Three things a person should avoid once they are past 70 years old. P.S. I’m on the list

I’m being a bit lazy this week.

Actually, that’s not true. I just seem to hit a wall on coming up with something that I felt you fine folks would pay even a hint of attention to.

So, I’m cheating and republishing a post that I put out on Quora.com a few weeks ago.  It has become my 3rd most popular post and 10% of the 1,300,000 views my Quora posts have garnered since I started posting daily in December 2019.

It’s a response to the question: “What three things should a person avoid once they are past 70 years old?

At 78 (this month), I guess I can bring a little credibility.

From my experience, here are three things to avoid:

1.Most other 70-year olds. That sounds cruel – and it may blow a big hole in my circle of friends, many of whom are 70+ and who I do love and cherish. I suspect I may have some explaining and repair work to do. But here’s my rationale.

Many, if not most, 70-year-olds are innocently in the “decay mode”, attitudinally and biologically, with resignation to the myths of automatic senescence and accelerating physical decline. Dinner conversations rarely progress beyond the latest knee replacement or shoulder surgery, concerns about memory lapses, or a friend with this or that malady.

I’ve started calling them “organ recitals.”

“Getting old isn’t for sissies” and “aging is a bitch” are common cliches.

Rarely does the conversation swing to how to continue to honor one’s birthright of good health and counter the accelerating decline with good practices that should have been a part of life all along. There is little appreciation for “it’s never too late to start, but always too early to quit.”

As an outspoken advocate for living to 100 or beyond (I’ve set my target at 112 1/2), I’ve learned not to bring it up at gatherings of my 70-something friends as I’ve endured enough derision to know not to put my hand on that hot stove again. The repulsion is deep and wide.

Famed motivational speaker, Jim Rohn said: “You rise to the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Selfishly, as time squeezes in, I ask myself how can I grow through this relationship and is this person open to considering that life doesn’t need to be one of accelerating decline.

I love hanging with a kick-ass 70-year old who is relaunching and not landing. But there’s a lot of chaff and not a lot of that type of wheat in our demographic.

Edith Wharton once said:

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

Maybe it’s just my circle, but I don’t find many that peer into elderhood with excitement or have that “unafraid of change, insatiable curiosity, big thinking” attitude. I’m more inclined to find it existing in the youngers and suggest that, as 70-year olds, we are better served by increasing our efforts to hang with the generations behind us with two thoughts in mind: (1) to grow and learn from their creativity and energy and (2) to help guide them with our acquired wisdom and experience.

If you would like a big dose of the logic behind this and the results of this type of effort, check out Chip Conley and his book “Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder.”

2.The retirement trap. OK, here again, I’m trespassing and entering sacred ground. But the evidence is there to support this heretic suggestion. The traditional leisure-based, “vocation to vacation” retirement that has been pounded into our heads for 5–6 decades is a Trojan-horse that has lead several generations into a lifestyle counter to our biological nature and to a pattern of “living short and dying long” in the western cultures where it exists.

Retirement doesn’t exist in nature nor did it exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago. It’s a Euro-American concept that doesn’t exist in many countries, some of which can claim the longest-living citizens.

It is a concept constructed for political purposes and has no relevance to today’s world.

Retirement puts us on a path to accelerated biological decline because it implies “winding down” is preferable to staying in the growth mode.  We are given only two choices with our bodies and brains – grow or decay. Retirement, which is derived from the French verb “retirer” which means retreat or go backward, can put us on the decay path – and does for most.

What are the fruits of traditional, leisure-based retirement? Here a few that we see that are not-life enhancing:

  • Increased isolation – a major killer
  • Sedentary living – despite best intentions, most retirees fail to maintain adequate exercise to sustain good health.
  • Self-indulgence – we are wired to serve. Retirement says you’ve paid that price and earned the right to be a self-indulgent consumer and to abandon being a selfless producer.
  • Removal of work from the lifestyle. Work is a key factor in longevity – retirement takes us in the other direction.

Fortunately, we are waking up to the fallacy and irrelevance of traditional retirement as we find ourselves in the unfamiliar territory of having a 20–40-year longevity bonus. Unretirement and semi-retirement now represent a rapidly developing trend.

3. Drifting. Because, as boomers and pre-boomers, we’ve been indoctrinated to covet the leap from labor to leisure, most of us move into that “third age” space between end-of-career and true-old age without a roadmap or plan for what that now-extended period is going to look like. We are now in new territory with 20–40 more years with limited precedents to guide us.

The result, for many, is entering an extended period of life in a drift, feeling their way through at the expense of the reservoir of energy and drive that exists in the early stages of this phase.

For example, we know that 2 of 3 retirements commence with no semblance of a non-financial plan that addresses the mental, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual sides of life in this new territory.

Retirement can be like an iceberg, drifting and with little of the realities of retired life on the surface. It can become a purposeless, drifting, unfocused time of life that can put us on the path to accelerated deterioration.

Dan Sullivan, renowned business and entrepreneur coach and founder of Strategic Coach, says:

People die early for three reasons:

  • No money
  • No friends
  • No purpose.

A successful, healthy third-age requires a plan, a sense of purpose, a direction. Without it, we waste the talents, skills, experience, and energy that still reside in us as 70-year olds.

That’s close to being criminal.

Thanks for indulging my lack of momentum this week. These COVID-19 walls are closing in it seems. Hope you all are being safe. Let me know your thoughts about this week’s diatribe with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

You May Be Ignoring Your Best COVID-19 Defense. Our “Leaders” Certainly Are!

I don’t get it.

In all of the recommendations we are getting to avoid contracting COVID-19, have you ever heard one utterance suggesting consideration of “immune system competence?”

You know, like, putting your body in the best position to ward it off naturally before it can get a foothold.

I watch more Fox News and MSNBC than I should admit to. I flip back and forth between the two when I’ve become bored with Comedy Central and need a stronger hit of comedy.

Never, with all the Fauci’s and Birx’s and Pence’s that are building quite the brand for themselves have I heard one utterance like “folks, get your ass in shape. That’s the first and best front line defense against dying of this nutty stuff.”

Nothing from the CDC or WHO or AMA either.

It’s all about “duck and cover” – no prevention talk from this prestigious circle.

Well, I guess that would be too much of a shock for a culture looking for a quick fix, a drug, a magic elixir, and a nanny state to come up with one or all of the above.

Yep, my needle is stuck

If you’ve endured my articles for very long, you know I’ve kinda railed on this a few times. Look, we are walking around in an incredible 24×7 immune system of 35 trillion cells – give or take a few trillion – that has somehow been kludged together into a wondrous system fighting to keep us healthy.

We do a magnificent job of mistreating it.

The cells don’t ask for much – adequate oxygen and some good glucose and less adrenaline/cortisol/norepinephrine coursing through the bloodstream is good for starters.

Treat ’em right and they are inclined to return the favor with more energy, fewer infections/illnesses and, ultimately, a longer life without extended morbidity and early frailty.

But, shoot, that’s too easy.

It doesn’t fit our lifestyles. Or our healthcare system ’cause all it knows is cure -trying to catch the horse after it’s left the barn. Mop up the water but don’t turn off the spigot. If we can’t medicate it, well, there’s always the scalpel.

What’s that, your PCP asks? You’re asking if more exercise, sleep, less processed foods, more leafy greens/beans/avocados/nuts, meditation make sense?  Where’s the reimbursement in all that, he/she says? Here, try this (fill in here with the Fox News miracle drug of the day _________________) and call me if it doesn’t work.

OK, I’m 78 and I’m hallway-gurney-triage-fodder if I get this bug based on my age. Screw the good physical condition – you’re toast, gramps. Can’t waste a ventilator.

I’m nuts and arrogant enough to believe my physical condition would prevent that from happening. Nothing I’d like better than to be an example for immune system competence for septuagenarians should I get it. No, I’m not that ego-saturated that I’m going to come out of my “stay-at-home” and take the risk.

But, I am just a little miffed that we can’t mix in just a little bit of monologue or dialogue about the basic, no-cost/low cost/always available tools that can front-end this rascally bug.

Get-less-sick, need-less-care, get-back-to-work formula (these are copied – see below for attribution):

  • Restorative sleep
  • Strong hydration
  • Nutritious food
  • Regular exercise
  • Avoid excessive alcohol (sorry folks, it’s oxidative)
  • Avoid toxins
  • Mental well-being
    • Calm reading, prayer, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, playing an instrument, listening to music, doing 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles (my wife does a couple a week), board games with your stay-at-home loved ones.

Now, that didn’t hurt, did it?

If these aren’t or haven’t been a part of your life, it’s probably too late to start today and expect it to build instant immunity to COVID-19. But how ’bout protection against the regular viruses that will continue to assault us or against the next pandemic (and there will be one).

Plus, what’s not to like about just flat feeling and looking better. And not having to unscramble the messages from our government and it’s media “friends.”

Oh no – another YouTube.

Yes, like you, I have some time that I’m filling with things I normally wouldn’t be doing. Like following some media trails I haven’t followed before.

I know you are getting besieged with tons of COVID-19 related info and, if like me, wondering what’s real, what’s fake, what’s politically motivated and shaky, what’s carrying more profit motive than not …….

Here’s a YouTube link to further clutter your inbox presented by a highly credentialed physician under the Singularity University banner that I found particularly informative because it succinctly covered  (if you can call 40 minutes succinct)  so much ground and touched so many different aspects of the coronavirus impact.

It’s also where I got the immune competence list above.

There’s stuff in here that I’d never heard before or would have ever thought about. You might find it worth the 39 minutes (or less at 1.25 speed).

Let’s renew our commitment to getting in shape.

Here’s a picture of my crowded “basement gym” which is getting lots of attention now as I continue my six-day-a-week aerobic and strength-training routine. It’s boring as hell and not the highlight of my day. But, you see, I’ve got this immune thing going that craves competence and has a big payoff.  It’s the least I can do.

I realize that’s not duplicatable in many homes, but you don’t need it.  Get reacquainted with that lost art of walking and use your own body-weight for resistance work until the rec centers and athletic clubs reopen.

Let’s stop being an easy, non-resistant target to the virus world. Perhaps this will be one of the many lessons we will have learned when we spin out of this.

And we WILL spin out of this!

Be safe – GET IN SHAPE.

Let me know your thoughts below with a comment or drop me an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

I trust that you are being safe and sensible during these challenging times.  If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

The Okinawa Diet – and Living to 100

Some time ago – April 30, 2018 – I introduced readers to Dr. Michael Greger,  American physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues. Dr. Greger is a clinical nutritionist.  I’ve been following him for several years by subscribing to his NutritionFacts.org blog.

As a very vocal critic of our food industry and our American eating habits, he provides an incredible amount of helpful information each week.  His insights are always backed by lots of research and documentation.

His video and written blogs are short with lots of punch.  Consider taking advantage of his free information to stay better informed.

This week, I simply wanted to share what I consider to be one of his best video blogs. It’s just one more eye-opener to the destructive nature of the American diet, using Okinawa as the centerpiece for his ongoing argument in favor of a change in our dietary habits.

Click on the video above. I think you will find it very informative – perhaps even inspirational enough to consider an audit of your diet.

Enjoy – and let me know what you think below.

P.S.  SCREW-UP ALERT! You will be receiving last weeks’ blog again this week in addition to this one. I hit the button a couple of seconds past my pre-programmed publish time last week which pushed it out to this week. Unfortunately, with my email carrier, I can’t take it back. Sorry for the email inbox clutter. 

Don’t Let Yourself Become a Senior Citizen. There’s a Better Alternative.

There’s been a rush of questions on Quora.com lately about when someone becomes a “senior citizen.”
Is it when you are 60? 70? 80? 90?
I don’t like the moniker.  Or most monikers tagged to those of us beyond mid-life.  So I fired off an answer to one of the posted questions and decided I’d share it with you.
Here was the question:

Is a senior citizen in their 60s or 70s, and at what point is one considered elderly?

My answer (augmented from the original Quora post):

It’s in the eye of the beholder.

I find “senior citizen” to be outdated, pejorative, ageist, and unnecessary.

I’m 78 (this month) and refuse to put myself in that category. This is not a denial that I am not older than most or that I’m not getting older. I just don’t need another moniker to remind me and to plunk me into a category that has a negative tone to it.

Culturally, we have this need to categorize people by age. It’s a by-product of the creativity of the American Psychology Association and corporate marketers.

For instance, until 1904, we had two age categories – adult and child. Then, in 1904, G. Stanley Hall, President of the APA, invented the term “adolescent.”

Since then, we’ve grown to seven categories: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age

Each one is a lucrative market for psychologists and clever corporate marketers.

It’s not surprising that we really don’t know what name to use for folks in that now-extended period between middle age and old age.  We’ve never been here before with 20-40 years ahead of us, most of it in good health. Senior citizen probably made sense when you were automatically there at 65 in the eyes of the government, financial industry, the general public and were facing just a few years before checking out.

It doesn’t fit anymore. And I, and many in my demographic slot, take umbrage with the term.

So, if you don’t mind, I’ll step over the “senior citizen” moniker and just consider myself a fully-functioning septuagenarian with more gas in my tank than I had when I was wandering in the haze of corporate life at age 50.

I don’t much like hanging with those who consider themselves “senior citizens” since conversations tend to become “organ recitals” about the latest surgery, colonoscopy, memory lapse, knee/hip/shoulder replacement, back pain or about someone they know who just went through all of the above.

I love engaging other “kick-ass” sexagenarians/septuagenarians/octogenarians who refuse to participate in the ageism that terms like “senior citizen” represent.

“Kick-ass defined”

How do you know if you are “kick-ass”? You are:

  1. An iconoclast, a revolutionary, a rebel – outspoken against ageist stereotypes, attitudes, and comments; against old, bad ideas, myths, and messages about aging (e.g. traditional retirement, automatic and unchangeable senescence, youth centricity); against conventional wisdom about most things; an “outlier” in several dimensions.
  2. High energy –  driven with a late-life sense of purpose.
  3. The CEO of your health – in control of your body and mind through acquired knowledge of your biology and practicing self-efficacy through sensible, healthful lifestyle habits.
  4. Curious – always learning, exploring, in a constant growth mode.
  5. Creative – demonstrating that creativity doesn’t deteriorate with age.
  6. Selfless producer and not a self-indulgent consumer – giving back, paying forward, lighting a path for those behind by sharing skills, experiences, talents.
  7. Necessary – to someone, all the time.

Equally important, I like to engage “youngers” be they millennials or GenXers because I have so much I can learn from them. And there’s a chance it will help break down the stereotypes they have about older people, a stereotype we have created ourselves by looking and acting like senior citizens or, worst case, geezers.

“Modern Elder” is the right replacement for “senior citizen.”

I like where Chip Conley, successful 50-something entrepreneur and author of a book entitled “Wisdom at Work: The Making of the Modern Elder” has gone with this. He’s coined the term “Modern Elder.”

Conley states that Modern Elders exhibit wisdom in the following ways:

  1. Good judgment
  2. Unvarnished insight
  3. Emotional intelligence
  4. Holistic thinking
  5. Stewardship

I think I’ve got most of these in me to bring out, polish up and do something meaningful with. I’m guessing you do too – unless you choose to be a senior citizen instead – and attend a lot of “organ recitals.”

Conley goes on to say:

“In fact, Modern Elders experience an emancipation from others’ expectations that allows us to transcend needless conventions which means we may appear more youthful and innocent. ‘Neoteny’ is a quality of being that allows certain adults to seem childlike and leads people to remark about how these elders seem so young at heart and timeless.”

See, doesn’t that sound and feel better than carrying a “senior citizen” bullseye on your back.

I can be a Modern Elder as long as I want and make a strong statement against ageism along the way.  There’s really no reason I, or anyone over 50, shouldn’t be a Modern Elder until the universe decides to take the parts back.

We can slow down that inevitability, ditch the monikers and use each day to share the gifts we’ve been given.

And leave the tags for the psychologists and marketers.

I hope this resonates. Let me know below with a comment or drop me an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

I trust that you are being safe and sensible during these challenging times.  If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so  at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

The Ultimate Act of Ageism is Upon Us. Are You Prepared?

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

Covid, shmovid!

It won’t touch me.

You see, I can’t let it touch me because – well, I’m too freaking old!

It’s a birthday month for me – number 78 in a few days.  It’s just a number but it drives me deeper into the “expendable” category that is subtly being hinted at here in the good ‘ol USA.  You know, that ultimate demonstration of ageism they have already put in motion in Italy where “battlefield triage” has people over 65 left alone on hospital gurneys to die from pneumonia.

It’s beginning to sound like there will be “no room at the inn, sir” if I show up with a fever.

Sir, do you prefer white or blue sheets on your hallway gurney?

But ma’am.  I’m in better physical condition than 80% of those 40 and up.

Sorry, sir.  I have my orders.  Please decide – we have others waiting.

Collectively, we’re smart enough to not let it get to that.  We’ll work through the toilet-paper and sanitizer frenzy, start listening to the right voices and hunker through this.

My wife and I, despite being in incredible physical condition, are self-quarantining.  We’re lucky we can.  We have deeply concerned and healthy 40-something children who are starting their role reversal early (with our cooperation) – doing some shopping for us, shielding us from 7-10-year-old grandkids (the most painful part).

As a family, we feel we are all on the same page, with a reasoned understanding of the complexity and danger involved and listening to the right voices. Calm and common sense should serve us well.

These are the cleanest hands EVER at this keyboard today. Believe me when I say that’s a major habit pattern modification.

Ron and I should be OK.

In the midst of all this, I found myself thinking about Ron.

I’ve never met or talked to Ron. I only know three things about Ron.

  1. He’s my age and has a health-building routine very similar, but slightly stronger, than mine.
  2. That he is a subscriber to this weekly newsletter.
  3. That he likes crazy socks.

These are his actual pictures.

Ron commented on the post that I put out on Quora.com on 12/24/19 that went viral and has logged 511,000 views as I write this.  The post was about the “best anti-aging workout.”   Seems I struck quite a nerve with my answer.

Ron and I haven’t shared any thoughts about covid but I’m guessing we’re on the same page with regard to our confidence that our biologies will handle an assault, even if we are relegated to a hallway gurney.

I’m sharing Ron’s comment here.  His story is the type that needs to be told because it validates the impact of a disciplined exercise routine.  His routine closely mirrors mine and goes a bit beyond.

I work to adhere to “Harry’s Rules”, the lifestyle rules written by Dr. Henry Lodge and appearing in the appendix of the life-altering book he co-authored with Chris Crowley entitled: “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond.”

Here’s a refresher in case you are silly enough to not invest in the book:

Harry’s Rules

  1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
  2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.
  3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
  4. Spend less than you make.
  5. Quit eating crap!
  6. Care.
  7. Connect and commit.

Ron and I are the same age – and are experiencing very similar results (Note: I don’t have the diabetic thing to worry about).  I don’t know, but it sounds like maybe Ron read the book too.

Here’s his comment:

Great post.

I’m 77. I maintain my weight normal with low carb diet. I go to gym 7 days a week. 30 minutes cardio on bike, rolling hills. 30–40 minutes circuit training with sets of 30 and abs sets of 50.

I work entire body every day. I keep weights moderate for me. Leg press 225–240. Curl 80–100. Abs 60 working front, both sides and rotating 50.

I never get sore.

I do circuit training as fast as I can, no resting between machines.

As a diabetic, I take 1/2 of a pill daily. With my diet and exercise program, I keep my A1C at 5.6 and non-fasting blood sugar at 85–88. My heart rate when I get up is 45–50. Days after lots of coffee it’s around 55–60. Blood pressure 120/60. I used to take 3 pills for blood pressure. Now one small one.

My body fat is 16%. High muscle mass.

It’s vital as we age to really keep muscle mass up so we need to lift enough weights to increase and maintain muscle. Lifting light weights sets of 10–12 with a minute or more between sets is a waste of time. I think one set of 30–50 where you need to press to get the last 5 done is better. Working different muscle groups on different days is too confusing. If I work the entire body every day I never get sore.

I’m in better shape now than when I was 70.

If there is any magic in Ron’s routine it’s in the fact that it is a routine. Good health habits happen when we routinize them.  If we don’t, they don’t happen.  They become haphazard, ineffective, and easy to abandon.

Take a look at the math. His routine comprises 3-4% of his week. Compare that with the 20-30% of the typical week that goes to some form of screen time, like CNN/MSNBC/FOX energy-sapping covid stories we get sucked into while cortisol and cholesterol do their quiet, insidious destruction.

So, is 3% worth it to keep you off a gurney, pandemic or no pandemic? Or alive if you are triaged onto one?

Keep your damn gurney!

My plan is for no gurneys when I return my parts to the universe.  My life novel ends going face-down in a Colorado trout stream still striving to prove that I was smarter and wilier than an animal with a brain the size of a pea.

I suspect Ron may have just as nutty a plan.

Be safe, be sensible, take advantage of your good health inheritance.  If any of this makes sense or appeals, there is more in my article archives, and more to come, at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

 

 

 

What? You Haven’t Gotten Your Stent Yet?

Over the last 30 months of invading your email with this weekly diatribe, I’ve frequently quoted a fellow named Katz, as in Dr. David Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM. (I don’t have the time to look up all those credentials – feel free).

Dr. Katz is very quotable. I first got hooked on Dr. Katz with a quote that I heard him say several years ago in a video recording of him addressing a room full of his peers.  He said:

“We already know all that we need to know to reduce, by 80%, the five major killers in our country.  We don’t need any more fancy drugs or equipment or more Nobel Prizes.  We know all we need to know today.”

He wasn’t admonishing the general public with that.  He was sort of “in the faces” of his peers, saying that physicians need to be more “preventative” in their patient care than “curative.”  At least that’s the way I interpreted his statement.

Health advice vs medical advice

Dr. Katz separates himself from much of his profession by being an advocate of lifestyle as the route to good health versus the “drug it or cut-it-out” methods of our broken, profit-driven health-care/disease-care system.

It’s also safe to say the food industry would like him to disappear because of the truth he speaks about their “health-destroying” practices.

So when I saw the following quote appear in an article he posted on LinkedIn entitled “The Disease Delusion”, he once again gripped me with his spot-on prose about how far off the rails we are in our current culture.

“America runs on coronary artery disease.

 Coronary artery disease is fully embraced in our culture as a veritable rite of passage. If, at a certain age, you don’t have a CABG (coronary artery bypass grafting) scar for show and tell, or at least an anecdote about the particular intracoronary stent you’ve received, you are the odd man (or woman) out, the cultural anomaly. Real Americans, and increasingly real residents of all the world’s developed countries, get stents! One is all but embarrassed not to have one.”

Here’s a link to the full article.

 I admire Dr. Katz for his position on real health and for his creative way of writing about it.  So, I’m keeping this week’s post short to let him do the talking.

You can find additional creative paragraphs in the article, like this one:

“The distal, or root causes, are a lifestyle also subordinate to the dictates of culture- a culture that runs on Dunkin; peddles multicolored marshmallows as part of a complete breakfast; and conflates the Olympics with a trifecta of fast food, junk food, and sugar-sweetened beverages.”

I so wish I’d said that.

Please use this post to read the article and get acquainted with Dr. Katz and his raw style of unveiling the truth about how we’ve lost our way in self-care.

I hope you will follow him.

I publish weekly on Mondays at 5 p.m. Mountain.  If you haven’t, you can subscribe 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.”

85/15, 8 of 10, and 114 Years

What’s in a number?

Meet Ron Benfield, Vancouver, WA.

Numbers are a big deal for Ron.

He has been swimming in them for over four decades as a finance executive with several prestigious hospitals and health systems.

I met Ron last fall on the phone while doing business development work with an executive healthcare outplacement and career transition firm, Wiederhold and Associates.

Ron is a previous client of W&A.  My call was a courtesy “catch up” call to nurture an important networking relationship.

In my pre-call prep, I sensed this might not be a typical call.  My first hint was the background picture on his LinkedIn profile (shown above). From database records, I knew Ron had just entered his seventh decade (he’s 61).  Reaching the top of Mount Rainier at, or close, to that age hinted that this could be an interesting conversation.

It turned out to go beyond interesting.

A “third-age” poster child.

Ron is now on my “Wall of Fame” for modeling a purposeful, productive, fulfilling post-career third age.

(Newsflash: There is still a lot of room on the wall for anyone interested).

Starting new at 59

Ron’s four-decade W-2 career is quite notable. He had earned a reputation as a stellar turn-around financial specialist while serving in various C-level (COO, CFO) roles. Pulling hospitals back from the brink of insolvency became his calling card.

Despite his mastery over numbers, there was one that was out of his control.  One that forced his most serious life-pivot.

In his last corporate C-level role, he “had begun to feel the presence of an unwillingness to value a 60-year-old who has seen more things over the fresh views of someone in their 40s.”

He harbored no enthusiasm for the uphill battle to get hired at his age.

Despite being financially set to age 114 (I’ll come back to that number), Ron drop-kicked the idea of retirement, booted his W-2 job (with an ageism-based boost from his last employer) and took his deep expertise and reputation forward into his own business at age 59.

Thus Millwood and Associates was born a year and a half ago, leveraging his team-building and financial turn-around skills to form a consulting firm with seven virtual specialists.  Each has unique skill-sets that enable Millwood to do essentially what he did as a W-2 employee – building and directing a team to find and fix the causes of the financial ailments that beset most hospitals and healthcare systems.

Immediate success? No, but close. It took four months to generate customer interest, a time in which Ron discovered what it was like to put on a selling hat.

Meeting expectations at this point? Ron is blown away with their results.  They have all they can handle and soon may have to turn away business.  And they haven’t reached outside of the state yet!

Ron’s goal with his business is straightforward: to provide his customers with solutions they can carry forward without Millwood being entrenched for the long term.  He wants to hand off the knowledge.  It’s a philosophy that has his existing customers returning for more help in other areas and the high-class problem of having his team and resources stretched.

His vision is to build a company that will sustain itself “post-Millwood and post-Ron” providing his clients with problem-solving skills to find and permanently plug the plethora of financial leaks that exist in the hospital environment.

I could stop here and have a pretty good article, don’t you think?

But that feel-good story isn’t what excited me most about my conversation with Ron.

It was the life perspectives that Ron brought to the story that I found most profound and helpful. I’ll share three.

Time: 85/15 versus 15/85

Long ago, Ron realized one of the trade-offs of working in the corporate world meant giving up control of a very large portion of your time – as much as 80-85% by his estimate.  Meetings, recurring monthly activities, lots of low impact stuff.   The 15-20% left over was where one tried to make a difference.

Enough was enough.  As he evaluated “what’s next” at 59, he knew he had to reverse that and that would only happen outside the W-2 world.

He has reversed that with his new business.  Every day is in his control and virtually every hour within it.

8 of 10 

Ron longed for a setting where he looked forward to going to work 8 out of 10 of his workdays, something that happened more rarely in the W-2 world. Starting this business has become a 10 of 10.  He can’t believe he gets to do what he does each day, get paid for it and move a needle that badly needs moving.

I suggested to him that it sounds like he has achieved the Japanese concept of “ikigai” which translates to “a reason to get up in the morning” or a “reason  for being.” Graphically, it looks like this.  He appears to be in that green-shaded sweet spot.

 

114 years

I was surprised when Ron told me he plans to live to 114, exceeding my goal of reaching 112 1/2.  Ron decided, at 57, that he wanted that to be his midpoint so he doubled it for his longevity goal.

He’s quite serious – and confident.  His confidence is buoyed by an Adventist upbringing and lifestyle.  Raised a Seventh-day Adventist, Ron continues to abide by tenants of the faith which includes a number of things that bode well for extended longevity.  For instance.

  1. He is mostly vegetarian.
  2. He’s a committed exerciser with mountain-climbing, hiking, and biking his favorite activities.
  3. He honors the Saturday sabbath which is devoted to restoration through family time, church, no work, no shopping, and a well-deserved nap or two.
  4. Socially connected – through his business, with his family, church, and within his community.

You may recall that Loma Linda, California – predominantly a Seventh-day Adventist community – was one of the five societies in the world with the highest concentration of centenarians featured in the best-selling book “The Blue Zones” by National Geographic explorer, Dan Buettner.

Ron is still part of a decades-long study of the Adventist lifestyle.

I like his chances of hitting that number.

But most of all I like the model that Ron is following: a balanced lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning as he moves into his third age.

Ron checks the box for purposeful, fulfilling labor with Millwood.

The leisure box is temporarily not fully checked as business momentum builds, but he has an African trip on the books and several countries selected that he and his wife Joyce plan to visit.

The learning box was checked long ago.  Ron is an avid reader, stays on top of changes within healthcare and does sudoku daily.  He also is an accomplished cello player which he admits he needs to spend more time with because of the mental challenge it presents.

The last box that Ron checks is the “generativity” box.  He is devoted to helping others by sharing what he has learned, in business and in life, with those coming up behind him, whether it be his adult children, friends or aspiring healthcare professionals.  Ron is one of the most active and appreciated networkers in the Wiederhold and Associates executive network, never denying an opportunity to share his experience and knowledge with another W&A network member seeking career counsel.

I came away from my conversation with Ron with a greater appreciation for paying attention to the numbers in my life – especially those involving time.  Our casual treatment of time overlooks its irretrievable nature, a fact that really squeezes in as we pass the mid-point.  I don’t get the sense that Ron is feeling squeezed on that front.

I also have appreciated Ron’s humility.  As I do with anyone that I want to feature, I had him review a draft of this article. Although he agrees on the accuracy, he feels it’s a bit too flattering.  I don’t.  His story just has too much of the message I’m advocating for me not to share details, professional and personal. Sixty isn’t a time for a landing but is a great spot for another take off leveraging acquired professional and life skills and experiences to pay forward and leave something that lives on when the parts are sent back to the universe.

Underneath that humility, Ron is making that happen.

With a 17 year difference in our ages, my 112 1/2 won’t have me around to see if he makes the 114.  Would one or more of you out there make a mental note to check on Ron in 2073 to see if he makes it and send me a text?  Who knows – by then, we may have that capability.

Do you know anybody like Ron Benfeld (maybe it’s you)? Let me know by email to gary@makeagingwork.com.  I really want to feature more stories like Ron’s that draw attention to what we “modern elders” can bring to the table.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to this 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.”

Enough of this “Life Purpose” thing! Can’t We Get Over It?

Do me a favor. Google “life purpose.”

Go ahead – I’ll wait.

Did you come up with the same number I did: 5,680,000.

Is it really THAT important?

Some would say it’s in the “woo-woo”, “touchy-feely” category crafted to sell books, workshops, and coaching services.

Others would say it’s essential to a life well-lived.

I’ll go with the latter.

The former and latter are working well for Richard Leider, founder of Inventure – The Purpose Company. He’s written three books on the topic and is ranked by Forbes as one of the “Top 5” most respected executive coaches on the planet.

Influential Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan, maintains that people die early for three reasons:

    1. No money
    2. No friends
    3. No purpose

Having coached over 18,000 successful entrepreneurs to success over 40+ years, Dan has observed the power of purpose and knows of what he speaks.

There must be something to it.

What is it anyway?

The University of Minnesota website Taking Charge of Your Health and Wellbeing  describes it this way:

Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For some people, purpose is connected to vocation—meaningful, satisfying work. For others, their purpose lies in their responsibilities to their family or friends. Others seek meaning through spirituality or religious beliefs. Some people may find their purpose clearly expressed in all these aspects of life.

OK, if it’s that important, why do so few end up with one?

Approximately 45% of U.S. employees are not happy in their jobs, according to a 2019 survey by The Conference Board.  Maybe building somebody else’s dream isn’t the most fertile ground for finding a life purpose.

Some find it there – many don’t.

In this era of Bernie, Elizabeth, Peter, and AOC, we seem to be thinking there’s hope in having it found for us.   Just get in line – D.C has the solution to your angst.

Then again, maybe not.

This caption from P. 259 of the book “Younger Next Year” by co-author Dr. Henry Lodge unpacks some interesting insight into that solution (bolding is mine):

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, enormous numbers of Russian men lost the only structure they had known.  With nothing to replace it, many of them lost their sense of place, of belonging, of matter, of simply being needed or relevant to their families and to their society.  What happened? Within just a few years, life expectancy for Russian men plummeted from sixty-four years to fifty-seven years.  They died limbic deaths. Heart attack and cancer rates soared as did depression, alcoholism, suicide, accident and violent deaths – all cries of limbic agony.  In some ways, what happened in Russia is happening to many of us in retirement, and it’s scary as hell.”

Hmmm – a forced sense of purpose doesn’t seem to have legs.  And the loss, however shallow, is devastating.

We’re sandwiched in a no-sense-of-purpose system.

OK, I may be going off the rails here – please let me know if you think I am.

I’m thinking we lack a “front-end system” that comes anywhere close to broaching the topic of life purpose.

We’re plopped into a classroom with thirty others, told what to learn, how to learn within a system that hasn’t changed in a hundred years.  Conformity is paramount, originality is often unrecognized, stifled.

Harry Chapin – the greatest troubadour ever – picked up on this and put it together in one of his greatest songs: “Flowers Are Red” – enjoy and ponder it here. 

We carry the conformity forward into the 40-year phase of this 20th-century life-cycle model and getta job, getta wife, getta family, getta mortgage, fenced yard, 2 1/2 kids, two cars and a labrador retriever, getta title, getta 401K, and getta gold watch.

A sense of “life purpose” in there? Maybe – evidence says usually not.

Then we back-end it with a wrap-up system called retirement that’s fully encumbered with an 85-year-old process whose purpose is to move us out and into a purposeless life of leisure and self-indulgence.

And then we die young.

Lacking a beginning, middle, and end, life-purpose development doesn’t have much of a chance it seems.  So we “live too short and die too long” in our society.

 

Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us:

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

It’s not too late!

I’m encouraged.  I believe we are beginning to see the emergence of a focus on “life purpose.”  From this seat, it seems to be coming from those at the mid-life point – that uneasy time of tough questions (Why am I here? Does anybody care?); of waning career interest or opportunity; of empty-nesting; of a deepening sense of life’s finite nature; of a sense of not wanting to waste the acquired wisdom, skills, talents, and experiences on a cruise ship,  beach, golf course or pickle-ball court.

Maybe even a sense of having better answers to the mess the country finds itself in.

We have the tools.

Permit me to link two phrases that we should be pondering in the face of the messiness around us:

“Life purpose” and “Active wisdom”

Unless terminally infected with the narcissism our current culture promotes, we are drawn to serve, to pass on what we know, to lighten a better path for those behind. It’s called “generativity.“  It seems to surface the drive for a life purpose.

It provides the “why.”

“Active wisdom” is a term coined by anthropologist, activist, and writer Mary Catherine Bateson.  She calls it a “new stage” where “wisdom is reaped from years of experience and living.”  She calls it the “most acceptable and positive trait associated with longevity.”

“Active wisdom” brings the “what.”

Not as I did.

I’ll be your poster-child for the wrong path.  I drank the 20th-century Koolaid and barnacled-over my innate talents or any chance for life-purpose immersion for 6 1/2 decades.

But it came, gradually, grudgingly – slowly removing the last vestiges of conformity and the cultural expectations and beliefs that were in the way. It feels right to try to bring forward the mere modicum of my life’s accomplishments and acquired wisdom, season it with legions of mistakes, challenges, and trials and to share it as a light for somebody.

Is there certainty in it all? Not even.

But neither was there on the other path.

I’ll confirm that there’s lots of room on this “road less traveled”  – and that the need is great.

Hop on – you’re wired to make a difference.

Your thoughts, criticisms, compliments, complaints all mean a lot. Leave any or all below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to this 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.”

 

We Aren’t Made for the Life We Are Living.  Here’s why.

Do you remember your biology class in high school?

Considering that I’ll be celebrating my 60th high school reunion this year – assuming one of those remaining from my class of 12 has the inclination to organize it – you’ll forgive me if I don’t recall much from the class.

I remember Mr. Parsons, the most-liked teacher in our high school of 95 students.  And I do recall dissecting a frog amidst the smell of the formaldehyde from which it was extracted.

But I have a hunch, with adolescent hormones at play, my mind was probably elsewhere – more likely on Maureen and what the weekend might hold.

We probably talked about cell structure but I doubt we applied it to how it affects our own biology.  I don’t remember any discussion of the brain.  If there was, it was soon lost in favor or basketball or football practice – or Maureen.

The message we didn’t get – or missed – is that the very cells found in that frog are fundamentally the same as the 35 trillion or so we all have in our bodies – cell membrane, nucleus,  cytoplasm, ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi vesicles, mitochondria, plus some other stuff.

Cells that have been doing their thing for billions and billions of years. Cells that are organized into an amazingly complex 24×7 immune system that’s working its butt off to compensate for our biological naivete and the gazillion nefarious villains that want to attack.

However it happened, that kluged-up assembly enabled us to inherit a birthright of good health, a biological fortune.

Unfortunately, our lifestyles don’t honor that birthright. 

We seem to be hoping our birthright will catch up with our lifestyle rather than adapting our lifestyle to our birthright.  It’s like: if we watch enough TV and eat enough Carl’s Junior and biggie fries, our biological fortune will eventually adapt and honor our lifestyle.

OK – sorry – that was insulting.

But, think about it.  For multi-billions of years, cells – fundamentally the same ones you and I have a few dozen trillion of – haven’t changed in how they produce energy, divide, decay, and die.

Regardless of whether you believe we evolved onto the savannah some 300 million years ago or that we started as we are in a garden some mystical number of years ago, the fact is our cells work with a functional design that doesn’t work well with a twenty-first-century lifestyle.

I lean toward the savannah theory, with famine and saber-tooths the norm.  Cells interpreted the infrequent surfeit – of a feast on an animal kill – as a chance to prepare for the inevitable winter, famine or the need to escape the saber-tooth.  They dutifully stored the bounty as fat to burn when those conditions arose.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century.  No winters, no famine, no saber-tooths.  Our lifestyles ran away from our biology. Our cells haven’t caught up. And won’t.

So, they just do their thing and store that fat. And store that fat. And store that fat.

Waiting for a winter – or a saber-tooth to run away from.

And then they decay and die early.

Alas, we thus dishonor our biological fortune and “live too short and die too long.”

On this 21-st century journey, we’re 20 pounds heavier than 30 years ago on average but we’re no taller.

Sixty-five percent of U.S. males are overweight; twenty percent are obese.

Fifty percent of our population is pre-diabetic and seventy percent of those don’t know it.

We unconsciously accept that we will “get old and die” and then most of us find out that we will “get old and live”, enduring a sad life of extended morbidity and early frailty  In bodies that believe they are in the grip of famine.

Aging is up to nature; decay is up to us.

It’s pretty simple.  Our biology only knows growth or decay. Biologically, there is no retirement or aging – only growth or decay.  So we have a binary choice – a road to good health by promoting growth or a road to frailty through lifestyle choices.

Our cellular biology is still poised to prepare for winter, famine, and saber tooths while we wallow in an eternal summer of plenty romancing our remotes.

Dr. Henry Lodge said in the book “Younger Next Year”:

“Your brain has no care for your happiness, no thought about your retirement.  It is a ceaseless machine, in relentless pursuit of the perfect match between input and output – between growth and decay. With that thought in mind, think about what your physical brain learned from the way you lived today, and think about whether it told your body to grow or decay.”

We mistakenly assume that we are made for this life which has become a nightmarish mix of bad food, sedentary lifestyle, stress, loneliness, and chronic diseases.  Then we cap it all off with the “ultimate casualty” called retirement that ensures that we continue on the path called “decay” and off the path called “growth.”

Our take-home message? What we do physically, what we eat, what we think, what we feel affects our body with processes refined on the savannah.

Our biological fortune is ignored and abused.

There is no famine or saber-tooth coming to save us from the stored fat and its adverse effects.  We need only to gain an appreciation for the birthright and find suitable substitutes.

And that starts with a mindset that acknowledges we weren’t designed to live the way we do.

And that’s hard because how we live “feels so good” and the alternative is a direct assault on the comfort, convenience, and conformity we strive for.

While it kills us early.

Let us know what your thoughts are on this. Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to this 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 Attitude May Not Get You Past 78.9

A couple of blogs ago, I mentioned that I started taking the advice of a large squadron of very successful writers, who have persuaded me that learning the craft of writing is “unglamorous blue-collar work” and that I should “just write.”

Duh!

So I’m holding fast to writing at least 500 words a day on something in my mental wheelhouse (positive aging, health and wellness, career/life management in the third age, etc.)

I’ve found the easiest way to hit that daily goal is to pick a question submitted on Quora.com which is, according to Wikipedia, “an American question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, and edited by Internet users, either factually or in the form of opinions.”

It’s been around since 2009 and has a user base of around 300 million active users.

I’ve been answering at least one question a day for a few months now and, quite shockingly, have had, as of this writing, over 885,000 views of my posts in Quora and achieved #1 Quora writer on the planet in one category (Longevity) and climbed into the top ten in two others (Health and Fitness).

It’ll be a tough position to hold but is a nice ego-stroke while it lasts.

////////////////

This Quora question hit my email this week:

“What should you do daily in order to live super healthy when you become 70?”

Smack into my wheelhouse!

I think my response is pretty good. Probably not good enough to go viral like one post did where I answered the question “What is the best anti-aging workout?  It went viral with 445,000 Quora views.

I decided to let you determine if this latest one is good so I’m reposting it here for this week’s blog, with some modification and additions.  You be the judge and let me know what you think.

P.S. If you’ve been tagging along with me on this 2 ½ year blogging journey, you’ve heard some of this before.  But I believe “repetition is the mother of learning” still applies.

“What should you do daily in order to live super healthy when you become 70?”

The components of good health that will carry us into our 70s and beyond in good health are not complicated and we’ve known them for a long time. Sad to say, individually, we choose to be naive to them, find them too difficult and inconvenient and end up not doing them.

I suggest that the most important “daily” activity to insure being super healthy late into life is to remind ourselves each day that we have an inheritance of good health and an obligation to maintain it.

We aren’t inclined to put the components of good health – nutrition, exercise, social engagement, continuous learning, sense of purpose/service – in place without an attitude that honors this inheritance.

This point was driven home to me several years ago when I stumbled across the book “Dare to Be 100” written by Dr. Walter Bortz, a semi-retired Stanford University geriatric physician.

In this timeless book, he lays out a simple roadmap for good health using the acronym D-A-R-E:

  • D=Diet
  • A=Attitude
  • R=Renewal/rejuvenation
  • E=Exercise

The D, R, and E are biological compass points for living to 100 (which, BTW, we all should be able to do). But attitude is the most important and the most difficult because, as Dr. Bortz says, “it’s in attitude that we find all the planning and decision-making that facilitate the biological steps. It is possible to live to 100 by chance, but not likely.”

So living healthily into our 70s and beyond isn’t going to happen by chance either and will only happen with a commitment to a discipline that builds the simple components of diet, exercise, social engagement, having a cause bigger than yourself, and continuous learning into a lifestyle.

It’s important to remember that there is no biological reason for any of us not to live to 100 or beyond.

The body has demonstrated that it can last 122 years and 164 days which is the benchmark for longevity set by a Parisian woman named Jeanne Calment. (Yeah, I know – you may have heard that this has been debunked.  Look again – the debunking has been debunked.)

The right attitude acknowledges this as our whole-life potential and the inheritance that we should honor.

Will we get to 122 1/2? Not likely. But with an attitude that acknowledges that the body is designed for a longer life than we experience on average, we enhance our chances of getting closer to it than if we accept that average life span as our destiny.

On average, at an overall average lifespan in the U.S. of around 80 (78.9 for men, 81.1 for women), we achieve only about 66% of that “whole life potential.”

With the exception of the consequences of the infrequent “blueprint error/genetic defect”, we die early in our culture simply because of our lifestyles. Our declines as we move into our 60s and 70s are thirty-year problems of lifestyle, not disease. We are more victims of our own healthcare illiteracy and lack of discipline than anything else.

Let me quote Dr. Henry Lodge, co-author of the best-selling and life-changing book  “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond”.

“The simple fact is that we know perfectly well what to do. Some 70 percent of premature death and aging are lifestyle-related. Heart attacks, strokes, the common cancers, diabetes, most falls, fractures, and serious injuries, and many more illnesses are primarily caused by the way we live. If we had the will to do it, we could eliminate more than half of all disease in men and women over fifty. Not delay it, eliminate it.”

I believe that statement has attitude written all over it, as well as a call to learn about our biological inheritance, how it works and how to treat it.

I’m two months short of 78 and approach each day with an acquired understanding of how my body and mind work at the cellular level (thanks to Dr. Lodge).  I set a preposterous age goal of 112 ½ at age 75 because I wanted a third of my life left to get things done that didn’t happen in the first two-thirds.

I have no illusions about getting there. I was guilty of some marginal health habits in my first fifty years and before I acquired this self-care awareness. But I know my attitude will get me a lot closer – and healthier along the way – than if I accepted only living to the average lifespan of 78.9 for men in the U.S.

If that were my attitude, I should be getting my affairs in order – which I’m not.  I don’t need that drag on my attitude.

Average isn’t healthy

I started re-reading “Younger Next Year” again this week for the fifth time.  It was good to be reminded of Dr. Lodge’s description of how he watched so many of his patients of 20-30 years simply start a gradual decline and accept an average lifespan as destiny.

He realized that he, along with our medical establishment, had failed them by providing them with good medical care but not great health care. He admitted that he “like most doctors in America, had been doing the wrong job well. Modern medicine does not concern itself with lifestyle problems.  Doctors don’t treat them, medical schools don’t teach them and insurers don’t pay to solve them.”

We forget – or didn’t learn along the way – that what we’ve come to accept as normal ailments and deterioration are not a normal part of growing old. In Dr. Lodge’s words “they are an outrage. An outrage that we have simply gotten used to because we set the bar so shamefully low.” (See “Whole-life chart above!)

I’m going to ignore 78.9 as it flies by, which it will as each day does now. It’s just an attitude, accepting of an eventual demise but not one conceding to a “bar set so shamefully low.”

How’s your attitude about your long-term health?

  • Is it infected with illiteracy about how your biology works? (Remedy: Chapters 3 & 4 of Younger Next Year)
  • Is it infected with a belief that your “DNA is your destiny” or that your genetics determines your lifespan (which, BTW, it does not.)
  • Is it infected with lifestyle habits spawned by comfort, convenience, conformity, and cultural expectations?
  • Is it infected with a longevity goal “set so shamefully low?”

Can I suggest that 78.9 should be just a signpost reminding you that you are well beyond average and that it is merely a mid-point in your healthy third-age journey to 100 or beyond?

As I immersed myself this morning in the challenging chapter 3 of “Younger Next Year”, Dr. Lodge rocked my world for the fifth time with the reminder that we have “- stepped outside of the crucible of our biological evolution” and with a “- remarkable triumph of ego over intellect, we simply assume that we were ‘made’ for this life: that we were purpose-built for life in the twenty-first century.  That is a deeply mistaken view, and one we must get over.” 

He reminds us that the great problem of our times is “surfeit (excess abundance) and idleness” with bodies and minds that still instinctively respond to the abundance as preparation for famine as we did 300 millennia ago when we barely survived winters and hid from saber-tooths.  Now, no famine is coming but our biology hasn’t caught up with change.

We have lots to eat with nothing that can eat us.

He concludes:

“Our lifestyle – especially in retirement, especially in this wonderful country – is a disease more deadly than cancer, war or plague.  We live longer because of modern medicine, but many of us live wretchedly and many of us die much younger than we should.  The point is that we have to learn to cure ourselves, or, in the midst of all that plenty, we will live and prematurely die in unnecessary pain – in bodies that believe they are in the grip of famine.”

If you’ve read the book (please don’t tell me you haven’t!), you know that Dr. Lodge’s main solution is exercise and that he does a marvelous job of convincing readers of the validity of that recommendation by explaining its impact at the cellular level.

From it, we have “Harry’s Rules” which I leave as the call to action with this article (along with reading the book), to help us all get well past 78.9 and 81.1. Without an attitude committing to something like this, that is likely to be our fate.

Harry’s Rules

  1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
  2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.
  3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
  4. Spend less than you make.
  5. Quit eating crap!
  6. Care.
  7. Connect and commit.

Let me know your thoughts – scroll down and leave a comment.

Our tribe is growing rapidly, thanks to your consistent support and spreading the word along with folks catching my diatribes on Quora.  If you haven’t joined, trip on over to www.makeagingwork.com, join the list and receive a copy of my free ebook “Achieving Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”