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.
On Climbing the Himalayas and Eating a Cobra’s Heart
Don’t you hate it when someone says or writes something that you wish you had said or written? The more I research to write, the more it happens to me. And it happened again today.
I surfed into an article this morning by Jonathan Look entitled “The Magic of Leaving Your Comfort Zones in Retirement.” Look is a retired U.S. traffic controller who sold it all at 50 to “travel the world.” He now resides overlooking the Atlantic in Lisbon, Portugal.
Mr. Look has an important perspective on fulfilling retirement. For him, it includes scaling Himalayan mountains and eating a still-beating cobra’s heart.
OK, stick with me here for a second – I’m not off the rails. Nor is he.
While his activities seem more self-aggrandizing than doing anything to advance humanitarian causes, the principle of moving out to the edge and away from the comfort zone in retirement is the key takeaway from his lifestyle choices.
As I portrayed in last week’s blog, the dark side of retirement in terms of disease, decline, and debilitation is very real, and disturbing.
Comfort zones are so enticing and so – well – comfortable. We are drawn to comfort which means we are drawn away from challenge. And nowhere are comfort zones more apparent than in retirement, certainly in the earliest stages.
No more alarm clock, no meetings, no commute, Lazyboy available 24/7, favorite series on Netflix mid-day, multiple daily naps. After all, this is why we busted the hump for 40 years, to get to this point. That’s what all the ads tell us it’s supposed to be.
But, as it’s said, “man makes the habits and the habits make the man.” Comfort zones have a way of holding us hostage.
Here are three areas critical to a fulfilling retirement and optimized aging that comfort zones will hinder:
Mr. Look says further:
“Retirement is the perfect time to explore and take advantage of new opportunities. Comfort zones should be places where we go to relax, reflect and rejuvenate. They should not become permanent retirement destinations where we passively allow time to slip away.”
I’ve had the pleasure recently to work with two very talented ladies, Judy, 77, and Jean, 64, who are thumbing their noses at traditional retirement and pushing boundaries. Judy, a retired attorney, is passionately driving a non-profit that is improving educational opportunities for over 150 young girls in a village in Senegal. Jean, a semi-retired veterinarian, is a central figure in the drive to outlaw the declawing of cats and to improve the nutritional quality of pet food.
I am humbled by the drive, energy and smarts these ladies demonstrate as they push their personal and professional boundaries. They reinforce my belief that senescence is not automatic and that vitality need not wane in our later years. Their only reference to retirement is to say that they retired to something of greater importance.
What are you doing to push the boundaries? Do you have a story to share with us? We’d love to hear from you. Scroll down and share your story with us – or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.
Pivot Your Retirement Before It Kills You!
A generation ago, IBM did a study of their pensioners and found that their average retiree didn’t make it past the 24th pension check.
John E. Lang, a petroleum engineer and 45-year employee of a single oil company, succumbed to a heart attack in his sleep 10 months after receiving his gold watch – and a few days after receiving a clean bill of health from his doctor. He was my father-in-law – a great man and sorely missed.
Shell Oil studied thousands of its employee and found that retiring at 55 doubled the risk for death before reaching 65 compared to those who worked beyond age 65, challenging the notion that retiring early boosts longevity and, in fact, demonstrating the opposite – mortality rates improve with later retirement.
The National Institute of Health reports that 1 in 5 of the 35 million Americans 65 and older suffer from depression – 2 million suffer from full-blown depression and another 5 million suffer from less severe forms of the illness.
Men older than 65 take their own life at more than double the overall suicide rate and men age 75 and older have the highest annual suicide rate of any age group
OK, can I ask it? Isn’t it time we redefine this retirement thing?
If you are in or approaching retirement, I suspect you weren’t aware of the dark side of this coveted late-life prize. If you have been working with a financial planner, was this ever a part of your discussions with her/him? Not likely – that’s all about the soft side of retirement and, with a few exceptions, financial planners only deal with the hard side of retirement – numbers.
The financial numbers are really important but not if they hasten you into a retirement for which you aren’t emotionally and psychologically prepared. And that’s the rub. Estimates are that 70% of retirees go into their retirement without a semblance of a non-financial retirement plan.
So where can it go wrong?
Ah, let me count the ways. In fact, the husband and wife team of Jeri Sedlars and Rick Miners, veteran executive recruiters and authors of a really good book on this topic entitled “Don’t Retire, REWIRE!” did just that. Following hundreds of conversations with retirees and uncovering this high level of discontent amongst retirees, they compiled a list of the “Top Ten Reasons People Flunk Retirement.” Here’s what they heard the most.
For better or worse, but not for lunch every day!
Take number 4 and number 8 on that list. This combo illustrates one of the most dominant problem areas when it comes to retirement. The fastest growing divorce rate in our culture is with couples over 50. Couples often fail to plan and consider the impact on their relationship when retirement rolls around for one or both.
For example, the man comes home full-time and the spouse is burnt out on being home full-time. She wants to go her own direction, perhaps even starting a late-life career doing something that has been suppressed for years running the household. The husband has an agenda for retirement, unarticulated until after retirement, and the spouse has different ideas. And gradual separation begins.
I recall a quote from a spouse with a recently retired husband: “I have twice the husband and half the space, and he’s getting bigger. If he rearranges my kitchen drawers one more time, I’m going to kill him!”
It is a little strange.
Couples do quite a job of planning and working their way through other significant life transitions successfully. But with retirement, which is a permanent resident on the top-10 list of life’s most stressful events, couples often ignore planning for it.
The aforementioned stats speak to the dangers of only planning retirement from a numbers perspective. And it’s this evidence and my own personal observations of the dark side development amongst retired friends that have inspired me to become a Certified Retirement Coach to complement my coaching in the area of health and wellness and late-life career transitions.
Time to unwash the brain.
Most of us in the 50+ genre still operate with this linear life plan indoctrination – I call it the 20-40-20 plan that looks like this.
It has been the “social expectation” pounded into us by parents, professors, peers, and pundits: get an education, get a job with a good company, get a spouse, get a car, get a house and big mortgage, 2.5 kids, fenced yard and a golden retriever. Bust your hump for 40 years doing what you marginally enjoyed doing, stretching to reach that coveted final 20 so you can do what you really wanted to do back in the early stages of the first 20. Only to find out that the 20 or so beyond the artificial finish line that our culture establishes isn’t as advertised. In fact, for many, it ends up being a period of decline due to becoming sedentary, socially isolated and functioning without meaningful purpose.
This 20th-century traditional retirement model is a big part of what continues to keep us locked into the “living short and dying long” condition that taxes our health care system and has created a very profitable opportunity for the creators of the massive “warehouses for elders” that are proliferating nationally.
Oh, by the way, I understand there are few nursing homes in Okinawa where elders are venerated and “live long and die short” at home with family.
The solution, please.
Thankfully, the traditional retirement model is dying a slow death, thanks in large part to Boomers who aren’t willing to disappear silently into the night. Research on 55,000 retired Boomers by the Age Wave organization found that only 30% had no intention of ever working again after retirement, while 70% engaged in some level of work, ranging from total volunteer to re-entering the workforce to starting their own businesses.
Successful “retirees” fit a pattern that Mitch Anthony calls the “Four Pillars of the New Retirementality” described in his book “The New Retirementality”:
Vision – successful retirees retire to something; failed retirees retire from something.
Balance – successful retirees find a balance between vocation and vacation; failed retirees move from bingeing on work to bingeing on leisure.
Work is important – successful retirees keep themselves plugged into meaningful pursuits; failed retirees devolve into boredom and aimlessness.
Successful aging is important – successful retirees focus on growing and well-being; failed retirees just take what comes.
Alas, for most going into retirement, this becomes an after-the-fact discovery where productive, healthful time is lost. A Retirement Coach, or a financial planner that includes a holistic, non-financial retirement planning component in their service, can help prevent this dark side of retirement. Dialog on these “soft side” elements should begin 3-5 years ahead of the anticipated retirement date.
Retired or anticipating retirement? Let us help you get it on the right footing. Inquire about our “Retirement Wellness Plan.” Email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.
What’s your retirement experience been? If close to retirement, how much planning on the “soft side” have you devoted to it? We’d love your feedback – scroll down and leave us a comment.
Can we get any sillier than this?
“Hostess Brands, known for fare like Twinkies and Ding Dongs, is making a successful foray into more upscale treats. The company posted surprisingly strong earnings on Thursday, along with an upbeat forecast, sending shares on their biggest rally ever. The snack maker credited the rollout of the Hostess Bakery Petites line, which has no artificial flavors or high-fructose corn syrup, for boosting the growth. The latest results helped solidify a turnaround for an iconic American business” Daniel Acker, Bloomberg, 3/1/18.
“Chicago – With more than 86 million Americans living with prediabetes and nearly 90 percent of them unaware of it, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are set to make a major announcement this week about their new joint effort aimed at preventing type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is one of our nation’s leading causes of suffering and death—with one out of three people at risk of developing the disease in their lifetime.” Press Release, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3/11/2015
The Bloomberg article was headlined: “Twinkie Maker’s Push Into More Upscale Snacks Helps Fuel Rally.”
The CDC press release was headlined “AMA, CDC to Announce Urgent National Initiative to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes.”
Isn’t America great?
I could hardly contain my excitement when I read the Bloomberg headline – a rejoicing about the evolving resurrection of one of America’s iconic “sugar factories” from a 2012 bankruptcy. What could be better than the re-emergence of a company that does a nice job of undermining our collective health, move upscale with that process and line the pockets of a small handful of private equity firms?
It’s just so thrilling – and American – isn’t it?
I love the part about “Hostess Bakery Petites line, which has no artificial flavors or high-fructose corn syrup. “ OK, we’re safe folks. No threat – got those ugly monsters out of this new treat.
This is food-industry marketing at its best. Make a big deal about eliminating the top-of-mind evil demon, HFCS, knowing that consumers won’t bother to read the label to find out that the top three ingredients in the product are still sugar.
Let’s take a look at what IS there instead of what isn’t there. Here are the actual ingredients in this new company-saving sugar treat. This is extracted from the Walmart advertising for this new treat. (I tried to count the actual number of ingredients but got lost. Maybe you can come up with a count.)
Hostess New Bakery Petites Double Chocolate Cake Delights. A Decadent small batch treats made with the finest ingredients with real chocolate, no artificial colors or flavors. Each mouth-watering mini cake is baked with care so you can savor each delicious bite Hostess Bakery Petites Double Chocolate Cake Delights, 7.9 oz
Ingredients: CONFECTIONERY COATING (SUGAR, PALM KERNEL OIL AND PALM OIL, COCOA POWDER, WHEY POWDER, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL FLAVORS), WATER, SUGAR, BLEACHED ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR [WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, FERROUS SULFATE (IRON), THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID], CORN SYRUP, COCOA, SHORTENING (PALM OIL, MONO & DIGLYCERIDES, POLYSORBATE 60), SPRINKLES (SUGAR, CORN STARCH AND CARNAUBA WAX), PALM OIL, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS: GLYCERIN, SOY LECITHIN, SOYBEAN OIL, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI) WHEY, BAKING SODA, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, MONOGLYCERIDES, POLYSORBATE 60, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, PRESERVATIVES (PHOSPHORIC ACID, SODIUM PROPIONATE), SALT, DEXTROSE, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, SORBIC ACID AND POTASSIUM SORBATE (TO RETAIN FRESHNESS), XANTHAN GUM, SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SODIUM STEARATE, CELLULOSE GUM, NATURAL FLAVOR, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE, CALCIUM SULFATE, WHEAT GLUTEN, AMMONIUM SULFATE, ASCORBIC ACID, CHOCOLATE LIQUOR. From Walmart product listing
As I chuckled over the thick irony of these two announcements, my thoughts went to Michael Pollan’s wonderful book “Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual”. Pollan’s compilation of 83 rules for proper eating is a masterfully written and illustrated two-hour read worth its weight in good health.
I thought it appropriate to invoke a handful of his rules here in hopes that someone would forward this to the execs at Hostess Brands and add to what already has to be a difficulty in sleeping.
Food Rules to the rescue
Food rule #2: Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
Food rule #3: Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.
Food rule #6: Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.
Food rule #7: Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.
Food rule #14: Eat only foods that will eventually rot. (NOTE: It’s important to point out that the rumor that Twinkies have a shelf-life of 50-100 years has been exposed as untrue. Their shelf life, however, has been recently extended from its original 26 days to 45 days. There, now don’t you feel better about its nutritional quality?)
Food rule #19: Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans. (as opposed to corporations)
Food rule #20: Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.
Food rule #21: If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t (NOTE: Hostess estimates that it uses 8 million pounds of sugar, seven million pounds of refined flour and one million eggs to produce 500 million Twinkies each year.)
Food companies like Hostess Brands are in a tough position. Stockholders, debtors and 18,500 employees to keep whole, while turning out products that are on the wrong end of the social consciousness scale and contributing to an emerging global health crisis.
But that’s not likely to change. That’s why it’s incumbent on us to be knowledgeable and take control of our own health, know how our biology works and pay attention to what we are eating.
Pollan’s book is a good starting point
Are You Headed for Life’s “Dinosaur Floor”?
There’s a story told by author Mitch Anthony in his book “The New Retirementality” of a Fortune 100 company in New York City that has a floor at their executive office complex that is referred to as the “dinosaur floor.” Reportedly, it is a floor where executive managers in their 50’s or 60’s whose contributions are considered as static are assigned to hang-on until retirement age.
Sort of a purgatory warehouse. No doubt a better option for the company than the time loss and expense of hassling with a bunch of age discrimination suits.
It’s interesting that there don’t seem to be any surprises for the occupants. If you go there, you know why and accept it. Or maybe you don’t stay and come back to life, bail out, resurrect, re-energize, and redeploy your experience and talents elsewhere.
The path to this floor? Irrelevance. Apparently a floor of talented folks who didn’t stay current and who decided to stop learning.
Are you headed for a “dinosaur floor” in your life?
Is there the equivalent of a dinosaur floor looming in your life?
If you’ve moved into your second half, there’s definitely a chance that you may have.
Think about what could put you there:
Who owns your career?
The 20th century offered up cradle-to-grave possibilities – an environment in which one relied on managers and human resources to guide a career. Work hard, don’t upset the cart and the rewards will be there. But the 21st century got in the way and all that is bye-bye. However, many still cling to the illusion that their company has their interests at heart and will nurture them along.
Never has a thought pattern been more dangerous.
If you have awakened to this, you’ll like the advice offered up by Master Certified Career Coach, Janine Moon, in her book “Career Ownership.” She cleverly contrasts home ownership with career ownership, asking the poignant question “why do so many of us own our homes but rent our careers?”
She points out that we will go to pretty extraordinary lengths to make sure our home purchase is the right one and done optimally but ignore the very engine that enables us to own it in the first place. It’s as if we are asleep to the fact that we are giving up our main source of security to someone else.
With both the magnitude and pace of change accelerating, career ownership becomes paramount. But what does that mean? Again, we can turn to Coach Moon for some solid advice.
I’ll cherry pick a few of her suggestions and encourage you to invest in the book. She packs a lot into 100 pages – and it’s coming from someone who can back up her advice as a veteran of “corporate wars.”
Here’s a partial list of Moon’s questions to ask yourself:
But they think I’m over the hill!
There’s no denying that ageism is alive and well within corporations. But we can bring it on ourselves.
If you are in your late 40’s or into your 50’s, you’ve stepped into ageism territory so it’s best to not give it a foothold. And that ageism foothold happens when one fails to stay relevant and current with upgraded skills and deep engagement with corporate initiatives.
Oh, and don’t forget politics. You should know by now how the political game is played and can leverage that to your advantage.
If you are 55, there is a 70% chance you will have a younger boss. The choice is to resent them or learn from them. Get to their level technologically and adapt to their communications style.
All this is taking career ownership. Don’t rent your career out. Own it.
It’s as Janine Moon says: “When was the last time you washed a rental car?”
Ending up on a “dinosaur floor” is a threat for us all to be aware of. How are you avoiding that threat in your job or your personal life? Scroll down and leave us a comment. We’d love to hear how you are safeguarding yourself against ageism and irrelevance.
A Serious Cellular Conversation
Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m a human cell. You won’t recognize me because you’ve never seen me before. I’m normally about 1/10th the diameter of a human hair.
I’ve blown myself up a couple of million times to be able to spend some time with you because, frankly, we need to talk.
I was floating along in your bloodstream a couple of weeks ago hauling my usual load of nutrients and oxygen for delivery – sort of a microscopic Fed Ex guy in a bright red truck – and I was chatting it up with a couple of my fellow red blood cells about how work seemed to be getting harder and harder.
Turns out, they were all feeling the same thing – tired, stressed, working overtime. So we pulled together some of our co-workers over in liver, pancreas, stomach, lungs – sort of a roundtable if you will – to see what they were feeling. And it was unanimous. Everyone was feeling stressed out.
The consensus was that there is very little understanding and appreciation for what we do and that makes our work a lot harder.
Let me start by pointing out that there are about 38 ½ trillion of us in your body– that’s trillion with a “T”. In miles, that’s equivalent to 414,000 trips to the sun.
We really haven’t changed in the last 3 ½ billion years – essentially most of us have a cell membrane, a nucleus, cytoplasm, ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi vesicles, mitochondria plus some other stuff. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about – you can Google all that.
Just know that whoever or whatever thought you up and put you all together did an amazing job of organizing something out of total chaos to make you into the most magnificent machine ever devised – an incredible 24×7 immune system that’s working it’s butt off to try to keep you healthy.
Unfortunately, you can’t imagine how tough that is these days.
We need some help!
I can’t stick around very long. So, I’ll cut to the chase.
We feel we are being abused! I’m here to ask you, on behalf of my 38 ½ trillion friends, to give us a break!
We’ve proven our ability to work effectively together to enable people to live a long and healthy life. For instance, we recently helped a lady in Paris live to 122 ½ years – a new benchmark for longevity. She was active right up to the end.
But, here in America, you choose to live only an average of 80 years – 42 years short of that benchmark, only 65% of the full-life potential that we’ve already established. And there’s still this tendency to “live short and die long.”
What’s up with that?
Here’s my point. We’ll perform for you if you will perform for us. There is no magic here. If you would like us to help you feel better, have more energy, rid you of invading toxins and viruses, corral our crazy cancer cousins, keep your brain and arteries unclogged, we can do it but we’ve got to have your help.
Honestly, there are days when it just gets to be too much and a lot of us just say screw it and check out early, leaving fewer of us to do the job. Or, sometimes, because we are so tired and pissed off, we’ll just go rogue and morph into a cancer cell.
What’s the real score?
Hey, I’m just a single cell – don’t take my word for it. Look at the scoreboard. After 100 years of hockey-stick growth of your lifespan, it’s now going backward; diabetes is out of control; heart disease still is the leading killer; 65% of American men are overweight, 25% are obese. Your own American Medical Association recently has announced that 50% of you reading this are either diabetic or pre-diabetic and 70% of you don’t know it.
What can I say?
Hey, I’ve got to get back to my glucose deliveries. Let me leave you with a simple plan that’s a plea from all 38 ½ trillion of us.
That’s all I’ve got time for. I really have to go. I think some of my customers are feeling a little shaky.
I hope you’ll take me, and this simple plan, seriously.
Look, we’ve been doing our thing successfully for 3 ½ billion years – you’ve been doing your western lifestyle thing for less than 100 years and it’s obviously not working. So as I say goodbye, I’ll just rest my case on that.
Gotta run. Good talking with you. Thanks for listening.
See ya back in your bloodstream!
Retirement worse than smoking? Maybe.
This should make you stop and cogitate a bit: the health risk of prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
That’s according to the AARP Foundation. I didn’t know AARP was doing that kind of deep biological, bio-scientific research. But who’s going to doubt the mighty AARP? Warren Buffett proved it long ago – selling insurance can support lots of things.
The article caught my eye because I’m a bit of a hermit, by nature and vocation, and a former smoker.
But the connection doesn’t resonate with me.
Smoking was stupid
And quitting was tough. But it was the best thing I ever did when I quit on 6/6/79. It was a launching pad for a whole new level of self-esteem and self-respect.
Isolation is built into what I do as a home-based recruiter, coach, and writer and it fits me as an introvert. I empower myself through my reading, writing, and thinking and through occasional deep, stimulating conversations with a selective tribe of friends.
I don’t do crowds well – and small talk drives me crazy and reminds me, every time, of my shrinking calendar. I’m inspired by what I do and draw a great deal of energy from my activities despite doing them largely in physical isolation.
I’m just not psychologically isolated. I believe that’s where the difference lies.
Loneliness sucks!
I do understand what they are saying because I’ve seen the ill effects of psychological isolation.
If you click on over to the AARP article, you’ll find a list of “Risk Factors for Isolation” and – Voila! – there’s retirement smack in the middle, in the same sentence with becoming a caregiver and losing a spouse.
Robert Waldinger, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, said in this popular TED Talk, “The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates.”
Now, wait a minute. You mean the golden ring, the coveted prize at the end of our labors, that late-life nirvana, that sole reason we’ve been busting our butts for 40 years doing something we marginally enjoyed or felt good about – it’s all really just a hoax? You mean it’s gonna make me age faster and die sooner?
Mostly. But it’s a big “it depends.”
We’re learning that pre-retirees are best served when they devote as much attention and energy to the non-financial components of retirement as they do to the financial components. Research indicates that upwards of 70% of retirees enter into their retirement with little or no attention to the psychological, emotional and physical dark side of retirement.
Increased isolation is but one of those potential pitfalls but perhaps the most destructive.
There is a hidden epidemic that takes place in the shadow of retirement. Some of the emerging statistics are alarming, all of which can be attributed, in part, to increased isolation;
The numbers of older people affected by loneliness and isolation are striking.
According to the new AARP Foundation website Connect2Affect:
All this is part of the reason that I have decided to devote more of my life and coaching practice to retirement coaching.
The reach for traditional, off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure concept of retirement still seems to prevail. That despite the fact we are at a place we’ve never been before with extended longevity facing unprecedented changes in the economic, financial and self-care landscape. Retirement that isn’t carefully planned carries with it significant life-shortening health risks.
A new retirement emerging?
The wiser of “retirees” are beginning to redefine retirement to prevent the above. For many, that means continuing to make some level of that previously disdained four-letter word -WORK – part of their lives. With it comes a solution to the problems of isolation, purpose, inactive lifestyle.
I wrote about the importance of work in my 12/18/17 blog “Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!”
Work with a purpose is a new catchphrase amongst retirees. Or collecting a “playcheck”, a term coined by Mitch Anthony in his book “The New Retirementality”, – being paid for something you really truly are meant to do, that is fun and fulfills a deep inner purpose.
Work and play can intersect. And there is no better time for that to happen than in a “re-defined retirement”, bringing forward acquired skills and experience and applying them to something fulfilling, fun and profitable.
Who do you know that has achieved that work-play intersection? Or maybe it’s you. Scroll down and leave a comment. While you are there, sign up for our free e-book “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”
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.
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:
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.
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.
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?
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”:
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.