Sirloin, with a side-order of guilt.

I’m 75 and I have cardiovascular disease.

I was a meat-eater for 60+ of those years.

Are they connected?  Well, yeah – not much doubt.

If you are over 60, and beef, pork, chicken, oils of any type have been a part of your diet over the years – even a small portion – chances are pretty high you’ve got some level of CVD as well.

Current science says that mine is in the high-risk category.

Scanned, calculated and verified. A seven-minute, $100 heart scan calculated the numbers and unveiled the frightening truth.   I’ve now known it for a year.

I’m not checking out anytime soon, not that you would really know or lose any sleep over it.  My doc and I agree that, despite the high scan number, I’m not demonstrating any other evidence of a life-threatening condition.

But it’s hard to shake the statistic that for 40% of heart attack deaths, the first symptom is the fatal heart attack.

In a panic-filled consultation with him (with my wife in tow), his diagnosis was pretty simple after reviewing the heart scan report.  The conversation went something like this:

Doc:  You are an active exerciser, right?

Me: Yes.  45 minutes of aerobic exercise six days a week, strenuous weight training three days a week.  I regularly get my sustained heart rate well above the recommended exercise range for my age (220-75 x .65 and .85 = 94-124).

Doc:   Any chest pain or shortness of breath?

Me:  Nope.

Doc:  Then I’m not too concerned.  Yes, we should watch it.  The heart scan only shows total calcification and yours show the two largest and most important arteries as mostly clear.  Without doing an invasive, expensive angiogram, we can’t tell exactly how the plaque is distributed.  But based on your ability to handle strenuous exercise and the clearness of the two main arteries, we can make an educated guess that your plaque is fairly well distributed and not highly clumped. (OK, there is a little literary license in all that but that’s what both my wife and I heard).

Me:  What’s next?  I still want to get off of Lipitor.  (NOTE: I don’t trust the drug and I don’t trust the pharmaceutical industry)

Doc:  Don’t be a d***.  (No he didn’t really say that.  But something like it was in the back of his mind).  Schedule an echo stress test and a nuclear stress test and let’s then decide on a course of action when we get the results.  In the meantime, don’t be a d*** ( assumed) and keep taking your mild dose of Lipitor and add a daily baby aspirin.

Echo stress test – good – no apparent issues.  Nuclear stress test – same.  We threw in a carotid artery scan for good measure and it shows some blockage but not enough to be a threat.

Doc reviews the tests and relays through the patient portal: stay the course – Lipitor, baby aspirin.  Don’t change your exercise regimen.  We’ll keep an eye on it.

Whew!  Live another day.

Something’s missing in all this.Do you see any mention in the patient/doctor dialog about food?

Nada!! Never one question asked about my diet.  No hint that elimination/reduction of animal-based foods might also help.

He already knew that I was an active exerciser.  Had he not, I’m not confident that there would have been a discussion about how much exercise I have in my life.

No discussion about potential stress points in my life – work, relationships, etc.

No hesitation, however, to stay rooted solely in the medication recommendation.

This event has further opened my eyes to the gap between wellness and cure that exists in what we call a healthcare system.

There’s more to the story.

On my next doctor visit – my annual physical – I asked my doc:  “Is my CVD condition reversible?”.  His response was instant and unequivocal.  NO!  Slow it or stop it – there’s a chance.  Reverse it?  Not gonna happen.

I’m just stubborn enough to refuse to accept that answer without at least trying to verify it.

Didn’t take long to determine that there have been lots of verified cases of reversed cardiovascular disease.  Two well-known physicians, Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, are two of the leading physicians who are stepping into the breach, opposing the prevailing bias of their compatriots and proving that it can be reversed.

I guess my doc just hasn’t had time – or the inclination –  to read the books.  I wouldn’t want to infer that there may be an ulterior motive.  As in: you get well, you don’t come back and my revenue drops.  Naw! That couldn’t be – not in our profit-driven disease-care – er, excuse me – health-care system.

You are the CEO

This whole process not only reminded me of the lack of focus on wellness or “health creation” in our medical community, it was a refresher for me to stay the course in being the CEO of my own health and not abdicate it to a really screwed up system.

We can take heart (yes, a pun!) that there is a slowly emerging trend toward a more holistic, wellness-oriented approach to medical care.  Something has to give because we seem to be getting sicker and the cure more expensive without significant improvements.

My appeal to any reader is just that:  take charge of your health.  Make the effort to understand how your body works and how what you do and what you put into it counts.

I still take the position that, ultimately, the biggest killer in our culture is healthcare illiteracy.

Goodbye sirloin.

So meat has disappeared from my plate except for very rare occasions since the CVD diagnosis.  That wasn’t so tough and I’m finding, as Ornish and Esselstyn predict, my craving for dead animal is fading away.

If I fall off my new wagon and attack a sirloin, it probably will still taste great – but not great enough to offset the guilt feelings that come with it.  I’ve just studied, read, and researched too much to know that there is virtually nothing good that comes out of eating an animal-based product.

 

So I’ve made a diet change that I feel has, at a minimum, stopped the progress of my CVD.  Mostly plant-based with no beef or pork, limited chicken, and fish, cranking up the veggies, fruit, legumes.

But I have an appreciation for how tough it is to do in our culture – the time to study and learn what is best, the extra shopping effort to get it, the new discipline and habit replacement required, not to mention different cooking techniques.

But I’m finding it worth it.  I feel better; my heart likes it.

And it feels good to be informed and in charge.

And I don’t have to fight that side order of guilt.

 

What’s Your Second Number?

Let’s try a little project.  Take note of these two numbers:  27,720 and 13,373.

The first number is the number of days, as of this writing (2/17/2018), that I have been alive.  That’s 39,916,800+ minutes, 2,395,000,000+ seconds.  Rather sobering numbers, wouldn’t you agree?  If you think they are sobering, you should see them from this side!

The second number is the number of days I have left.  You see, I have decided to live to 112.5.  So today, six weeks short of 76, I’ve got 32.5% of my life left – also a sobering number.

Since we’re throwing around numbers, here is another one:  97.7%.  That’s the percentage of people reading this who think I’m nuts, whacko.

Why would anyone want to live to 112.5?  Or even 100, for that matter.

I can guess your thoughts –  images of walkers and wheelchairs, oxygen tubes and osteoporosis, nursing homes and needles.

I use to tease my two grown children with this.  I’d tell them that it’s payback time and that I intend to reach the 3-D time of my life – dementia, drool and Depends.  They didn’t think it was funny then – and I don’t now.  

So why such a screwy, arbitrary number like 112.5?

Here’s my nutty, whacko logic.

First, the feasibility of living a healthy life to 100 or beyond began to blossom as a real possibility in my mind about ten years ago as I dove headlong into learning about my biology and how it works.  I found tons of research supporting the simple fact that there is no biological reason that our bodies shouldn’t last well beyond 100 years.  (Visit my August 2017 blog on this here.)

The 112.5 is simple – at 75, I decided I still wanted a third of my life ahead of me because there is so much more that I want to accomplish in making my future bigger than my past.  I now understand and believe that age doesn’t define my usefulness and what I want to do isn’t age-related. So I upped my number from 100.

My immediate circle now all accept me as certifiably nuts.

But the why or the how of living to 100 is a subject for another day.  I want to use the idea to share with you how it has helped me rediscover and begin to apply an important principle in my life – one that I hope you will find helpful.

 

What’s your second number?

Have you thought about it?  If you are 40 or under, probably not.  Based on an average lifespan of around 80 today, your second number is most likely still larger than the first.  You’re too busy striving, achieving, slaying corporate dragons, trying to balance all that life is throwing at you to worry about something like this.

But a funny thing happens on this road called life –around age 50 – usually with the arrival of the first piece of AARP junk mail.  The realization that there are more days behind you than in front of you takes on significance.

It’s a time when thoughts of legacy creep in – what am I going to leave that has meaning?  It’s when Peggy Lee now becomes relevant again – “Is This All There Is?”  It’s when we begin to have thoughts like: “If I walked into my own funeral, would I like what the eulogies said about me?  Or, will there even be a eulogy?”

What is your second number?

The truth:  I really don’t know mine – you don’t know yours.  We all know we are but a heartbeat away.

So why bother setting a second number?  For me, it’s just simply a goal I’ve put out there that has motivated me to study and learn about aging, about what it takes to make this body work at its best – and to last.  To put more years in my life so I can put more life in my years.

Underlying all that for me are 5- and 6-year old grandsons that I want to teach how to flyfish, to play golf with and to see graduate from college.  And a marvelously beautiful and creative 8-year old granddaughter that is going to leave a massive footprint that I hope I can witness and participate in.

If you’re a bit whacko like me and have actually set one, guess what?

Your second number and my second number are the same. 

Our second number is – now!  One!  This very moment! Today!

Author Jeff Olson, in his wonderfully powerful book “The Slight Edge”, reminds us that there is no someday, only today.  Our greatness, our destiny lies in our moments of decision – the decisions we make moment to moment.

What I’ve discovered is that a concern with either a first or second number rides on a dangerous wind.

Dredging up the first number may carry with it regrets, remorse, blame, and bitterness.   Carl Sandberg said it best: “It’s a bucket of ashes – to be thrown out.”

Thoughts of a dwindling second number ride that same dangerous wind –  the potential for fear, impatience, even ignoring life’s earlier lessons.

The only thing that determines what our second number will produce is this very moment.

My second number is now.  Your second number is now.  Our second number together is “carpe diem” – to seize the day.  Our second number is the “moment of decision” – what we think and do with our next heartbeat.

We are the ax.  We are the saw. Our moment of decision, our second number, is how we sharpen them.   Let’s have it serve us well.

 

 

Are You Prepared for the Inevitable Loss of Your Job?

 

“Companies now have to be on a war footing. They need to learn about technology advances and see themselves as a technology startup in Silicon Valley would: as a juicy target for disruption. They have to realize that the threat may arise in any industry, with any new technology. Companies need all hands on board — with all divisions working together employing bold new thinking to find ways to reinvent themselves and defend themselves from the onslaught of new competition.”

That’s a quote from an article posted on LinkedIn June 21, 2017, by Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering. Silicon Valley. The italicized bolding is mine.  It brings to mind names like Borders, Blockbuster and Kodak, companies who failed to see the disruption coming and failed to reinvent.

Hmmmm! What about you and me?

Should we, as mere human pawns on the corporate chessboard, also be on a “war footing?” Are we a “target for disruption?” Do we really need to be serious about this ubiquitous buzzword “reinvention?”

Well, yeah!!

Have you seriously assessed where you are professionally relative to the accelerating rate of change?

Have you looked over your shoulder to determine how close the “6 Ds of Exponentials” – digitization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization – are to what you do to buy groceries?

Those “6 Ds” are the work of Peter Diamandis, MD, engineer, entrepreneur, futurist. They are the stages that companies and products go through when experiencing disruption. If the “6 Ds” are new to you, this short Diamandis YouTube will acquaint you with them.

Is your company or industry susceptible?  If so, at which “D” stage is it?

I never saw it coming!

It’s an increasingly common lament as technology roars through numerous industries and through many historically stable professions. Lawyers, accountants/tax preparers, stock brokers/investment advisors, office workers, manufacturing workers, taxi drivers are but just a few that have found themselves heavily impacted.

The Babson School of Business has predicted that, in ten years, 40% of the Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist, disrupted by technologies that haven’t been invented yet.

That’s pretty freaking scary!

Don’t get beached.

Jay Samit, disruption expert and author of a best-selling book entitled “Disrupt You” makes this statement for a Forbes article posted on LinkedIn

“You will have your career disrupted. So you have to either proactively turn the impending change into something more enjoyable and fulfilling, or you sit in fear of the inevitable day when the hatchet comes your way and then not know what to do. People who prosper find the spark inside them to change their lives and turn potential catastrophes into career triumphs.”
“Sadly, people have given up hope for positive change. They work just enough to get a paycheck because the system has driven out individuality. They work enough not to get fired, but not enough to actually care. Self-preservation is the first rule. They duck and cover, hoping someone else gets cut.”

Maybe not the smartest thing to do.

He encourages individuals to avoid derailing a promising future by being alert and taking control of their destiny before disruption broadsides them. In the article, you will find four suggestions he has for preparing for disruption to your career.

I’d like to add three suggestions of my own:

  1. Resurrect, expand and cultivate your professional network. This will help equip you with critical contacts should the hammer fall. But, equally importantly, this can be a very productive way to get marketplace feedback on potential disruptive changes in your current industry as well as insights into opportunities less susceptible to disruption. If you are north of 45, this is a vital activity, because, in addition to disruption, you are now entering into ageism territory.
  2. Be aggressive in your self-development and stay current with technology. In other words, enter a new phase of learning. If the last time you were in a classroom was in college or the last book you read was around the time of Apollo 13, it’s time to adopt a new attitude toward learning lest you be left behind.   As you intensify your network cultivation, listen for who’s-doing-what to upgrade their skills.  Before you rush to an MBA or other advanced degree and a new $50K debt addition, carefully assess the opportunity cost and marginal return of such a move.  There are many lower-cost, less time intensive alternatives to a full-blown advanced degree – MOOCs such as Udemy, Coursera, Kahn Academy, local junior colleges –  that offer courses that can bring you the skills boost you need to stay up with, or ahead of, the disruption curve. And read, read, read.
  3. Consider a side-hustle.  Building something on the side while gainfully employed is growing in popularity.  This new interest in entrepreneurship is being driven by the growing realization that being employed by a company is one of the least stable places to be today. With disruption, mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing looming in the background, many are doing their own thing to (1) satisfy an inner entrepreneurial drive and/or (2) as a safeguard against the fuzziness of the corporate landscape.  While there is certainly some risk (some employers have a low tolerance for what they perceive to be diluted employee commitment), the risk is minimal relative to the opportunity to take advantage of the greater access to, and lower cost, of technology that can enable a lucrative business over the long-term.

It’s interesting to note that more new businesses are being started by folks over 50 than those started by the 20-40 age group.

So the choices seem to be pretty clear.  Stay stuck, naïve and uninformed, get blind-sided and forced into a less-than-optimal, reactive position or be proactive and take charge of your career with a cautionary, forward-looking perspective.

We’d love to hear from you.  If your career has been interrupted by technology what have you done to adjust?  Do you see it coming in your industry?  What are you doing to do stay ahead of the technology curve?  We are looking for success stories for our podcast series that will be coming later in 2018.  Scroll down and leave your story or contact me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t subscribed to our weekly newsletter, go to www.makeagingwork.com and sign up.  We’ll send you a free ebook on living longer, healthier and more productively.

How’s Your Corpus Callosum?

 

 

 

I knew it!  There had to be a plausible reason to justify my keeping two guitars within eight feet of my office desk and a legitimate explanation for my inability to resist playing one or the other a couple of times a day.

I now have an excuse for when my wife asks why I’m playing Tommy Emmanuel’s “Mr. Guitar” for the 735th time in the middle of the day instead of being heads down on a revenue-generating activity or writing another 500 words toward one of the many book ideas I have.

I can now shut that down by telling her that I am developing my corpus callosum.  That should stop her in her tracks, don’t ya think?

It sure stopped me when I read it.  I actually read it and heard it in this fascinating, informative four-minute YouTube video embedded in this Next Avenue article.

Turns out that pounding on my 51-year- old Gibson Hummingbird every day is doing more for me than just relieving stress, which is my primary reason for reaching for it in the first place.

It turns out that just listening to music doesn’t do much to enhance brain function but playing a musical instrument – and I quote the video – “increases the volume and activity in the brain’s corpus callosum, the bridge between the two hemispheres, allowing messages to get across the brain faster and through more diverse routes.”

I just knew it all along.

The video gets even better as it goes on to say that this increased corpus callosum activity “may allow musicians to solve problems more effectively and creatively in both academic and social settings.”  It then says further that musicians often have higher levels of executive function including planning, strategizing and attention to detail.  And better memory.

I guess I need to play more each day because I suck at those three “executive functions” and my memory is up there in the sucky category also. I’m sure it’s just a question of hitting the 1000 mark on “Mr. Guitar” in the next few weeks and my executive functions will miraculously appear and my memory be dazzling.

Or maybe not.

 OK, what’s the point?

The point is that we’ve learned a staggering amount about how our brains work over the last couple of decades with the advent of advanced radiology tools such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRi) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans.

We can now see what lights up in our brain with certain activities. When they watched the brain of a subject listening to music, they saw fireworks.  But when they observed the brain of someone playing an instrument the “backyard fireworks turned into a jubilee.”

I liked that visual – the thought that my brain was fireworks when I worked at learning a new finger-style song on my Hummingbird or a chord melody to a jazz tune on my jazz guitar.

Our brains, about 2 ½ pounds of fatty acid, are essentially like a muscle, subject to atrophy just as any muscle.  “Use it or lose it” is real and never more applicable than with our brains.

This fatty-acid muscle starts at birth with around 100 billion neurons and should end with about the same amount.  The myth of “automatic senescence” would have us believe that we lose neurons and the brain shrinks as we age.  True, that it will shrink a bit in actual size but untrue that the neuron count shrinks – unless we choose to let it shrink.

It’s all about synapses!

Here’s a contrast for you to chew on.  Brain studies with these new technologies determined that there was no difference in synaptic connecting activity in the brains of people staring at a brick wall and those who were watching television.

Put that in your “Game of Thrones” or “Will and Grace” pipe and smoke it.

If we start with the fundamental understanding that it’s not about the neurons and that its about the synaptic connections that the neurons are there to facilitate we can put a more meaningful brain health strategy in place.

If a neuron doesn’t have anything to do, it’s gonna retire (there’s that word again) into atrophy and die off.  However, if it’s got something to do – as in remembering how to play C-minor 7th chord with a flatted 5th in third position on the guitar at the appropriate time in a challenging new tune – do you think it might wake up and show its intended usefulness?

But I’ve got my crossword puzzles and sudoku – –   

Good – to a point.  We’ve learned that puzzles, sudoku, and their ilk are brain healthy until they become neutral.  Like any activity that you repeat over and over again, you get good at it and then it isn’t a stretch.  So your brain doesn’t increase it’s synaptic activity much if that is as far as you go in stimulating your brain.   Sure, you can migrate from your local newspaper crossword to the New York Times crossword, but the same thing will happen – over time it too will become rote.

In all my fascination with the brain and the reading and study I’ve done, it seems there are three activities that continually come up as “brain stretchers” that most likely create “firework jubilees”:

  1. Playing a musical instrument, especially piano or guitar (OK, I’m biased)
  2. Learning a foreign language.
  3. Dancing.  You get a multiple-dip here because you not only have to think hard, coordinate several parts of your body, listen to music but you also get a nice dose of exercise.

Tommy Emmanuel is helping me live longer

I took about a 30-year sabbatical from guitar playing as I did the expected cultural/corporate thing to keep up with the Joneses, only occasionally picking up my Gibson for a few minutes during any given week.  But my wife had been encouraging me to get back at it and surprised me with a nice jazz guitar for my 60th birthday.

My journey with the guitar had started with R&R, migrated to a serious study of jazz guitar in the 60’s (anybody remember Howard Roberts?) and then went dormant.   My new jazz guitar got me seriously back into my passion for learning and playing jazz chord melodies.

Then it happened.  Somebody sent me a YouTube of an Australian finger-style guitarist named Tommy Emmanuel playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”  and my guitar life shifted.  Upon hearing that rendition and seeing Tommy’s technique I decided I need to learn fingerstyle guitar and that has consumed my guitar playing journey for the last 10+ years.

With Tommy as an unattainable benchmark, I’ve learned that music, and the guitar, in particular, has no top end threshold – you can never master it.  Even Tommy, arguably the best and most recognized finger-style guitar artist on the planet, acknowledges this.  His motto is to “get better every day” and he’s been getting better now for over 50 years.

Pushing myself with Tommy as the mentor/teacher, I believe I keep more neurons alive and continue to add synaptic connections to keep my brain healthier.

Were you to listen to me play guitar, assuming you’ve never had more than a five-minute encounter with the instrument, you would say that I’m a pretty good guitar player.  Relative to the masses, probably so.  But bounced up against a master like Tommy and many others, I’m comfortable settling into the “advancing beginner” category knowing I can only scratch the surface of the potential but have an opportunity to use the instrument to move the needle a little bit each time I pick it up.

I really think my brain appreciates that.  And will reward me in the long run.

What do you do to build your “corpus callosum?”  Scroll down and leave a comment about what activities you enjoy to stimulate your brain and your thinking.

Also, if you haven’t subscribed to our weekly newsletter, go to www.makeagingwork.com and sign up.  We’ll send you a free ebook on living longer, healthier and more productively.