fair to say that Jay Gatsby is a compulsive shopper.
The problem with Gatsby’s compulsive behavior is that when it comes time to calm down, he cannot. Gatsby is compelled to take blame and protect Daisy at a key moment in the story, and this decision (prompted by a compulsive urge to protect his adolescent sweetheart) ultimately leads to a great deal of suffering. The lesson to be learned? An uncontrollable compulsion is no good for health.
4. Infidelity
Breaking the sacred vows of marriage gets everyone in trouble. When Tom Buchanan’s mistress, Myrtle, makes like she might tell his wife Daisy of their infidelity, Tom break’s Myrtle’s nose. Later on, Tom’s own discovery of the love between Daisy and Gatsby spurs Tom to anger and violence. And of course, certain tragic events toward the end of the story could well have been avoided if no one had been schtupping anyone else’s wife.
In the real world, married people are not nearly as promiscuous as the characters in Gatsby, but still, infidelity can have a genuine effect on health. Cheating on one’s partner has been associated with high blood pressure, cardiovascular risk and a higher chance of having a heart attack. Being the victim of infidelity has health consequences as well – a greater chance of developing depression, proclivity toward low self esteem and outbursts of anger, and again, a higher likelihood of having heart problems.
Because infidelity often leads to divorce, both partners in an unfaithful union also lose out on the health benefits of marriage. Married people tend to live longer, stay healthier, and develop fewer chronic diseases. If only the characters in The Great Gatsby had taken this health advice to heart.
Be Sociable, Share!
