Ten habits That Will Improve Your Life the Most After 55

In case you haven’t noticed, if you are over 55 today, you are the center of a lot of attention.  As a “boomer”, you’re a hot topic because you are part of the hysteria about the aging of our society.

You see, in the eyes of the government, media, academia, most corporations, and many of the Gen Xers and millennials, you threaten the stability of our country because, well, you’re getting older. And that means you are less capable, less productive, less motivated, less energetic, less whatever.

In spite of what we’ve learned about our mind and body and its resilience and potential, culturally we persist in believing that there is a major downturn in capability when we approach the end of our sixth decade or move into our seventh.

Pardon my bluntness, but that prevailing attitude has a lot bull**** mixed into it!

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I believe in following the money.  And when you F-T-M on a lot of the attitudes about aging, you get the sense that there just might be some ulterior motives in trying to keep us in the dark about our potential to age more successfully, gracefully, optimally or whatever “-lly” you prefer.

 

Let me take a shot at a couple of “suspects”:

  • Our healthcare (er, disease care) system: Consider what would happen to our $3.5 trillion healthcare system if that system decided to revert to proactive healthcare instead of reactive healthcare.  What if, instead of drug it or cut it out, our healthcare practitioners practiced the Greek concept of “Hygeia” which means “soundness” or “wholeness” of the body and keeping it fit.  Instead of “Panacea” or “remedy for all diseases” and chasing the horse with pills or scalpels after its left the barn, what if “Hygeia” took over and fewer people showed up for their $35 co-pay, “fix-me, Doc” experience – because they didn’t need to.  Just think of the horrific impact it would have on general cash flow within this out-of-control system.  Empty hospitals.  Docs with openings on their schedule and more than 15 minutes to meet with you. Rusty radiology machines. Empty waiting rooms. Fewer drug addictions. Kind of a refreshing thought, isn’t it?
  • The pharmaceutical industry. Can you imagine if we learned how to get well and stay well what the drug companies would do? Extend that to TV advertising.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that drug advertising dominates TV advertising these days.  Neither of those industries wants us to take charge of our own health and do the things that allow us to avoid taking their drugs or ignoring their commercials.  Our healthcare naivete/illiteracy keeps them in business and profitable.
  • The food industry. OMG, don’t even get me started. Consider that we exist in a profit-oriented society where our healthcare system doesn’t care about what we eat and a food industry that doesn’t care about our health.  Sixty-five percent of us are overweight, twenty percent of us are obese. Heart disease remains the biggest killer.  Diabetes has reached epidemic levels.  On average, as a population, we’ve gained fifteen pounds over the last couple of decades but haven’t gotten any taller.  We succumb to the convenience of processed and manufactured/pretend food for a lifetime and then wonder why we get sick for a long time before we cash out.  Does the food industry care?  If you’ve ever been in middle aisles of an American grocery store, I think you know the answer to that.

Is there an answer for healthy survival in the midst of all this.  Yep – and it really isn’t complicated.  I didn’t say easy – I said it’s not complicated.

It’s called self-efficacy.  It’s getting educated and taking full responsibility for your health.

It’s never too late to start; it’s always too early to quit.

Here are ten simple things to do to improve your health and enhance your chances of living longer and healthier. Most of these you know. But, are you doing them?  As the proverb says:  ‘Knowing and not doing is not knowing.”

  1. Don’t retire. How’s that for a controversial starting point? Retirement, as we’ve known it for several decades, is dying, none too soon.  And for good reason.  Joint research by the Social Security Administration and the National Institute on Aging indicates that full-time retirement is associated with a 23-29 percent increase in mobility and daily activity difficulties, an 8 percent increase in illness, and 11 percent decline in mental health.
  2. Upgrade your diet away from animal-based and processed foods. The verdict is in, and has been for a while: a largely plant-based diet is by far the healthiest.  The only argument the food industry can take against that – in particular the beef, pork, and poultry industries – is that a plant-based diet doesn’t provide enough protein.  Wrong!   Most nutrition experts claim we are over-proteined in our culture and feel a plant-based diet offers adequate protein.   F-T-M and don’t buy the meat and poultry industry argument.
  3. Up your exercise and include strength training. Less than a quarter of Americans 18 or older met physical activity guidelines for cardiovascular and muscle-strengthening activity in 2017 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On page 56 (adult) and page 68 (older adult) of the downloadable .pdf of the government Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans,  minimum recommended exercise calls for 2 ½ – 5 hours a week of moderate-intensity or 1 1/4 – 2 ½ hours of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week.  Muscle-strengthening activities involving all major muscle groups should be added on two or more days a week. Get your heart rate into the optimal exercise range for your age (220 minus your age times .65 and .85) and sustain it.

The weight training is vital. You are experiencing sarcopenia and probably aren’t aware of it.  We all fall victim to it.  It’s loss of muscle mass and it started for us all in our 30s.  The only antidote is strength training.  Remember this simple mantra:  Aerobic exercise will give you life, strength training will make it worth living.

  1. Get more sleep. No magic here.  You need a minimum of seven hours a night at this age.  Naps count.  Research shows that a chronic lack of sleep, or getting poor quality sleep, increases the risk of disorders including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and obesity.
  2. Challenge your brain. Don’t believe the myth that brain senescence is automatic.  It isn’t.  Oh, it can happen if you let it.  But we’ve known for years that our brain, regardless of age, can produce new synaptic connections.  It’s called neurogenesis.  Think of your brain as a muscle.  It, too, can atrophy.  Use it or lose it.
  3. Maintain a high level of social activity. AARP says that social isolation is as damaging as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.  Too often, reduced social engagement is a consequence of the retirement phase of life. We now know that being socially active plays a key role in longevity and good health.   TV and Lazyboy are deadly combinations.
  4. Assess your relationships and do some housecleaning. Do you have toxic relationships in your life? We benefit by getting rid of negative, draining relationships. Motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, famously said: “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”  We are greatly influenced by those closest to us, in the way we think, our self-esteem, our decision making.  Severing a relationship can be tough, but vital to avoid the energy drain and excess cortisol production that a bad relationship can cause.  Do yourself and your toxic friend(s) a favor – cut the cord.
  5. Increase your interaction with younger people. We seem to be quick to throw rocks at Millenials when we should make an effort to interact more with them.  It will be a mutually-beneficial relationship.  You feed off their energy, enthusiasm, ideas, and tech-savviness.  They gain from your wisdom, steadiness, and common sense.   It’s encouraging to see more and more companies discovering this and striving toward multi-generational workforces.
  6. Learn something new every day. Henry Ford said: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.”  We lament our muscle atrophy as we age but ignore our brain atrophy.  One of the greatest old dead white men, Leonardo de Vinci, nailed it:  “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”
  7. Get savvy on basic technology. Technology development will continue to accelerate. If you are still pondering the purchase of a smartphone, well, you may have some serious catching up to do.  Yes, there are downsides to all the tech that surrounds us.  But the upsides are much greater.

There may be an organization in your area that specializes in teaching technology to seniors.  One good resource is a site called Senior Planet  which “celebrates aging by sharing information and resources that support aging with attitude, and helps people who were born long before the digital revolution to stay engaged and active by bringing a digital-technology focus to a range of topics – among them news, health, sex and dating, art and design, senior style, travel, and entertainment.”  They have physical locations in New York City. Plattsburgh, NY, San Antonio, TX, Palo Alto, CA and just opened in Denver, CO.

  1. Find someone to help/mentor. There is often a serendipitous effect of mentoring someone that goes beyond helping.  Mentors typically improve their own skills by being inspired by new ideas, expanding their network and learning new strategies, technologies, and methods.

OK, I don’t count well.  The last one is a bonus.

The list could be much longer.  I hope there is a pearl in this list you hadn’t heard or thought about.  I don’t expect you to agree with all of them.   I’d love to hear your disagreement/counter-argument.  Scroll down and leave a comment.

 

 

 

The One Word That Is The Most Dangerous To Our Health

 

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

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

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

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

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

Why do you need to know this?

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

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

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

Help your body help you

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insidious is a word that we should understand – and fear

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

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

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

Eggs, meat, and potatoes were the staples.

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

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

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

Reversing the effects of insidious habits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

You’ve been hijacked

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

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

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

Exercise – the life extender

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Your Dentate Gyrus Needs a Pair of Sneakers!

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Did you know you have a dentate gyrus?

I just learned I’ve got one.

So do you.

I didn’t know it.

You probably didn’t know it either.

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

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

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

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

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

How was I to know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But sneakers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

It starts with O2

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

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

It’s a simple formula: 

220 minus your age times .65 and .85. 

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

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

I think my dentate gyrus probably loves me.

Brain exercise?

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

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

Brain exercise should be as routine as your physical workouts.

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

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

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

What a relief that would be.

You Are Too Old Not to Exercise!

 

Photo by Catherine Heath on Unsplash

Late afternoons on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday are three of my least favorite times of the week.  That’s when you will find me at my local 24-Hour Fitness.  I rarely break that routine.

It’s the most boring, painful time of my week.  I hate it, until I’m done and back home rewarding myself with a cold Wialua Wheat beer with Passion Fruit.  (I know what you beer snobs are saying – just get over it – I’m 77 and “entitled” to have weird beer tastes).

With mega-missing cartilage in both knees from 17 years of pickup basketball, I’m relegated to not having both feet off the ground at the same time.  So my aerobic is no running, no basketball, nothing that pounds the knees.  So I’m restricted to an elliptical, a treadmill or an upright bike.

BORRRING!!!!!!

I relate to what Jack LaLanne, the late fitness, exercise, and nutrition expert is reported to have said when asked why he enjoys exercise so much.  His response: “I don’t like exercise.  I just like the results.”

I get that.  The two other guys in my age range that I see repeatedly at 24 apparently get it also, I guess.  I’m sure they are hating it also.  Why else would they be there looking so out of place as we do?

The mirror-muscle crowd with their tattoos, tank tops, and tiny testicles don’t seem to be bored with it.  But then, I’m thinking they have a different motivation, as in attracting the Lululemon-clad “hard bodies” that seem to align their workout schedules with the mirror-muscle clan.

I also wonder if they have a life. And what’s really in those big water jugs they haul around?  I don’t inquire.  We don’t get in each other’s way since we are working opposite ends of the weight racks.

Six by forty-five

I’ve held to a six-day-a-week, forty-five-minutes-a-day aerobic exercise routine since 2013 when I first read “Younger Next Year”, one of the most transformational books ever (Bill Gates and thousands of others say so also!).  Following the book’s recommendations, I add 45-minutes of strength training to three of those days – the aforementioned least favorite.

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday are “off days.”  Still boring – just a shorter bore.

The physician co-author of the book, the late Dr. Henry Lodge,  made a statement that has stuck with me and motivates this exercise regimen.  He said:

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

Let’s get “counter-cultural”

A few decades ago, exercise physiologists assumed that older people cannot build muscle mass or strength after age fifty-five.  That is cultural programming at its worst.  We now know it’s wrong.  But it still lingers as just one component of general negative programming that triggers physical changes in the body leading to reduced health and vigor.

We are subtly taught to expect to be socially useless after a certain age.  We buy in and ignore what we now know can retard, even reverse, the so-called inevitable declines of aging.  We’ve known for a long time that lack of physical activity, along with poor nutrition, smoking, and excess libation are responsible for much of the late-life suffering caused by chronic illness.

All are preventable choices.

Be like Fred

If you’ve hung with me for a while, you’ll recall my three-part series entitled “Aging Without Fraily – A Series”.  I talk a lot about a phenomenon in my Colorado backyard by the name of Fred Bartlit.  Fred is an 87-year old practicing attorney, West Point grad, former Army Ranger, back-bowl skier, a golfer who shoots his age and is a gonzo strength-trainer.

He co-authored a book “Choosing the Strong Path; Reversing the Downward Spiral of Aging” in which he is not shy about taking our healthcare industry to task for not raising the awareness about the ills of inactivity – especially strength-training – and its role in early and long-term frailty.

Fred pushes more weight around in a day than any five randomly-selected people in my neighborhood would push around in a week.  And he looks it (check him out at www.strongpath.com).

I had a brief phone conversation recently with Fred, trying to persuade him to volunteer to let me interview him for an article or podcast. No luck – but I did get an earful about how the day before he had made 23 runs at Vail, including five from top to bottom.  He not-so-subtly reminded me that “nobody does 23 runs in a day at Vail.”  He’s right  – I’d guess a good day at Vail for most would be 12-15 runs. (If you are sensing a bit of arrogance in Fred, you would be spot on – but I’m thinking maybe he’s earned the right.)

Fred, and the thin slice of our older population like him, demonstrate what we third-agers must come to understand. Exercise, especially strength-training, are not domains for just the young.  When we are younger, it’s an option.  When we cross the 50-year line, it is imperative.

At that point, you are too old not to exercise.

Not an exerciser?  Take these three simple steps to start.

 

 

 

  1. Get a wellness check/physical and get your doctor’s green light to start a program. Just be aware that your doc probably doesn’t exercise and isn’t likely to be an expert.  He/she is still too busy trying to figure out how the electronic medical record on the computer works. You’re not looking for personal trainer-type advice from him/her.  You just want to know that you don’t have something that will go haywire if you walk to the end of the block and back while arm-curling 2-lbs weights.
  2. Walk to the end of the block and back arm-curling 2-lb weights.   Start slow and commit to a routine.  Scrap that – make it a ritual.  Routines are OK but until you make it a ritual it won’t stick for the long term. (Reference my 6 x 45 above – that is a ritual for me – you don’t want to be in my vicinity if I break that ritual.)
  3. Start kedging and count telephone poles. Whaaa? Kedging is an old mariner technique whereby the captain of a sailing ship that was “in irons” (that’s no wind for you non-mariners) would keep his ship moving and his crew busy by having them row a small boat out a few hundred yards with a rope attached to the main ship, drop anchor and pull the ship to them.  When you start out with a walking/jogging exercise routine, walk/jog to a close-in telephone pole and back (or similarly repeating marker like the end of a block) the first day and then the next exercise day walk/jog to the next furthest telephone pole/block and back.  Keep extending it and before you know it you have exceeded your best expectations for this life-altering activity.  And you will:
    1. Lose weight
    2. Regain stamina
    3. Gain flexibility
    4. Have a better appetite (no sugar, salt, fat please)
    5. Sleep better
    6. Like yourself better
    7. Make your sedentary, grumpy neighbor jealous and perhaps motivate him/her to action.
    8. Help reduce our out-of-control healthcare expense.
    9. Wonder why you’ve been so naïve up to this point.
    10. Forget the number for your favorite TV channels.
    11. Open space in your home where the Lazyboy used to be.

This really is simple but vital stuff.  There is no better antidote to extended morbidity, frailty and a shortened life than exercise.  Yet our cultural programming has convinced us it’s the young person’s domain.

I’ll wrap with two specific points of knowledge that we, as third-agers,  should understand:

  1. Sarcopenia is a condition that we all experience starting in our thirties. It’s the loss of muscle mass and strength.  It starts subtly and really accelerates in our fifties.  There is no drug or surgery for it.  The only antidote is resistance training.
  2. There is a protein called brain-derived-neurotrophic-factor (BDNF) that is a key player in generating new neural connections in our brain. The only source of BDNF? You guessed it – exercise!

We can be pretty creative in coming up with reasons and excuses for not exercising.  I submit that few are legit.

It’s not an option – it’s imperative.  Because you are too old to not do it.

Do you have an exercise breakthrough story that you can share with us? Email me at gary@makeagingwork.com or leave it as a comment below.

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

 

 

 

 

.

Is Your Geezer Showing?

 

Photo by Roland Kay-Smith on Unsplash

Call me crazy!  Call me unkind? Call me unsympathetic! Call me insulting!  Call me self-centered!

Just don’t call me illogical!

You can call me paranoid – because you would be right.  Because I admit to a slight case of paranoia developed over the last decade-and-a-half or so.

I’m terrified that I might become a “geezer”!

You know what I’m referring to – that grumpy, immobile, smelly old fart that you swore you would never become.

Yes, that redundant, useless “elderly” that has been shuttled to the sidelines, park bench or nursing home by a youth-oriented culture that prefers we are out-of-sight – a society that largely resents us taking up space and using up valuable oxygen.

My paranoia is so real that four years ago I began penning a 45,000-word book by the same title:  “Is Your Geezer Showing? Ten Steps To Not Becoming That Grumpy, Immobile, Smelly Old Fart That You Said You Would Never Become.”

The book is stuck in terminal edit mode. Some say I should pull the trigger and put it out there.  Others say it’s too close to the bone and “unfriendly.”

Add those to a long, creative list of reasons for keeping it on my voluminous procrastination stack.

Maybe if you read the introduction, you could advise me as to whether or not you feel it should stay on the stack.  Here it is:

I dread the thought of being called a “geezer”. 

I’m grateful that, so far, it’s happened rarely in my life, usually in jest in a playful conversation with a group of similarly-aged friends, geezer candidates all. 

But now, deep into my eighth decade, I have an increasing dread of hearing that moniker aimed at me, whether playfully or earnestly.

To be a geezer is not a destination that I want in my life.

Perhaps I’m overly self-conscious, paying too much attention to the external – the eye-bags, jowls, wrinkles, hair in the wrong places, turkey-neck, age-spots, persistent belt-overhang, ad infinitum.

Perhaps it’s resentment.  I don’t need anyone’s help to remind me that the calendar is getting shorter.

Perhaps it’s because it’s an ageist term and I’m on a crusade against ageism.

Perhaps I’m feeling some guilt about having used the term, under my breath, on those occasions where an “elderly” is causing me some level of inconvenience – slow driver, holding up a line, etc.

Perhaps it’s because it strikes too close to home, forcing a face-off with the reality that I’m at a point, at the three-quarter century mark, where I could easily become one.

But most of all, I dread the term being directed at me because it means I may have demonstrated something that invited it.  And that bothers me because it is something I have considerable control over.

This rather silly pre-occupation roused my curiosity about the origin of the word and how it came to carry such a derogatory meaning.

 What is a geezer?  What really defines a geezer?  When does “geezerdom” start?  What would it look like?  What is it about me that would elicit this lovely term from someone?

How does one avoid becoming one? 

That’s where I intend(ed) to go with the book. 

A geezer definition

Merriam Webster defines a geezer as: “a queer, odd or eccentric person – especially of elderly men.” 

Wikipedia says: “the term typically refers to a cranky old man.” 

There, you see – just what I don’t want!

I did a very informal, unscientific poll of friends, family, and acquaintances to see how consistent other people’s descriptions of geezer are.  Here’s a sample of their responses to the question “What do you think of when I say the word “geezer?”

“An old man that’s going nowhere.  Not so much age-specific but attitude specific.  My dad is 85 and not a geezer – very active, still working developing a mobile sawmill, hunts, and fishes, traps, involved in the community.  Conversely, my aunt, his sister, ‘hunkered down’ early and has health problems as a result.”  Fellow Toastmaster Club Member

“A guy, older, some hair, funny whiskers on his chin.  Something you wouldn’t want to be.  Not age specific –more of an attitude.”  My wife (Note:  I’m relieved she didn’t just say “You!”)

“Old guy bent over on a cane. Hook nose, warts, snarling.” Member of extended family

“A cross old man who sits on the porch and every other word is f*#@, drinking a cheap geezer beer in a sleeveless undershirt.” Name and relationship withheld for obvious reasons – I really don’t know this person!

I suspect you may have your own description – most likely not very uplifting either.

Age-ing to Sage-ing

I have Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller, co-authors of “From AGE-ING to SAGE-ING; A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older” to thank for re-stimulating the latent geezer paranoia in me.

If you share even a modicum of my paranoia, you might consider plowing through this challenging but seminal book on becoming an “elder” instead of just “elderly”.

Here’s a taste: by way of encouraging continued and deeper learning, the authors remind us that we seriously underutilize our brain capacity and that we can counteract the ravages of brain cell disintegration associated with ageing by increasing neural connections through meditation (pick your own form) and lifelong learning.

Specifically, they say:  “- – elders need to upgrade the number and range of programs that their brains are able to process.  Without doing this, elders will continue to be devalued by society as a useless and redundant population.”

Ouch!  See, there is more justification for my paranoia.

Pouring more fuel on the fire, the authors quote the head of a Sufi order in the West and a respected meditation person who says:

“If you don’t know that you can be a new person, you will continue dragging your old self-image into the brave new world.  You will be outrun and pronounced redundant, unable to make a contribution to the inexorable advance of evolution on our planet.”

And then the paragraph that motivated this post:

“Who needs “old geezers” around if all they do is deplete the Social Security system and give back little to society?  But if we honored elders for their moral and spiritual leadership, we would value this form of ‘invisible productivity’ as necessary for our survival.”

I guess I hadn’t really thought of my quest of encouraging “elderhood” instead of “elderly” as one of “invisible productivity” but I’m motivated by the term.

It’s a concept worthy of deeper understanding.  Further into the book, the authors relate it to “holding the field” whereby we contribute to our “personal and collective well-being by growing beyond our current level of understanding”, recognize our inherent potential and accumulated wisdom and thus empower ourselves to pay forward and “hold the field” for those behind us.

That’s all kind of “anti-geezer”, don’t you think?

Maybe I should finish the book.  I’m going back to see how much, if any, of it will help anybody “hold the field.”  Perhaps I’ve been “invisibly productive” and not known it.

Your thoughts on the matter will be taken seriously.  Leave them below.

I’ll let you know what I decide.

 

The Case for Not Overusing Our Cheeks.

 

“Sitting for More Than 13 Hours a Day May Sabotage the Benefits of Exercise”

I really didn’t need to see this headline!  Thanks, New York Times, for this ugly reminder.

Then there was this sub-title in the article:

People who sat for long periods and took fewer than 4,000 steps a day developed metabolic problems, even if they exercised.

I took a quick glance at my Fitbit.  It’s 6:30 a.m. and I’ve been on my arse in my office chair now for just short of two hours and amassed a whopping 417 steps (that’s a trip to the driveway for the morning paper, two to the coffee pot and one to the john because of the coffee).

This was not a great way to start my day!

Yeah, the mantra has been around for a while now:  “Sitting is the new smoking!”  Now, this!

Can’t we find something for all these research scientists to do other than to run around revealing the truth about how this transport system/body works?

I’m an ex-smoker.  It was a b***h to quit (June 6, 1979).  I’m thinking this sitting thing might be as tough but in a different way.  I’m not so much addicted to sitting.  It’s just that I’ve got this keyboard-monitor combination thing going that seems to work best from a right angle posture.  Yeah, I know all about the stand-up desk.  No, I have not bought in.  They seem clumsy and you’re still not moving.

The discouraging part of all this, for me personally, is that I work pretty hard at hitting at least 60,000 steps a week, with Sunday a sort of non-exercise/recovery day.  But most of every day I’m in my Office Depot faux-leather chair deteriorating my retinas before two large monitors pretending to make my wife wealthy (on that front, I’m a skilled imposter).

I usually hit my 60,000 steps by lumping it all into daily exercise sessions made up of a revolving combination of elliptical, upright bike, treadmill and some pretty serious weight-lifting. (I can’t run – no knee cap cartilage because of 17 years of pickup basketball).  I try to hit 10,000+ on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and 7-8,000 on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.  An active Sunday- not common – can take the pressure off the rest of the week.

I’m sure that was a lot of information that you didn’t need/want to know.

Now they’re saying that my yeoman exercise effort is farshtunken (Google it).

I’ve averaged 59,905 steps/week over the last 50 weeks.  My biggest week: 72,219.  My lowest week: 45,546.  That’s 2,995,265 steps.

It makes me tired just typing that in.

Starting this article incented me to waste some valuable time to determine how I’ve done against my step goal over the last year.  Yes, I confess that my quirkiness includes foldering my Fitbit weekly reports since 2014 and being weird enough to take the time to calculate this average  for your consumption (do you begin to understand how I’m falling short of making my wife wealthy?)

So, if this latest research report is valid, then I’m maybe neutral at best on the health front with my oneness with my chair-keyboard-monitor combo.

My Fitbit Charge 2 lives up to its product pitch – it vibrates every so often and a little figure dances across the screen and reminds me to get up and accumulate 250 steps.  Unfortunately, I treat it the same way I do the flood of offshore solicitation/scam calls that hit my office phone – as an aggravating interruption.

I look at the little dancing figure and tell it to take a hike itself rather than get in my grill.

Maybe if we FTM (follow-the-money) on this research project we’ll discover Fitbit financed it.  I’m pretty much that trusting of a lot of studies.

But something tells me this one is more legit than most of us chair-huggers and lazyboy-lovers really want to accept.

I’m getting off my butt!

So, here it is:  a publicly-stated commitment for which I will expect you to hold me accountable.   I’m taking little dancing Fitbit figure seriously.  I’m getting up and doing something when he/she/it vibrates me.  I’m going to figure out a half-dozen or so 250-step round trips I can take from my chair/keyboard/monitor anchor.

It’s going to have to be quite a change in routine.  My usual trips each day are to the bathroom (28 steps, round-trip) and to the refrigerator (52 round trip). One is optional, one isn’t.  Combined they fall seriously short of the 250-step Fitbit dancing-irritator goal.

On top of the sitting-is-killing-you warning, I’m reminded that I’m amongst the many on the planet who have a Vitamin D deficiency because I don’t experience much sunlight.  Apparently, the 200-watt incandescent in my desk lamp and the constant monitor glow aren’t good substitutes.

So, like so many other things that we can do that we don’t that can positively affect our health, this one is also simple (see below) – but a bit difficult because it calls for – egad – a habit change.  I don’t like all my habits but I dislike change more so they stay put.

This one is going to change – and I have your commitment to hold me accountable, right?

Here it is in its simplicity:

  • Respect the vibrating, dancing Fitbit and find a way to hit 250 steps with each vibrate. It will tell me if I hit 250 with a congratulatory “you’re a winner” type message.  Hokie? Yeah. I’ll roll with it.
  • Get my butt outside a couple of times a day as part of the 250.

There that’s pretty simple, right?  Not an overwhelming stretch to add an important health habit.

We all have plenty of unhealthy habits.  I’m betting that many of them are no more complicated to reverse than this sitting habit.  What are yours that you could reverse?  Can you commit to a simple plan to replace an unhealthy habit – and find an accountability partner to help you stay on track?  This isn’t, as they say, rocket science.

I’ll wrap with an example.  I have a friend in Toastmasters who recently “confessed” to me and a fellow Toastmaster and health advocate following my speech on “compressing morbidity” and “avoiding frailty” that he has a serious addiction to Diet Pepsi – to the tune of a 12-pack a day (yes, you read that right).  He committed to gradually work his way off of this habit, and, three weeks later, is down to two cans per week.  His drink of choice is now becoming unsweetened tea.

That by itself is huge.  But, with his new surge of energy and confidence, he has also begun to swing his diet to more of a plant-based diet.

He acknowledged his habit, committed publicly to changing it and uses both of his witnessing Toastmaster friends as his accountability partners.  His enthusiasm about this new lifestyle change is palpable. And, serendipitously, his wife, who is dealing with her own set of unhealthy habits and has been very resistant to changing any of them, is now getting in step with his lifestyle change.

Consider the simplicity of what he is doing but be inspired by the difficulty of his transformation. His motivation?  A new awareness of the downside of his habits by becoming more knowledgeable and seeing – and feeling – the upside of what his life can become with the habit change.

It’s a track any of us can follow.

 

Why Centenarians Don’t Rely on Doctors.

Photo by Martin Brosy on Unsplash

I did an 18-minute speech recently at my Toastmasters club – the last of 40 “formal” speeches that I’m required to give on my quest to achieve the top Toastmasters achievement tier, Distinguished Toastmaster.

I estimate I’ve delivered half again as many “informal” speeches at the club so I’m probably 60-70 speeches into it since I joined Toastmasters six years ago just because I want to continue to refine the craft and because, well – I admit – the strokes prop up my fragile ego.  And Toastmasters clubs are great at delivering positive strokes, even when you muck up a good topic, which I do regularly.  It’s a beautiful learning and confidence-building environment.

End of commercial.

My speech was about “compression of morbidity” and “frailty avoidance” – probably a real yawner to any other type of gathering.  They all seemed to like it, most likely because they all like me (it’s a Toastmaster trait – they overlook personality deficiencies) and because it was my 77th birthday. There was probably a touch of sympathy factor there as well.

I used my dad’s extended morbidity chronology as the launch of the speech.  It goes like this:

  • Heart attack – age 59
  • Stopped smoking, ate better, lost weight
  • Early ’70s, diagnosed with COPD – began a restricted life of hoses and oxygen tanks
  • Age 77, falls, breaks a hip
  • Hip replacement
  • Sepsis infection following surgery – extended intubation
  • Extended hospital recovery from intubation; no voice, no sleep
  • Rehab facility
  • A short stint in a small retirement home
  • One year stay in a larger nursing home
  • Second heart attack; dead next day at 81

Webster defines morbidity as diseased, sickly, grisly, gruesome. That pretty well described my dad’s final years.

On a simple graph, Dad’s morbidity looked something like this:

The point of the speech was that our incredible advances in medical and scientific technology haven’t done much to compress this morbidity stretch in our culture.  We are still good at “living short and dying long.”  We’ve gotten pretty good at adding years to our lives but not at adding life to our years. So we continue to maintain a life curve that bends like this:

I shared my own planned morbidity curve with the group.

Expecting gasps, I got muted guffaws – I believe my fellow TMer’s are tiring of my “I’m living to 112.5” mantra.

But I forged on, undeterred because it’s the Toastmaster way – finish, no matter how bad it is.

I’ll condense the 18-minutes to this:  bad lifestyle choices lead to insidious morbidity which leads to frailty which leads to death.

I think that would pass a medical scientist’s review for accuracy.

Pretty simple.  We start at zero with a full arsenal of cellular-based weapons called an immune system and we proceed to make it difficult for it to do its job.

I’ll paraphrase neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez: we inherit our health; our culture teaches us to be sick.

Dad didn’t know much about all this.  He grew up when we knew little about how our biology works.  He ate 3-4 eggs for breakfast most of his life; meat and potatoes were standard fare; athletes and actors, dentist and doctors advocated for cigarettes and babies were used to market them (he smoked for 40 years); exercise was whatever physical exertion happened at work.

His extended morbidity was pretty much a given from the start.

So what does this all have to do with centenarians not relying on doctors?

Based on research of healthy centenarians across a multitude of cultures, one of the consistent traits amongst them was that of an “outlier” attitude.  They tend to defy the expectations of culturally-defined life segments or portals (e.g middle-age, old-age).  They don’t succumb to the admonishment that accompanies the failure to comply or fit into the boundaries of a cultural portal.

Wrinkled rebels, with a worthy cause – live long, die short.

Somewhere along the way, they realized that their biology can be adversely affected by the cultural labels and traditions that they lay on it.   For instance, they understand that if you believe you are too old for something, your biology will comply.

In the words of Dr. Martinez, they become “worthy outliers” and enter into “centenarian consciousness: an opportunity to live the causes of healthy longevity.”

So, it follows that a “worthy outlier” with a “centenarian consciousness” is not going to be beholden to a doc that thinks in portals (e.g. “you’re too old for that” or “what do you expect at your age?”) and practices only traditional medicine, rather than mind/body medicine.  Healthy centenarians seem to realize that they are more than just the sum of their body parts and that their mind impacts those body parts.

Resilience prevails

Another trait of healthy centenarians is their ability to not only overcome trauma and travails but actually thrive and find gratitude in the midst of adversity and expect a better future following it.

Again, in the words of Dr. Martinez: “Despite the initial physical and emotional pain of trauma, they maintain a sense of humor and hope for recovery.  More important, their positive expectations enable them to learn from the negative experience.”

I take from all this that being a “cultural outlier” with a “centenarian consciousness” can position us to compress our morbidity, delay our terminal frailty and thus live a longer, healthier and happier life while saving our society billions in late-life healthcare costs.

The tough part is to shake off the cultural expectations and be an outlier.  It takes some thick skin and a strong self-image.

Dad knew nothing about all this cultural portal stuff – it preceded him.  His morbidity started at 59 and grew insidiously for 22 years – not an uncommon timeline in our society despite medical advances.  He wasn’t destined to be a healthy centenarian – few from his generation were.

But we’re smarter now.  At least book smarter.  We know all that we need to know to be healthier and live longer. Yet we don’t act that out.   Our average longevity is now starting to recede after a century of meteoric acceleration and the five major killers continue to hold their position despite us knowing they are all largely preventable.

Perhaps it’s going to take the “centenarian outlier attitude and consciousness” to turn the tide.  There was a time we paid attention to the wisdom of our elders.

Maybe now would be a good time to be an outlier and listen to the outliers.

Aging Doesn’t Need to Be a B****

I hear it a couple of times every week:

“Getting old is a bitch!”

Or the overworked, less profane version:

“Getting old isn’t for sissies!”

Occasionally, someone will resort to an attempt at the comedic approach and borrow the classic:

“If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

I’m not saying it’s pandemic, but it’s bumping up against it with my demographic peer group.  I’m a septuagenarian (for you Pittsburgh Steelers fans, that means I’m in my seventies).

I know, if I don’t like it then stop talking to the complainers. I get it. But that’s not an option for me.  I’m out to change attitudes in this demographic, so continued engagement is part of my quest.

I’ll admit, however, there are a few in that ever-widening group that merit reconsideration for future conversations.  You know the type – the ones that are so negative about their age-related problems that you come away having a big chunk of the remaining oxygen sucked out of your own dwindling supply of positive about aging.

And then there are conversations about surgeries.

Holy crap, am I the only one that can’t avoid a conversation with a fellow second-halfer that doesn’t evolve into a long litany of completed and/or impending surgeries?

I recently had coffee with a good friend who I hadn’t seen for about 18 months.  My hopes for an invigorating conversation of substantive topics – which we have had in the past – quickly slid into a recap of his knee replacement, impending hip surgery, and his wife’s shoulder replacement and a few other physical infirmity issues I don’t recall because I tuned them out.

To top it off, we ran into a mutual friend and that conversation centered totally on his multiple surgeries since we had last seen him.

I came away with nothing more than coffee breath, two lost hours and 15 more miles on my similarly aged Explorer odometer.

Since my last surgery was fifteen years ago and it was just a thumb ligament repair, I find myself on a bit of an island in a lot of conversations when sexagenarians and above get together – or chat it up by phone.

Should I expect different attitudes?  Perhaps not.  It’s a product of three things, it would seem.

One, our venture beyond middle-age today is putting us into unfamiliar territory.  We haven’t been here before – living this much longer.  One hundred years ago, we checked out around 50, mostly succumbing to what retired Stanford geriatric physician Dr. Walter Bortz refers to as “lightning events” i.e. infectious diseases, injuries/accidents, malignancies, poisonings, wars.

Not so much today.

Second, that same medical establishment that stamped out many of those lightning events now has gotten really good at propping us up when we slump and extending us on into what is, for many, an extended period of agony and reduced mobility.

Third, much of our boomer and pre-boomer demographic have mental hard-drives crowded with outdated and inaccurate perceptions of the aging process.

To appreciate and realize full-life potential calls for a serious defrag.

Here are three myths, models, and messages that we boomers and pre-boomers seem to cling to that hold us back from making the second-half/third act the most productive and fulfilling time of our lives, including my two-cents worth on each:

  • Myth #1:  Aging equals infirmity

I’ve written before about the reaction people have when I tell them of my intent to live to 100 (recently revised up to 112 1/2 because my quest is growing and I need more time).  Repulsion is the prevalent reaction.  The mind’s eye immediately envisions urine-scented nursing homes, degraded function, frailty and loss of independence – at worst, dementia, drool and Depends.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.  A Pew Research Group survey revealed that only 8 percent of us show interest in living to 100.  Sad.

Pew research, however, also tells us that, despite the disinterest, the centenarian population will grow eightfold by 2050.

Neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez, in the research for his book The Mindbody Code, did extensive analysis of healthy centenarians across varied cultures.  His research tells us that we can “ – modify ‘aging consciousness’ in a society that does not support growing older for what it is; an opportunity to increase your value and competence.”

One of the central themes he found among healthy centenarians everywhere was their defiance of disempowering cultural portals (beliefs) and “- a conviction to question what does not personally make sense to them” and to “- choose healthy defiance of the tribe where others opt for unhealthy compliance with it.”

In other words, not going with the crowd while sticking their finger in the eye of automatic senescence.

Our culturally-imbued vision of old age is wrong-headed.  Too often, it puts the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy into play and ignores – even denies – the fact that much of how we age is subject to intervention and under our control.

It’s never too late to put life-extending habits in place; it’s always too early to keep the bad ones alive.

Our bodies will respond to proper treatment at any age.

  • Myth #2: My DNA is my destiny

My wife and I did a simple exercise about 35 years ago that appeared in the Parade magazine insert in our Sunday newspaper (remember those?).  It suggested that we could predict our lifespan by averaging the ages of our parents and grandparents.  Based on the results, she’s been dead for seven years and I’ve been dead for eleven.

Currently, neither of us appear close to dead.

That little exercise spoke to the level of scientific understanding of the role of genetics that existed at the time. The belief that genetics drive our health and longevity continues as a common belief.

I’m surprised at how much it still influences our thinking in the face of overwhelming evidence that our fate is not sealed by our DNA – evidence spawned by the information being yielded through, amongst many bio-scientific discoveries, the sequencing of the genome.  The idea that we can influence how our genes express themselves continues to be a subject that many of those in my demographic aren’t aware of or are unwilling to accept if they are aware.

An important emerging field in genetics is called “epigenetics” which is the “biological mechanisms that switch genes on and off.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, offers some insight on genetics and epigenetics from his website MercolaTake Control of Your Health :

Epigenetics is probably the most important biological discovery since DNA. And it is turning the biological sciences upside down.

Now that we realize our fate is not sealed at the twining of our double helix, we avail ourselves to a whole new world of possibilities. There are things we can do to change our genetics, and therefore our health.

But beware — these changes can be good or bad. It works both ways.

You can improve your genetics or you can damage it.

In fact, you ARE changing your genetics daily and perhaps even hourly from the foods you eat, the air you breathe, and even by the thoughts you think.

You are the “caretaker” of your genetic roadmap.

Fundamentally, we’ve been called out if we are trying to hide behind genetics as an excuse for bad lifestyle habits.

  • Myth #3: Retirement is a good thing

I’ll be careful – and brief here.  Retirement is so entrenched in our culture and psyche I would be foolish to totally condemn it.  I have enough trouble sustaining relationships with my hermit qualities as it is.

What I will rail against is off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation retirement – the traditional model that emanated from a political decision in 1935, and that grew and became deeply embedded with the help of the financial services industry over the past 40-50 years.

The statistics showing accelerated physical deterioration, depression, suicides, substance abuse, and divorce that accompany this traditional retirement model are too compelling to ignore and to say that it’s the smartest, healthiest thing to do.

I advocate for unretirement or semi-retirement where the talents, skills, experience of 30-40 years of life are carried forward and shared with future generations in a way that pays forward while rewarding the “semi-retiree” a balanced lifestyle of leisure with contribution, service, and production rather than a sedentary, greedy, selfish lifestyle of consumption only.

‘Nough said.  Off the soapbox.  Thanks for tuning in.

Let me know your thoughts on all this.  Leave a comment below – and don’t be shy if I’ve offended you.  I grow from your feedback.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Been there – – – –

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

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

Gap analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In “The Mindbody Code”, he says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alzheimer’s Reversal – New Hope?

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The treatment?  Lifestyle modification.

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

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

Perhaps.  This project offers up encouraging possibilities.

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

I dosed two paragraphs in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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