Are You “Winging It” Into Your Retirement?

“You’d Be Better Off Just Blowing Your Money: Why Retirement Planning Is Doomed.”

This intriguing statement headlined an article that came through on my LinkedIn feed this week.

I was shocked when I saw the source – Forbes.com!

Surely, with that headline, this is coming from some rogue, off-the-edge, iconoclastic, contrarian writer looking to gain a foothold in the American mind.

Kinda like what I keep bashing my head against the wall trying to do.

But to get an article with such a contrarian view published in Forbes there needs to be some street cred cooking here.  Something my head-bashing is yet to produce.

Turns out there is some of all this at play here.  The author is Garrett Gunderson, Chief Wealth Architect at Wealth Factory, keynote speaker, and author of the NY Times bestseller “Killing Sacred Cows.”

Wealth Factory helps entrepreneurs develop personal finance strategies that leverage their strengths as an entrepreneur.

I’m not promoting or endorsing Gunderson or his business. Well, I guess I just did a little by mentioning it.  I’ve never met or talked to the man.  But I think the raw truth of his article is worth mentioning.

I went to his Wealth Factor website.  It’s interesting that the word “retirement” appears ONLY TWICE in the lengthy home page.  In both cases, it referred to the hopeless nature of putting your money in a “retirement plan and hoping it works out.”

I really liked the article because it peels a few of the covers back on the retirement planning industry.  This statement lays it out pretty straight:

“The concept of retirement has robbed the public of the responsibility and accountability required with personal finance. It has become too easy to hand money over to so-called experts due to the busyness of business, kids, hobbies, and other obligations competing for our time.”

Gunderson refers to the prevalent narrative, “work hard, save money in a retirement plan, wait and it will all work out in the long run” and calls it destructive.

It takes some real cajones to make that kind of statement considering the grip that retirement has on our collective psyche in this country.  And to do it in one of the premier business mags!

It appears that Gunderson’s mission is to encourage investors – particularly entrepreneurs – to avoid the passive approach to accumulating wealth and to be more engaged and take more responsibility for the growth of their individual wealth.

What does your non-financial retirement plan look like?

As I thought about his stance against the passive retirement savings approach so prevalent in our society, it reminded me how passive we also are about planning for the non-financial side of retirement. 

Much like we put money into a retirement plan and hope it works out, so many of us move into retirement without a plan, assuming the non-financial side of retirement will work out also.

Passivity is not a good thing to have working for us for what could possibly be nearly a third of our lives.

Consider this:  if you live to be 65 without any major health challenges, you have a reasonably good chance of living to 95 or beyond.   That’s a long time to drift and just “let things happen.”

But that’s what most people do.

That can be risky.

The Hartford Funds recently explored the transition into retirement and the honeymoon phase and found that 69% of new retirees have challenges adapting to retirement, 37% miss the day-to-day social interaction with co-workers, and 63% of people feel stressed about their retirement decision.

Husbands and wives often discover they aren’t on the same page about retirement, contributing to the phenomenon called “Gray divorce”.  The rate of those over 50 who are divorcing has doubled in less than 30 years. Most of those divorces are initiated by the woman.

Deep depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide rates amongst the retired are alarmingly high.  One of the highest suicide rates in our country today is amongst men over 65.

Those aren’t great stats for something that consumes so much of our attention and energy through the mid- to later-phases of our lives.

So what if you applied Gunderson’s advice on both sides of your retirement planning – financial and non-financial?   No more passivity but rather an aggressive, take-charge position on how to build your wealth AND how you want to use it.

I spoke recently with a hospital CEO in the Chicago area that is approaching retirement.  He has already let his board know that he has no more than a two-year window before stepping down.  Once a major renovation of his hospital is complete, he is out of there.

I asked him about what he sees his retirement looking like.  It was fuzzy at best – not uncommon even from hard-charging executive types.  “Maybe a retirement community of similarly aged retirees somewhere in the southeast”, he replied.

I held my tongue since that is, in my opinion, a guaranteed fast-track to boredom and a roadblock to a purposeful third age – sort of “upscale warehousing”, if you will.

On the financial side of his retirement, however, he was anything but passive, managing his own portfolio which included investing in downtown residential real estate in Chicago.  Without specifics, he made it clear that there are no financial woes in his future.

It’s a pretty typical contrast amongst execs approaching retirement:  in good shape financially, limited attention to what they want their retired life to look like.

Risky and wasteful

I wish I could say that just letting your retired life happen will turn into the nirvana that the financial planning industry would have us believe it will become.  There’s a chance that a happy, fulfilling, purposeful retired life will happen by chance, but it’s not likely.

The research in support of the positive impact of a purposeful retirement on longevity is extensive. Entering retirement with a plan helps avoid the loss of the early years of retirement to purposeless drifting and boredom, a common result of “winging it” into retirement.

We’re built to think, create, produce, strive, grow, learn, teach.   Those are not age-specific traits.  Our culture would have us believe otherwise.  But we don’t have to buy it.

So Gunderson’s contrarian position applies for this third age.  Take charge, be proactive, have a plan – don’t pass it off to fate or someone else’s ulterior motives.

You, those around you, and the world will be better off for it.

What your thoughts are on this?  We’d love to hear from you on this topic.  Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at  www.makeagingwork.com and receive a copy of my free ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Seven Reasons We Should Be Amazed About Getting Older

“Getting old is for the birds!”

That’s one of the dozens of ageist statements tossed out casually when a group of seventh-, eighth-, or ninth-decaders assembles.  Each is usually followed by a litany of the issues that can make it seem so.

Nary a conversation goes by without multiple mentions of knee/hip/shoulder replacements, this or that type of surgery, arthritis, back pain, bunions, hearing aids, loneliness, ad infinitum.

What if one flipped the conversation and started brainstorming what is amazing about getting older?  While I suspect the audience would thin pretty quickly (physically or mentally) and the instigator tagged as beyond strange, isn’t the idea worthy of consideration?

After all, what is there to lose?  What’s the worst thing that could happen?  The worst thing would be that some would simply continue in their funk, incapable of a change in mindset.  And you or I, as the instigator, will have weakened a relationship that wasn’t helping us move forward anyway.

Call me pollyannish, but I think it’s worth a try the next time you find yourself with a group of naysayers.

Some people just won’t want to hear that there is a positive channel of thought about growing older. Should you choose to accept this assignment, be prepared for pushback.

Here are seven amazing things about aging that you can toss into a sagging, ageist conversation to turn it into one more uplifting and worthy of your time.

  1. Freedom of thought. Haven’t we reached the point, in our late-50’s and beyond, where our thoughts are fully ours and we no longer need to bend to other people’s opinions, to comparisons, corporate guidelines, policies, procedures, plans not of our making?

We bring forward credibility based on life experiences unique to us. We’ve paid significant prices and learned some deep lessons.  We’ve sorted out and rejected a lot of the dumbness of our culture.   We’ve made more than our share of silly mistakes but now realize that life is a series of experiments and there is no failure in life, only research and development.  It’s brought us to this unique and powerful place with the power to have our thoughts translate to gain for others.

We’re free to express ourselves knowing that we bring value based on our learning and our experiences but that we have no control over whether anyone else aligns with us.

We’re free to accept who we are which is little more than the thoughts we allow to take hold every day.  “As a man thinketh, so is he”.  We are free to either let our thoughts bring us down or build us up.   At this point, we have much more positive to build on than we may realize or acknowledge.

 

  1. Time freedom. At last, we are mostly in control of our time.  We can take Socrates’ advice and “avoid the barrenness of a busy life.” No alarm clock, no commute, no deadlines, no meaningless meetings.

We are more sage in our appreciation of time, having wasted so much of it in earlier decades.  We have better filters of what counts and what doesn’t.  We are less apt to worry about what others think when we say “no” – and we say no more often.

We say “yes” now to more things that are important and fewer things that are urgent.

And if an afternoon nap feels right, we can do it because, well, we’ve got the time and it matters not if someone says there are better things to do with our time.

 

  1. An opportunity to be generative. We can pay it forward and help the generations behind us.  We can do our part to extend the evolution of what’s right in life. We’re done with the selfishness of accumulation and comparison and can turn to the selflessness of sharing our wisdom and material wealth by helping those that follow.

We can turn this period of our lives from aging to sageing.  Thus, a backward glance is a good one, not one filled with regrets.   Someone – maybe even many – will say “s/he was a light on my path at a time that I needed it.”

 

  1. Live stress-free. Now we can relax into our worthiness.  We’re done striving to compete; other’s opinions of us no longer release unnecessary cortisol; we’ve learned that worry is useless and that few things that we worry about ever happen.   If they do, they are rarely as troublesome as we expected.

So we can settle into an experience-based mindset that responds only to those things over which we have control and don’t waste energy on the things we can’t.

We accept the inevitability of dying and that it is part of life. We no longer fear it.  We know it’s coming but that we don’t need to rush its arrival by stressing over it.

 

  1. We can help change the world. We’re sage now – we know the planet and the human experience are in trouble. And we know why.  With calmness and confidence and lack of concern about condemnation, we can take the right message about change to the world, one person, one encounter at a time.

We have an acquired appreciation for the state of our planet and have observed the damage that humans can cause.  We’re done accumulating, done with impression-motivated consumption.  Through our lifestyles, we can demonstrate that the planet doesn’t have to suffer for us to enjoy and appreciate life.

We can retest Gandhi’s guiding principle: “Be the change we want to see in the world”.  We’ve learned that we can’t change others and that motivation is an “inside job.”  But, by our example, we can be an inspiration to others to be what we are, want what we have and to kickstart that motivation.

 

  1. We can restore respect for the elderly. We’ve grown up in and endured the derision that our culture places on older people.  We’ve been on the receiving end of an evolution away from respect for the elderly that existed a mere 150 years ago.  We’ve witnessed the magnitude and folly of overemphasis on youth.

By our example of good health, vitality, shared wisdom, and our open stand against ageism, we can be a new light of reason and logic in an often dark, unreasonable, and illogical society.

 

  1. We can become “truth agents”. We’re good at filtering out the truth in situations.  We’ve got nothing to lose by exposing it and telling it like it is.  We can effect change by taking a stand on what we know is reality, the real truth.  In our wisdom, we know that “methods and techniques may change, but principles never do” and that a life worth living is guided by these ancient and immutable principles.  We are not afraid to stand behind them, live them and teach them. And watch truth change the world we live in.

Our experiences enable us to be “positively skeptical”.  We are good now at filtering the “wheat from the chaff” when it comes to truth.  We are skeptical about much of what evolves around us and push new developments through our well-developed filters.

We aren’t easily swayed from our position now when we know what is true.  We aren’t afraid to take a stand, realizing that it’s better to stand on the truth than to give in to public opinion half-truths.

Getting old is not the same as aging.

Growing old gracefully requires resilience. It requires an “attitude with altitude” that is grateful on a daily basis. It requires knowing that growing old is inevitable but that how we grow old is optional.

And, ultimately, it requires being in service to others, paying forward what we’ve learned, passing on our wisdom.

Therein may lie the true joy of growing older.

Consider a “Quest”, Not a “Rest” in Your Retirement

“The good things in life are not things.”

So said a bumper-sticker on a Subaru I was behind as I was leaving Home Depot for the umpteenth time this week (it’s springtime spruce-up and planting time as I write).

I think the sticker is a mantra that’s resonating for a growing number of us boomers and pre-boomers.

At a time when my wife and I are “purging” in preparation for an eventual home downsize, this sticker hits home.

I sense there is a lot of major purging going on in boomer households these days. Purging comes up in a lot of conversations with fellow boomers and pre-boomers.  Not as much as colonoscopies and knee, shoulder, and hip surgeries, but still at a pretty good clip.

We got another clue this week when we tried to drop off a pickup load of unneeded furniture at one of the local Goodwill facilities and they turned us away.  They already have too much of that stuff, they said.

Egad!  Nobody wants our stuff!

Doesn’t bode well for landfills, I’m afraid.

Not two hours after my Home Depot run, an article published by MarketWatch hit my news feed about a Google poll that revealed that the #1 question asked about retirement is “How Much Do I Need to Retire?”

Not surprising.  But, money is “things” isn’t it?

In our Western culture, we’re pretty wrapped around the axle about having enough money to enter into the mystical, uncharted territory called retirement.  Because we’re living 20, 30 years longer than our grandparents/parents, we don’t much know what this territory is supposed to look like.

Up to this point, our lives had lots of societal/cultural checkpoints defining what to expect and what our lives should look like at each point.  Then we hit this end-of-career wall and suddenly the guardrails and checkpoints disappear.

A metaphor by Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, co-author of “From AGE-ING to SAGE-ING”, A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older” says it beautifully:

“From childhood to late adulthood, we’re like railroad trains that follow highly regular stretches of track to predictable destinations.  Then, as elderhood approaches, we reach the end of the line, only to discover that management hasn’t had the foresight to lay any more track.  We must get off the train and walk – but to where?  What is our next destination?”

It seems because we haven’t been here before, we generally don’t plan for it except for guessing at having enough money to enter into it comfortably.  And, logically, we don’t get much help in facing this new life void from the financial planner(s) who took us down the “paint-by-numbers” path to financial security.  Their work is done and they can pridefully say “you did it – congratulations – now go forth and – do ???????”

The “do what” is the rub.

Financial planners usually stop there.  Mental, physical, social, spiritual post-career elements are not “paint-by-numbers” issues and financial planners aren’t equipped to go there – or interested, thankfully. These soft-side components of planning your future apparently don’t pay very well – or at all.

There is one “what” we all know we don’t want.  We don’t want our grandparents or perhaps even our parent’s retirement – isolated; park bench; bingo, bridge, and bocce ball; extended morbidity; urine-scented nursing home; walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen bottles.

But rather than plan on how to avoid that type of end-stage (Free hint: exercise, diet, social engagement, continuous learning, continuing to work, giving back/paying forward), we focus on a paint-by-the-numbers, magic figure designed to buy our way out of all that.

Then, a few years in, we find it ain’t quite like advertised.  We begin to realize:

“Things” don’t buy legacies.  “Things” buy disposal problems.

 “Things” have never bought happiness.  “Things” diffuse our energy.

“Things” don’t extend evolution.  “Things” deplete our planet.

“Things” don’t build friendships.  “Things” create comparisons and jealousies.

 “Things” cause us to buy things we don’t really need, with money we don’t want to spend to impress people we don’t even like.

What’s real here?

Continuing through the entire MarketWatch article gets a little freaky and may cause mild-to-severe depression or the application of a corkscrew to a second bottle of wine.

For instance, the author states further in response to the #1 question: “ – most people won’t be able to retire the way they want with just $1 million.”

Just a million? Oh, really?  Tell me it isn’t so!!

Finance guru Suze Orman says the magic retirement number is $5 million!

According to a recent survey from Charles Schwab, which looked at 1,000 401(k) plan participants nationwide, Americans believe they need $1.7 million to retire.

Enough already – can we bring this back down to earthly reality?

If my readership were representative of the general population, 60% of us would have zero, zilch, zip retirement assets.  And only 11% of us would have $500,000 in retirement savings.

The median account balance for those with retirement savings accounts is estimated at $40,000.

Isn’t this latter figure close to “beans and weanies” and “under-a-bridge domicile” territory?

I know, as one of my readers, you do better than that – or aren’t hung up about it.

But just for grins: if you’ve got the $1.7 million in the bank, raise your hand.

OK – thanks and congratulations to all three of you!

Are we asking the right question?

If we were to flip the poll and ask “What is the least asked question about retirement?” what would you guess it would be.

I’m putting my money on: “Why do I have to retire?”

So maybe rather than succumb to the cultural pressure to enter into this unnatural act with its politically-inspired, artificial-finish-line, we should be asking: “Where does it say I have to do this retirement thing?”

I know.  It’s a real ego bruise and not easy to tolerate the fact that you may be tagged as a loser because you’ve chosen not to retire – early or late.  We’ve got a ways to go before un-retirement or semi-retirement will become the new prestige, replacing the current prestige tagged to early retirement.

But I sense we are getting there at a pretty good pace.  I’m trying to accelerate that pace. That’s a big part of my quest.

How about a “quest” instead of “rest”?

Speaking of a quest, do you happen to have one for this period between middle age and true old age?

When we succumb to the intrigue and hype of a traditional vocation-to-vacation retirement, we set ourselves up to slide insidiously to an early demise at a time when we can be kicking some serious tail with our accumulated skills, talents, wisdom and maturity.

We don’t have to look too far or too deep to see evidence that underscores the downsides of removing ourselves from the mainstream of life through retirement:

  1. We still “live too short and die too long” in this culture. Extended morbidity rates and early-on-set frailty are still too prevalent, costing us multiple-billions in late-life health care costs.  The sedentary lifestyle of traditional retirement, the accompanying withdrawal from social engagement and learning, and lack of purpose combine to rob us of our full-life potential.
  2. Depression, divorce and suicide rates among the retired have reached alarming rates.
  3. Research done by the Blue Zones organization has shown that retirement doesn’t exist in the societies with the longest-living citizens where most citizens typically “live long and die short.”

We can turn to some notables for practical (and perhaps uncomfortable) perspectives on the concept of retirement:

  1. Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan,74, refers to retirement as the “ultimate casualty” and advocates for “making your future bigger than your past” regardless of age.
  2. Walter Bortz, 89, semi-retired Stanford geriatric physician and author of seven books dealing with healthy aging refers to retirement in his book “Dare to Be 100” as “statutory senility.”
  3. Warren Buffett, still going strong at 87, says to avoid retirement. His rationale for avoiding retirement is straightforward and simple:
    • You’re healthy
    • You won’t have a fixed income
    • You stay engaged and productive
    • You’ll continue to mentor
    • You can leverage your knowledge
  1. William Shatner , 88, refuses to retire and continues to work like his hair is on fire.
  2. Ken Langone (co-founder of Home Depot), 82, says: “ I’m not going to stop.  I still go to work every day.  If I didn’t have to sleep, I’d work 24 hours a day!
  3. Boone Pickens, 90, still keeps an office that he goes to every day saying, “Retirement isn’t an option for me. When you retire you have time to do what you love, and I love to work.“
  4. Fred Bartlit, 87, is a West Point grad, former Army Ranger, new author, strength-training fitness expert, back-bowl skier and a golfer who shoots his age. He still is a practicing attorney in the hugely successful law firm he founded.

These are all folks who seem to have a “quest” of some sort in their lives – and aren’t so much into “rest” as a lifestyle.

Somewhere along the road over the last 80 years or so, we’ve developed this attitude that we’re supposed to “rest” when we get older.  For decades now, we’ve tagged 65 as the magic date at which this “rest period” should begin.

There is a multitude of problems with that.

Let’s start with the fact that our bodies and minds are not designed to “rest”.  There’s nothing about aging that says we are supposed to stop challenging our bodies and minds. When we make “rest” our lifestyle, the insidiously destructive nature of inactivity begins to take over.

If we don’t use it, we lose it – body power or brain power.

Just look at the extended morbidity that still pervades our culture.  We start “resting” and the decline gradually sets in.

We’ve been sold on the idea that we need to “slow down, enjoy life, take it easy, kick back, smell the roses, etc., etc.”  Then, before you know it, we are in such decrepit shape that we can’t stoop over to smell the rose.  Or our brain is gone and we wouldn’t know a rose scent from a bad case of flatulence.

No friends. No money. No purpose.

Those are the reasons that people die early, according to Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach.  All three seem to reflect “rest” instead of “quest”.

A “quest” is a sense of purpose with action behind it.  It will almost automatically mean an increase in social engagement and more friends because any quest is going to involve touching lives in some way.

A quest can serve and still generate income.  Author Mitch Anthony refers to it as a “playcheck” i.e. doing what you really want to do, are good at, that serves others and generates an income.

Start a quest

In mythology and fiction, a quest is a difficult journey toward a goal. It often involves a changed character of the hero.

You are the hero of your life.  A quest in the third age brings to bear the components that help ensure a longer life with greater vitality by engaging mind and body, avoiding the deteriorating nature of the comfort zone, and deepening the social engagement so vital to good mental and physical health.

Evidence in support of the physical and mental advantages of a late-life sense of purpose/quest is overwhelming as is the evidence of the downside of not having one.

Let us know what your thoughts are on this, especially if you have a quest in your life.  We’d love to know what your quest is and how you came to find it.  Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at www.makeagingwork.com and receive a copy of my free ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

 

The One Word That Is The Most Dangerous To Our Health

 

If you are 55 years old living in California and you just found out that 24-hour home care would cost you $18,000 per month should you need it, would you do something different today to avoid having to go there?

That number came from a veteran senior care professional in California I had a conversation with this week.

Maybe $216,000/year just to have someone around 24×7 to feed you, clean you up and keep you on the planet is no big deal for you.  But that would put you in a miniscule swath of the California population – or any state’s population, for that matter.

Considering that most U.S. folks have accumulated, on average, about $100K by the time “retirement age” rolls around – well, do the math.

This gets more than a little freaky for all of us “peasants” out here.

Why do you need to know this?

Granted, California represents the extreme here, as they do in most everything.  But even if the cost is half that much in your state, well the math still doesn’t eliminate the freaky.

My point in tossing out this unabashed scare tactic is to suggest that “it’s never too late to start and always too early to quit” when it comes to protecting yourself from the conditions that lead to this abhorrent situation.

My thesis is simple (and not original):  reaching the point of needing someone 24×7 to prepare your gruel, wipe your fanny and tuck you in is, with some exceptions, a result of the insidious effects of harmful lifestyle habits.

Help your body help you

It’s a wonderful, amazing thing that our body’s 35 trillion cells somehow work in sync to sustain us despite our naivete about how they work and what they need.  We have a 24x7x365 immune system working hard for us, despite our propensity to make that job difficult.

I’ll confess to that naivete.  I flat out took all of that coordinated cell work for granted for the better part of six decades.   Life was all about following the linear-life model and the cultural rules de jour through childhood and adulthood:  striving, accumulating, comparing, competing, spending, playing.

That naivete included eighteen years of smoking and no attention to food types.

It wasn’t until my 73rd year that the insidious nature of lifestyle habits was really driven home.  It was then, following a routine heart scan (my first ever) that I found out that I had an artery calcification score that, at least in numbers, put me in the high-risk category for cardiovascular disease. (You can read more detail of that part of my story here.)

Fortunately, echo and nuclear stress tests revealed that artery occlusion was minimal and blood flow was normal.  But it was a wake-up call.  I realized that my inattention to diet to that point had contributed insidiously to the plaque buildup in my arteries despite years of exercise.

For 35 years at that point, I had been an avid exerciser.  I hadn’t put any tobacco to my lips in 40 years.  But I put my taste buds in charge and paid little attention to the foods I ate.

Insidious is a word that we should understand – and fear

The dictionary definition of insidious is “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.”  Synonyms include stealthy, surreptitious, deceitful, deceptive, underhand, backhanded.

Reflecting on my situation, I wish someone would have insisted that I understand the stealthy nature of many of my lifestyle habits.

My formative years were in the 1950s living in a rural area of Wyoming.  Health habits were secondary to survival – we essentially “ate what we killed and grew”.  And in Wyoming, there isn’t a whole lot you can grow.

Eggs, meat, and potatoes were the staples.

It was a time when smoking was promoted as healthy by doctors, dentists, actors, athletes and was even marketed featuring babies (gee Dad – you always get the best of everything – even Marlboro!).  The warnings of the insidious nature of these habits were decades away.

Would I have adopted better habits had I been warned back then?  Perhaps – but not likely.  Like most, I suspect I would have stayed with the majority and forged on in the face of new advice to the contrary.

But insidious caught up with me.  Just as it did – more severely – for an uncle and my dad.  I watched both succumb to suffocation from emphysema as a result of 40+ years of smoking.

Reversing the effects of insidious habits

Just as we learned about the destructive nature of many of our habits, we have also learned that, in many cases, the destruction can be reversed.

For instance, I’ve been advised by my physician that after fifteen years of not smoking my lungs had recovered to that of a healthy non-smoker.   I suspect, immodestly, that my lung power is well above average for a septuagenarian because of my aggressive aerobic exercise routine.

Another example is that of offsetting the insidious effects of sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass.  As I wrote about in my three-part series entitled “Aging Without Frailty”, loss of muscle mass is a condition that EVERYBODY begins to experience starting in their thirties with a dramatic acceleration commencing when we move into the fifties.   It can be halted, and even reversed, through a disciplined exercise plan of resistance training/weight lifting.

Of particular interest to me following my heart scan revelation, was whether or not cardiovascular disease (CVD) can be reversed.  Surprisingly, the response I got from my doctors was “no”.  They agreed that the advance of the condition could be stopped but not reversed.

Further research revealed the contrary.  Even cardiovascular disease has been shown to be reversible, although most doctors don’t take that position.  Most notable of the doctors advocating for – and proving – CVD reversal are Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.  Both Ornish and Esselstyn have proven that a change to a plant-based diet joined with an aggressive exercise program can reverse CVD.

Esselstyn advocates a totally vegan diet with no oils, nuts or seeds.  Ornish is less restrictive.  Both have shown that the insidious build up of artery plaque can be reversed.

My calcification score motivated a diet change four years ago.  I have become what author, journalist and food activist Michael Pollan calls a “flexitarian”.  I found going totally vegan a bit much.  I have virtually eliminated meat (I succumb to an occasional brat or do a “meat treat” meal infrequently) and dairy (almond milk is a healthy, tasty change from milk) and drastically increased the plant-based nature of my food intake.

Have I reversed my CVD?  I don’t know – and am not really motivated to do another heart scan to find out.  I am confident that the progression has stopped and I have experienced a serendipitous effect on the rest of my body as I have switched diets and intensified my exercise.

What’s insidious that is going on in your body?

You’ve crossed the 50 threshold, most likely thinking there are fewer days ahead than behind.  Perhaps with visions of what you don’t want to end up like – warehoused, wheel-chaired, and withdrawn.

It’s a good time to do an inventory, a personal assessment with a view toward lifestyle changes that not only can extend your life but drastically reduce that period of extended morbidity that proceeds our inevitable decline into frailty and true old age. (See my April 15, 2019 article on this.) 

I predict, should you choose to accept the assignment, that your assessment will reveal a surprising number of marginal lifestyle habits that, if reversed, can play a huge role in you maintaining vitality and vigor right up to the end – to “live long and die short” versus the “live short and die long” scene that still dogs our society.

We both know what the low-hanging fruit will be:  diet and exercise.

We both know what will be the toughest: diet and exercise.

 

 

You’ve been hijacked

Admit it.  Your taste buds have been held captive by our blameworthy food industry for decades.  Breaking away from the fast and processed foods and their crafty combinations of sugar, salt, and fat produced by our huge and highly mechanized food industry is a big challenge.

Need a guide to start to turn the diet ship?  For starters, I recommend investing the equivalent of two Carl’s Junior Bacon Cheese Thickburgers in a wonderful book by Michael Pollan entitled “Food Rules” in which you will find 64 rules on eating that are designed to steer you away from the Standard American Diet (appropriately called SAD).  It’s a clever presentation of the steps we can take to eliminate processed “edible food-like substances”  and move toward a diet built around the mantra Pollan is noted for:

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”.

Exercise – the life extender

The late Dr. Henry Lodge, co-author of the transformational book “Younger Next Year” issued a succinct and profound statement in the book that can serve as a motivational guide for an exercise plan.  He stated:

“Aerobic exercise will give you life.  Strength-training will make it worth living”.

That statement alone has inspired me to the regimen that is now my weekly exercise discipline:

  • Aerobic exercise for 45 minutes, 6 days a week with my heart rate at the top end of my exercise heart rate range of 93-121 beats/minute.
  • Aggressive strength training with free weights and machines three days a week.

Join me in declaring “insidious” your enemy and working to eliminate the habits in which it thrives.  The changes are pretty simple but not easy because the habit patterns are decades deep in their entrenchment.  And there are powerful “stealth” elements out there that aren’t on our side in making those habit changes.  Our food industry and healthcare system are at the top of that list.

We exist in a culture in which our food industry doesn’t care about our health and our health care system doesn’t care about what we eat.

We’re pretty much on our own with our choices.  Informed decisions result in better choices.   And better choices, even now at 55 or beyond, can make for a longer and better life.

What lifestyle changes have you made to extend your good health?  We’d love to hear your story.  Leave a comment below – or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at www.makeagingwork.com and receive a copy of my free ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

 

 

Your Dentate Gyrus Needs a Pair of Sneakers!

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Did you know you have a dentate gyrus?

I just learned I’ve got one.

So do you.

I didn’t know it.

You probably didn’t know it either.

When I first saw the term, I thought, yuck, a Greek sandwich made with toothpaste?  But it turns out that it’s a pretty important part of your brain, specifically your hippocampus.

Yes, you have one of those too.  Your hippocampus is mega-important.  It’s that walnut-sized, seahorsey-shaped thing in the middle of your brain that regulates emotions and is associated mainly with memory.

So. If you remembered to shower this morning and didn’t kick the puppy because it piddled, yours appears to be working.

Now we learn that the hippo has a side-kick, an important appendage.

My biology class in high school in the 50’s didn’t mention my dentate– wait a minute – I don’t remember having a biology class in my rural Wyoming high school sixty years ago.

How was I to know?

But then, why do I need to know?  Is this in the too-much-information category?  Well, maybe – but I’m forging on to make an important point.

This brain is made for walkin’ (my apologies to Nancy Sinatra – see, my hippocampus is still mostly operational)

Not only do I have a dentate gyrus, but I’m learning it needs a pair of sneakers – or running shoes –  or cross trainers – any of those will do.

The idea was spawned by an article in Psychology Today by Nigel Barber, Ph.D.

He points out we’ve come a long way in understanding this 2 ½ lbs of fatty-acid between our temples.  This is yet another discovery – that the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus has something to do with increasing the proliferation of stem cells.  And that’s a good thing because it’s good cell growth and not the uncontrolled growth that becomes the “big C”.

Now, aren’t you glad to found out that you have one?

But sneakers?

Canadian neuroscientists apparently produced some “startling evidence” that exercise stimulates cell growth, especially in your dentate gyrus. 

This article reminds us that exercise affects both body and brain and that “the logic of a healthy mind in a healthy body becomes compelling.”

Barber says (bolding is mine): “Some confirming evidence was produced in a study showing that educated people live longer than those having less schooling. One plausible interpretation of this finding is that a well-exercised brain resists senile deterioration, possibly by having a more robust circulatory system due to increased cognitive demands placed on it.”

Now I agree there’s a touch of judgmental harshness in that paragraph with the inference (maybe a side-effect of Ph.D. achievement) that only the “educated live longer.”

I’m no Ph.D. or neurologist, but I think I can fill any “education” gap you may be feeling from this article.  Barber gives us what we need to know in the above paragraph:  well-exercised brain and a robust circulatory system.

Read the following and you can consider yourself educated.  All it will cost you is the price of a pair of sneakers and a commitment to a few habit changes.

It starts with O2

When I first read the book “Younger Next Year” in 2013, my biggest takeaway was the importance of providing health-sustaining levels of oxygen to my cells, which only happens when I get my heart rate up.  It’s how you build a more robust circulatory system.

So the new simple habit with our new sneakers is to feed the dentate gyrus, (along with the other 35 trillion or so cells in our bodies) by using them to get our heart rate to a meaningful aerobic exercise range.

It’s a simple formula: 

220 minus your age times .65 and .85. 

That’s the heart rate range you should get to and sustain for 20 minutes or more at least three times a week.

My range, at age 77, is 93 to 121 beats per minute.  Since my “Younger Next Year” revelation, I push the upper limit of the range six days a week for 36-45 minutes.

I think my dentate gyrus probably loves me.

Brain exercise?

OK, we’ve covered Barber’s “robust circulatory system” part.  That leaves the “well-exercised brain” part to address.

Your brain is like a muscle:  Use it or lose it!

Brain exercise should be as routine as your physical workouts.

How do you “exercise” your brain?  Here are ten tips for starters:

  1. Read – tabloids and newspaper don’t count. Dig into something that will move you out of your comfort zone, take you somewhere, and make you think. Consider a book club.
  2. Start journaling
  3. Put down the smartphone and lose the remote. I’ve shared with you the research that revealed watching a sitcom on TV and contemplating a brick wall generates the same amount of brain activity. Stephen King refers to TV as the “glass teat.”
  4. Get more sleep. Seven hours plus.  The brain flushes junk with spinal fluid while we sleep. More sleep, less junk.
  5. Eat brain supportive foods. Medical News Today says these are the best brain-boosting foods:
  6. Meditate/pray daily
  7. Play challenging board or card games with friends.
  8. Learn a second language or play a musical instrument.
  9. Dance (this is a double-dip – dancing makes you think and gets your heart rate up).
  10. Take a cooking class – and learn to incorporate the ingredients listed above.

Think of the serendipitous benefit of what you’ve learned with this article.  You now can impress your friends by dropping a dentate gyrus bomb into the conversation and turn the conversation from colonoscopies, achy joints, and hip and knee surgeries.

What a relief that would be.