Take-off? Or landing? – Time to Decide (an update)

“Life is a fatal disease. Once contracted, there is no hope for survival”

Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician and one my heroes, made that statement in his 1984 book “Dare To Be 100”. It forms a backdrop for his message about our potential to live longer, healthier and more meaningful lives.

Dr. Bortz knows a thing or two (about growing old) because he’s seen a thing or two (thanks, J.K. Simmons).  What better source than someone who has 50+ years of observing life, death, and survival?

A Google search today didn’t produce an obit on Dr. Bortz so I’m assuming he is still continuing to set a very active pace, at 89, taking a longevity message to audiences globally.  Watch this two-minute video to get a taste of Dr. Bortz’s commitment to full-life potential.

I discovered Dr. Bortz and his book “Dare to Be 100” in 2013. Dr. Bortz was saying three decades ago what we now realize is the truth about what it takes to age successfully.

His seven books were a catalyst for me, providing a sensible “roadmap” to late-life health with facts and advice unencumbered by political or corporate influence.

I find that most of us are repulsed by his claim that there is no reason we shouldn’t live to 100 or beyond. I get it – I carry the same images of extreme, prolonged frailty that we associate with growing old. We don’t want to be like those images in our head.

It’s a deeply ingrained attitude – but it’s naïve. I’ll stake that claim on the fact that we choose not to understand our biology. And because we don’t understand it, we do things that result in us “living too short and dying too long” and robbing ourselves of our full life potential – really the core of Dr. Bortz message.

I started this weekly printed pontification 20 months ago in an attempt to manifest a deepening desire to help people who have passed the 50-year milestone to pivot their attitudes regarding aging and to “Make Aging Work” by thinking and living bigger while slowing the aging process.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out.“

With boosts from the likes of Dr. Bortz and others that I’ve studied and followed, my hope is to help others live their whole life, sing all their song and to live longer, live better and finish out with vitality and a strong sense of purpose.

Been there – – – –

I passed the over-50 threshold some time ago – I’m a “pre-boomer” by four years, born in 1942. My life experiences and professional experiences as an executive recruiter and career transition coach, coupled with two decades of intense reading and study on human development and the aging process, has led me to two conclusions about how we age in this country.

  1. We don’t live long enough to truly die of old age because we choose not to understand how our bodies and minds function and thus subject them to repeated, long-term abuse and disuse.
  2. We allow myths, misconceptions, outdated models, dangerous cultural portals, deceptive advertising, deplorable government policies, and just plain complacency guide us to a premature demise.

Gap analysis

A prominent Yale physician, Dr. David Katz, founder of the school’s Prevention Research Center, got my attention a few years ago when I heard him say:

“We know all that we need to know to reduce, by 80%, the five major killing diseases in our culture – heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. We don’t need more new fancy drugs or expensive new equipment and technology or more Nobel prizes. We already know what we need to know.”

I believe Dr. Katz’ position extends logically to aging: we know all we need to know to live healthier, longer and more productively.

We have a 35-40 year gap between our 80-year average life span and the length of time our bodies appear to be designed to last.  The benchmark of 122 ½  years supposedly set by Ms. Jeanne Calment of Paris is currently being debunked by some.  So if it turns out to be a myth, that cedes the record to another confirmed record holder at 116 – hardly a difference to get wrapped around the axle about.

Why the gap between our potential and our average, between what we already know and what we do to stay healthy and live longer? Take #2 above and stir in ignorance (as in ignoring best practices), instant gratification, comparison, stress, lack of purpose and I believe we are close to the answer.

Feel free to add your own thoughts to this toxic brew.

Quixotic as it may seem, I’m choosing to join the voices of those who are working to dilute this brew and close this gap.

Granted, this journey may be like “tilting at windmills” but I’m venturing forth nonetheless with my crusade-like mission, sharing what I hope will be valuable, meaningful information and resources.

I’m grateful for the readers that have remained with me and with the growth in readership that is taking place.  I’m especially grateful for the feedback readers have been sharing with me, validating my message.

Despite what our society would have us to believe, we can truly make our second-half of life work for us in a big way rather than against us.

Life to 100 and beyond with energy, enthusiasm, and purpose is now one of the fastest growing realities of our age. Centenarians are growing at 8X the rate of any other population demographic in our country. We are learning what it takes to “live longer, die shorter” or “die young, as late as possible” and finish out with a purpose having left a footprint.

I’ve become a fan of neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez.  His two books, “The Mindbody Code” and “The Mindbody Self” are challenging projects that are transformational in revealing how our view of the aging process is distorted, demeaning, and destructive.

In “The Mindbody Code”, he says:

“Growing older is a natural process we all experience.  Aging, on the other hand, is a dysfunctional concept, an assimilation of cultural portals that define how our biology ‘should’ respond to the passage of time.” 

He challenges us to step out of the portals imposed on us by our culture in order to achieve our full life potential, saying:

“- – you can modify ‘aging consciousness’ in a society that does not support growing older for what it is: an opportunity to increase your value and competence.”

Makes a lot of sense to this septuagenarian.  How about you?

I invite you to join the conversation and the crusade. Please share your thoughts, insights, experiences – and pin my ears back if you disagree or if you feel I’ve slipped over into hyperbole.

I look forward to your feedback. Please leave a comment below.

P.S. Here’s a link to a very poignant one-minute video from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada that will make you stop and think.  Enjoy

Alzheimer’s Reversal – New Hope?

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

I’m compelled this week to use my post to provide a shortcut to some important information on the healthcare front.

Recently, Alzheimer’s became a part of my wife’s and my life.  Fortunately, not with either of us nor within our immediate family.

We have been witness to the devastating effects of the disease on the wife of a dear friend, half of a couple that we have been very close to for nearly 30 years.

We had read and heard about the ravages of this affliction, but nothing prepared us for witnessing its takeover.  Nor could we imagine the extent of the strain that it’s putting on the healthy partner.

No doubt there are a number of you reading this who have been similarly, or more directly, impacted and know of what I speak.

The data on the disease are frightening (Source: Alzheimer’s Association)

  • 8 million living with the disease today, projected to rise to 14 million by 2050
  • Someone develops the disease every 65 seconds in the U.S.
  • 1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another dementia
  • Alzheimer’s is the 6th leading cause of death in the U.S. – more than prostate and breast cancer combined.
  • 2019 projected cost: $290 billion in healthcare costs
  • Early diagnosis can help, but only 16% of seniors say they receive regular cognitive assessments

I try to stay tuned into developments in the efforts to find a cure.  The news just continues to go in the wrong direction.  Failed drug tests, major pharmaceutical companies abandoning efforts to find a solution after billions invested.  No drug yet has touched it.

That’s why I was roused by an article that was forwarded to me by a friend today that offered perhaps a new glimmer of hope.  Clicking this link will take you to the Blue Zones website and a republished article that summarizes a research project done at UCLA that applied a new approach in the treatment of Alzheimer’s with striking results.

The treatment?  Lifestyle modification.

Yes, you read it right.  No drugs.  Just a change in lifestyle centered around – wait for it – – – – –diet, exercise, stress management and sleep (sound of mic dropping!).

Have we been stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime for the last several decades with our deeply embedded bent toward pharmaceutical treatment?

Perhaps.  This project offers up encouraging possibilities.

You will find a link to the actual research paper in the second line of the article.  If you are the type that gets off on reading research papers, you’ll like this one, with its twelve-cylinder words and academia-speak.

I dosed two paragraphs in.

I find the possibilities from this study encouraging, but not so surprising.  Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician and a hero of mine on the disease prevention front published a provocative book in 2011 (one of seven he has written) entitled “Next Medicine”.  He fundamentally advocates for “lifestyle medicine” to be the “next medicine”.

If you delve into this article and this new development consider his words:

“Man, as a rule, finds it easier to depend on the healer than to attempt the more difficult task of living wisely.”

His position, which I paraphrase, is that “ – – current medicine and capitalism equates to focus on parts and events, episodes and components.  Next Medicine (lifestyle medicine) looks at whole processes and systems.  Current medicine, when coupled with capitalism, peddles dysfunction, disease, and illness.”

The result, in his view, is the nation’s largest corporation: The Illness Industry.

If there’s any doubt, count the number of drug commercials that you will experience in any given hour of TV viewing.  None of which make any mention of prevention – all trying to mop up instead of turning off the spigot.

 

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. I get it if you are skeptical of this study.   How can we not be with all the reports/studies that have gone nowhere in the past?   It’s a small study.  It’s totally contrary to our entrenched medical mindset of “drug it or cut it out.”  Big Pharma will, no doubt, tear into it.

But, as a “lifestyle medicine” advocate, I’m encouraged that it seems to further validate lifestyle medicine as the “next medicine.”

Perhaps this research project will represent a breakthrough in acknowledging that the Greeks had it right 2000 years ago with their emphasis on Hygeia (prevention) and not Panacea (cure) and begin to bring lifestyle to the forefront in disease prevention where it belongs.

An Older?  Or An Elder?  A Question Every Boomer Retiree Needs to Confront.

Photo by Bruce Mars, Pexels

“Those who continue to grow as they grow older can develop long-term vision, whereas most become blinded by near-term needs and common neediness. Growing older happens to everyone. But growing wiser happens to those who awaken to a greater sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Without this added dimension, society produces ‘olders,’ who blindly hold onto life at any cost, rather than seasoned ‘elders,’ who help others find meaningful ways to live.”

That deeply convicting statement was made by the 74-year old author, storyteller, and mythologist Michael Meade in an interview conducted and published in a February Medium.com post by Dr. Connie Zweig, psychotherapist and best-selling author  Read it here.

Further in her article, Dr. Zweig suggests that those with visions of becoming an Elder do so because “—a ‘vision’ was calling them, rather than a ‘should’ pushing them.”

Leave it to me to stir up the pot and inject retirement into this esoteric, thought-provoking conversation. 

I can’t help it.

In the first sentence of Meade’s statement, he sums up what seems to happen in a typical traditional labor-to-leisure retirement (blinded by near-term needs and common neediness) and what doesn’t happen (growth, long-term vision).

The word retirement is derived from the French verb “retirer” which means to withdraw.   Growth is high on the list of things that many retirees withdraw from upon retirement. Well-meaning financial advisors operate more from pushing “shoulds.” They generally advocate for a no-growth, leisure environment and withdrawal from challenges rather than helping underwrite a “calling or vision.”

This reinforces a deeply entrenched retiree mindset that says: “Been there, done that – I’m tired of growing, learning, solving.  Time for time off.”   The backbone for continued healthy growth gets stripped out.

Without a growth component, a long-term vision – if it even existed – succumbs to no-growth habit patterns and eventually morphs into survival i.e. near-term needs and common neediness.

And becoming an “older.”

We’ll find the “live short, die long” track crowded with “olders” where physical and mental deterioration starts early after retirement, is unnecessarily accelerated through inactivity, and then protracted in its misery by the wonders of modern medical technology.  It’s where any kind of a vision or dream will give way to fighting a daily battle against lethargy, lack of purpose, and creeping frailty.

It’s the mindset and path behind the growing depression, suicide and divorce rates amongst retirees, and a contributor to our century-long longevity growth rate now starting to recede.

It’s a one-letter difference

The difference is a one letter change.

 

We likely will find Elders to be:

  • Enthusiastic, not lethargic
  • Energized, not bored
  • Emerging, not abandoning
  • Expanding, not diminishing
  • Expectant, not skeptical or cynical
  • Experimenting, not abstaining
  • Exploring, not ignoring
  • Enjoying, not tolerating
  • Engaged, not isolated
  • Educating, not withholding

But perhaps the biggest “E” of all:

Extending

Extending themselves into their communities, into the lives of others, especially the generations to come.  Extending their talents and accumulated wisdom and skills in a “pay-back” and “pay-it-forward” manner.

An Elder will be selfless, giving, producing; an Older will be selfish, greedy, consuming.

An Elder will live in the present unencumbered by fear and regrets.  An Older will time travel into the regrets of the past and the fear of the future.

I wonder how much better this country – this globe – would be if we convinced more people to make that one-letter change.

What are your thoughts?  Leave us a comment below.

Retirement Planning Done Well.

Dola Handley and Cary Smith in Munich, Germany

Imagine with me that you are working 60 hour weeks, making life-and-death decisions virtually every day, herding cats that are your staff, fighting with superiors for adequate resources, putting up with arrogant personalities, being on call-standby many weekends and operating on less than adequate sleep.

Now imagine that you’ve been doing most or all of the above for 20+ years.

Imagine further that you finally decided you’ve had enough and jumped off the cliff into retirement.

If I then asked you the questions: “How do you come down from that type of intense existence?” “How does it feel?” – what do you think your response might be?

I posed those very questions to a recently retired nurse executive that I had connected with on LinkedIn.

Her name is Dola Handley.

I pushed for a phone conversation with her because I was curious, as part of my overall research into the retirement mindset, why she retired, what the experience has been like for her and what she sees ahead for her and her husband.

In my 17 years as a healthcare recruiter, a high percentage of the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with candidates have been with middle- and executive-level nurses like Dola.  Bachelor- or master-degreed RN’s, some even with doctorates.

Dola fits the mold of this very special breed of professionals.  Selfless; humbling in the depth of their commitments to care; overworked, underpaid and (colossally) under-appreciated in their work environment.

Dola has “completed” her 22- year nursing career which included 20 years of active military duty with over half of that in a tactical signal officer role then as a nurse and a number of Director-level management positions in large hospitals overseeing women’s services/mother-baby/OB units.

I found her answers to those questions to be insightful:

  • “How do you come down from that type of intense existence?” Answer: I’m experiencing “active stillness”.
  • “How does it feel?” Answer: I’m “wonderfully bored”.

I probed both responses.

“Active stillness” for Dola is a throwback to her Appalachian farm upbringing where there was a lot of downtime and one learned to “relax into non-stressful activity but staying active”  For her, that currently includes satisfying her love of the outdoors by doing volunteer outdoor work with the state parks department here in Colorado.  She also walks 3-4 miles a day with a friend. She likes to mentor and finds that people she worked with are calling her for advice which she unselfishly provides.  She also meets monthly with a group of five nurses on a social basis where, not surprisingly, she has become the de-facto leader.

Also, in typical nurse fashion, she couldn’t turn aside a request to do some voluntary consulting work for a local hospital that was setting up a new mother/baby unit.  She got that out of her system – it was a good reminder of why she had retired.

Being “wonderfully bored” means she no longer needs to dread the ringing phone, the pressure of someone in a health crisis, the weekend on-call inconvenience and, most of all, the 12-hour days.

Her work “filled her up” for years and she is proud that she impacted a lot of people.

She doesn’t miss it.

She is a doer, a server who is now freer and hasn’t lost anything. She revels in being able to now set her own schedule.   She knows what is right for her and that includes peace every day, comfortable in being financially secure and not worrying about where she is mentally, emotionally, physically.

Dola is less than a year into her retirement so the bloom is still on the rose, so to speak.  How will she feel, how will all of this play out say 1,2,3 years from now?  That’s part of the adventure.

Something tells me that Dola will somehow just go deeper and wider in her active stillness and stay wonderfully bored but busier in her service to others.  I’m suggesting that because, if I may paraphrase, you can take the nurse out of nursing but you can’t take the nurse out of a nurse.

Oh, did you catch the financially secure part?

I wonder how many couples start serious retirement planning discussions ten years before their targeted retirement date.

I believe one would need to sort through a trainload of couples to find one or two.

Dola and her husband, Cary Smith, are married with a blended family of four grown daughters and would be one of those rare finds.

This couple doesn’t fit the mold in this area.  They have their proverbial you-know-what together in this department.

Dola shared with me that she and Cary began retirement discussion together over 10 years ago.  They are both planners.  Cary, also a military retiree (they met in the military) is a skilled program manager still gainfully employed, by choice.

They both have military pensions and the accompanying health care coverage.  She didn’t reveal what they have stashed away beyond that but what I did find unusual, impressive and prescient is what they have done with real estate as they have gone through a number of job changes and relocations.

Within the last decade, they have lived in four homes.  Three of those (two in N. Carolina, one in Colorado) they have kept and are renting out, thus adding a nice equity component to the portfolio.  The fourth is their current residence in Colorado Springs.

Cary is keying his retirement date to the day they write the last mortgage payment check for the house they are in – which is two years out.

The retirement discussions that began 10 years ago focused on:

  1. What they want to do.
  2. Where they want to do it.
  3. What they want this third stage to look like.

Listening to Dola, you’ll get the impression that the what, where and how are pretty well set.  And the when is on the radar.

The initial “what” sounds exciting. They both have spent extended periods of time working abroad. They are doing a “pre-retirement” trip to Scotland next year and have agreed that, upon retirement, they will pick and move to a location (TBD), most likely in Europe, and go, “not as tourists”, for an extended stay.

And then determine the next step.

Dola and Cary present a stark contrast to the route most couples take to retirement, particularly on the non-financial side.   Research has shown that 2 of 3 couples go into retirement without a semblance of a non-financial plan.  As a Retirement Coach, I’m discovering that a surprising number of couples wait until the retirement of one or the other of the partnership to get on the same page, adjusting to the changed environment and sorting out what they want retirement life to look like.

It results in the loss of precious retirement years where resources and physical vitality are higher

It may help explain why the divorce rate of couples over 50 has been skyrocketing while overall divorce rates have leveled off.

The takeaway from Dora’s and Cary’s retirement story is clear:  start early, agree on what you want it to look like, put a plan together but be flexible and willing to compromise and respect the interests and desire of the other.

Theirs may seem like a retirement heavily tilted to a “life of leisure”.  I ‘spect not.  I doubt this nurse and these two military veterans will ever give up an opportunity to continue to serve in some way.