Archive for category: Health and Wellness

Maybe you saw the news article in your local paper this week from The Washington Post announcing that for the first time in a decade, the United States was crowned the world’s most competitive economy by the World Economic Forum in Davos.

I wasn’t on their invitation list so I didn’t know it was going on, or who makes up the forum.  Without my help, they scored the U.S. at 85.6 out of 100 against metrics that included infrastructure, information and communications technology, macroeconomic stability, health, skills and labor market.

Whew!  So glad we were able to claw our way back to the top.

But wait.  Three paragraphs later we see that the Forum also pointed out that the U.S. “is far behind most advanced economies in health, with life expectancy six years behind competitors Singapore and Japan.”

Maybe if we knew how to get healthy, that 85.6 could have bumped up against 100.

The fact is, we do know how to get healthy but it’s apparently just not a priority for most of us – until it is.  That’s usually after the fit hits the shan.  Then we are “all in” – and desperate to catch the horse long after it left the barn.

We know all we need to know

OK, I’m going to sound like a broken record so I hope you’ll forgive another rant or two.  Repetition is still the mother of learning last time I checked.

Fact:  The five major killers in the U.S. are heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and dementia.  That hasn’t changed in decades, other than some repositioning in the stack ranking.  Diabetes is now slowly working its way to the top as the biggest health threat.  Our own American Medical Association recently announced that half of our American population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it.  OUCH!

Fact:  All five are, for the most part, lifestyle diseases and are subject to intervention.  Genetics plays, at most, a 30% role in the development of these diseases.  In the words of Dr. David Katz, a physician at the Yale School of Medicine, and founder of an organization called the Academy of Lifestyle Medicine:

“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.”

 Fact:  the meteoric rise in U.S. average life expectancy appears to have peaked, actually going backward in 2015.   We’ve gotten very good at finding ways to kill ourselves early in the face of all that we know about how to do the opposite.

Fact:  We’re getting bigger, but not any taller.  This at the same time that Americans now spend more eating out than they do cooking at home.

Fact: The Standard American Diet (SAD) is deplorable and is killing us early.  According to the website Forks Over Knives:

• 63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)
• 25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods
• 12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods
• Unfortunately, half of the plant-based calories (6%) come from french fries. That means only 6% of America’s calories are coming from health-promoting fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

There’s a good reason we abbreviate standard American diet to S.A.D. The standard American diet leads to standard American diseases that lead to standard American deaths.

Fact: Our healthcare system cares little about what we eat and our food industry cares little about our health.  Need proof?  (1)  Has your primary care physician ever initiated a conversation with you about what you eat? Not!  There’s no box to check for that category in his electronic medical record.  (2) Burger King just confirmed that meat and cheese cause nightmare diseases.  The fast-food chain just launched the “Nightmare King” sandwich – a quarter pound of beef, a chicken filet, cheese, bacon mayonnaise and onions –  which they openly claim is “clinically proven to induce nightmares.” 

Fact:  We’ve gotten very sedentary.  The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics just this year announced that only 23% of Americans meet national physical activity guidelines which, for adults, are 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week.  Do the math:  that means we can’t find .007% of our week to get our heart rate up.   But we can find, on average 49 hours (29%) to veg out in front of the TV or on social media.  A lack of physical exercise is now being equated to the equivalent of having a major disease.

What Can We Do?

Few things are simpler and more impactful than taking charge of our own health.  The biggest overall killer is healthcare illiteracy combined with complacency and lethargy, all of which are addressable.

The formula is simple – but not easy, considering the deeply ingrained habits we function in.

Here’s an optimized plan as offered up by Dr. Henry Lodge, co-author of the best-selling book “Younger Next Year.” It’s referred to as “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

Simple, but not easy.  SAD if we don’t.

Would $79 and 12 hours be too much for you to spend to avoid Alzheimer’s?

If so, kill this blog and return to – whatever.

Too close to home

Alzheimer’s recently became a reality for my wife and me when the wife of a dear friend, half of a close 40-year friendship, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

We feel fortunate that it hasn’t occurred in our immediate or extended family, and that, so far, this is a single incident within our reasonably normal-sized circle of friends.  Nonetheless, this single incident has validated all that we’ve read or heard about the devastating impact of this brain disease – and more.

The speed with which this has transformed a beautiful, wonderful woman into one that we can’t recognize or who can’t recognize us has been stunning – and deeply saddening.

Following this development, I have had my radar up for any information related to answers to solving this devastating disease.  What I have found, until very recently, has been pretty grim.  This summarizes some of what I’ve found:

• It’s generally accepted that 1 in 3 of us will develop Alzheimer’s in America.
• While medicine has made significant progress against heart disease and several types of cancer, progress against Alzheimer’s has remained elusive. Time after time, a “promising” new drug has failed to come through.
• Industry-research service EvaluatePharma revealed in a 2017 study that of the 20 most promising future drugs coming to market, none are aimed at Alzheimer’s.
• Many of the major pharmaceutical industries are reducing or eliminating entirely their departments in the area of Alzheimer’s and dementia research!
• In January of this year, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals ended their research to discover new medications for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. They laid off over 300 scientists in their labs and closed down the entire division.
• In an interview, one recently laid-off neuroscientist said, “The current medication for Alzheimer’s disease is approved, essentially, because it’s better than nothing. There’s nothing else at the moment.”
• The reason? Shareholder value.

There’s much more I could share, but I realize that I only have people’s attention for about 1200 words/six minutes if I’m lucky, even on a life-and-death issue.  So let me cut to the chase.

We’re getting answers

About 10 days ago, a promo-email hit my mailbox that my radar picked up immediately – a “free” 12-episode video series entitled “Regain Your Brain: Awakening From Alzheimer’s”. 

Being cheap and a knowledge-accumulator, I was all over it.  I just completed about 20 hours of watching and taking extensive notes from this series.   It’s a collection of interviews with some of the top neurologists, psychologists, neurosurgeons and functional medicine physicians in the country.

I’m going to try to summarize my key takeaways from the series below – a tough task because there are so many.  Just let me say first that we are getting answers to solving the Alzheimer’s puzzle, but they aren’t going to come from your doctor’s office or from your local pharmacy.

More on that in a moment.

Invest in your healthy future

Here’s the deal.

The free version of the series went away – they left each video up for 24 hours.  But the entire series, plus a plethora of other supplemental information is available in three different packages ranging from $79 to $189.  It’s all explained here.

At a minimum, own the DVD of the video series ($79 package) and find twelve hours at your leisure to digest the information therein.

Disclaimer: 

Please know, that I have no affiliation with the producing organization, nor do I stand to benefit one nickel if you purchase the series.  With very few exceptions, I found it highly credible and thought-provoking.  It unveils a lot of information we aren’t going to hear from our hospital-system-ensnared, insurance-company-directed primary care docs.

It addresses some questions a lot of us may be asking ourselves, such as…

• Why haven’t I heard of these therapies before?
• Why have I been led to believe we’re hopeless in the face of these diseases?
• Why hasn’t my doctor made me aware of these methods of prevention and recovery?
• Why does the media insist that there’s “no cure” for Alzheimer’s or dementia?
• Why do the drug companies ignore this research, coming up short again and again?

Sadly, the answer to all of these questions comes down to money.

My takeaway

I’ll try to briefly summarize my take away from this experience.  You may draw different conclusions should you invest in the series.

1. Dementia and Alzheimer’s, in particular, is a preventable disease. Reversal of advanced stages of Alzheimer’s remains out of reach, although the series references examples of reversal of early onset.  The central message is that Alzheimer’s is preventable because we now know, through extensive brain research, what brings it on.  The brain is susceptible to the very same lifestyle-initiated pathogens that keep heart-disease our #1 killer and diabetes as the greatest threat to our national health.   Namely, poor diet, lack of exercise, hormonal imbalance, vitamin deficiency, exposure to toxins, amongst other factors.
2. Your primary care physician doesn’t (care to) know this stuff. I respect my primary-care doc – I’ve been with him for 25 years.  But he’s a traditional “drug it or cut it” doc.  He’s never initiated a conversation about my homocysteine levels, asked me about my diet, suggested I visit a Vitamin Shoppe for some key missing vitamin supplements, had me tested for toxins in my system, or for hormonal imbalance.  The blood tests he is authorized to authorize by his hospital system and covered by my insurance is cursory at best.  He and his hospital system are paid to cure, not to prevent.  Prevention doesn’t pay.
3. Big pharma isn’t likely to help. As noted above, Big Pharma is bailing out. And that’s a good thing.  The industry only knows to try to catch the horse after it has left the barn, not preventing the horse from leaving the barn.  Functional/Personalized Medicine is beginning to demonstrate that there are myriad of effective natural remedies that Big Pharma won’t bother with because of, well – no shareholder value.
4. Functional/Personalized Medicine is the future. A growing segment of our healthcare system is Functional Medicine – referred to also as Holistic Medicine or Personalized Medicine.  It is within this emerging area of medicine that analysis and testing are taking place that isolate the pathogens, toxins, hormonal deficiencies and lifestyle habits that result in Alzheimer’s.  You can learn more about Functional Medicine at this site.
5. We control our “dementia destiny”. Twenty years ago, the brain was considered a fixed, unalterable organ that was destined for deterioration over time.  We now know, unequivocally, that this is false.  Our brain is a “use or lose it” organ that can grow new cells at any age (neurogenesis) and is alterable (neuroplasticity) based on lifestyle decisions that we make.  WE CAN DIRECTLY AFFECT OUR CHANCES OF DEVELOPING ALZHEIMER’S.

I think I hear what you’re thinking.  OK, I’m 55/60/70 – isn’t it too late?  Maybe.  But, as with many things, it’s never too late to start but always too early to quit.  If you are reading this and making some sense of it, then I say it’s not too late.  This series helped me appreciate the fact that there are now ways to know if we are headed toward this disease and to take the steps to head it off and even reverse the early symptoms.

The research has been done, the treatment pathways for prevention have been laid out.  But we will have to go outside our traditional disease-care system to participate.

I hope you’ll invest in this series.  If you do, drop me a note or scroll down and leave a comment with your impression or with any thoughts that you have along these lines of dementia prevention.

I plan to dig more into this area of Functional Medicine and to publish more articles in the future on this emerging dimension of healthcare.

I have a couple of confessions.

First, I’ve fallen into a bad habit of reading the newspaper in the morning over breakfast. For me, it’s the Denver Post, a newspaper that has become a shadow of its former self, considered by some as best used for bird-cage bottoms instead of news.

Second, I always come away from the experience (a) having LEARNED NOTHING HELPFUL and (b) having set a marginal tone for the rest of the day.

My lizard brain/amygdala loves it.  That’s what it thrives on.  It’s looking for bad news – like the lion behind the bush – so as to enact my fight-or-flight mechanism for my protection.  But, I’m not hearing of too many lions-in-the-bushes here in suburban Denver, so it’s an unnecessary activation of cortisol injection into my system through largely unnecessary drivel that has virtually no impact on my life.

So why do I even have it delivered?   

Because it encases the sports page and the crossword puzzle and soduko my wife does every day.

I gotta have the sports page because I’m a Broncos/Rockies/Nuggets fan (in that order), plus I find that sportswriters are well above average writers – certainly better than the reporters at the news desk who are trained under the guiding light of “bad news sells” and “if it bleeds, it leads.”

I was reminded of the senselessness of this morning activity – and of tuning in the evening network news –  in an article by Ryan Holiday in Medium.com today: “Why Everyone Should Watch Less News.”

Holiday is a strategist and author with quite a cult following in the business and sports world.  As one might expect of an author, he suggests watching less news and reading more books because “just about anything bound between two covers will teach you something more than the latest headlines – and will do far more in regards to settling your soul.”

I recall doing a Toastmaster speech on the state of reading a number of years ago.  In my research, I discovered that the average number of books read in the U.S., at the time, was around 15 and the median (midpoint) number of books read was around 4.

That average is pulled up by the gonzo readers like myself.  I’ve averaged 60+ books/year for the last 10 years with only two novels in the mix.  Yes, I know – pretty weird.  It’s the way I’m wired and when the weirdness of it all starts nagging me, I remind myself that Bill Gates averages a book a week, Warren Buffett reads five hours a day, and Teddy Roosevelt reportedly read a book a day.

Think 60 books a year is overwhelming?

Not so much. Think on this formula

60 books x 50,000 words / book (avg size of a typical non-fiction book) = 3,000,000 words

3,000,000 words / 300 wpm (slightly above average reading speed) = 10,000 minutes

10,000 minutes / 60 = 167 hours

167 hours/52 weeks = 3.3 hours/week

Average time spent by Americans on (see this article by Charles Chu: “The Simple Truth Behind Reading 200 Books a Year):

Social media – 608 hours/yr = 11.7 hours/week

TV – 1642 hours/yr = 31.6 hours/week

I won’t insult you by going further and doing the math for you.

In that speech in 2013, I reported that reading is declining in this country.  No doubt, it hasn’t gotten better.  I parsed out some stats for that presentation that really caught my attention along with a couple of stats that are the consequences of this decline:

1. % of U.S. adults who are unable to read at the eighth-grade level – 50%.
2. % of U.S. high school students who will never read a book after high school – 33%
3. % of college graduates who will never read another book after graduating from college – 42%
4. % of families in the U.S. who did not buy a book in 2012 – 80%
5. % of adults who had not been in a bookstore in the past five years – 70%
6. According to the NEA, the average 15-24-year-old watches 2 hours of TV and does 7 minutes of leisurely reading each day.
7. In a U.S. population of over 300 million, popular movie gems in 2013 such as “The Matrix” and “Fast and Furious” sold one million DVDs while the 2011 top-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel only sold 135,000 copies.

What about the consequences of all this.  Again, some revealing facts:

1. 2/3 of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the 4^th grade will end up in jail or on welfare.
2. 80-85% of juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system and over 60 % of prison inmates are functionally illiterate.
3. Low literacy directly costs the healthcare industry $70 million every year.

Need more reasons to read?

Holiday continues (bolding is mine):

 “While research has shown that visually shocking and upsetting news can contribute to anxiety, sleeping trouble, raise cortisol levels and even trigger PTSD symptoms, a University of Sussex study found that just six minutes reading a book can reduce stress levels up to 68%. A study done by former journalist turned positive psychology researcher Michelle Geilan found that watching just a few minutes of negative news in the morning increases the chances of viewers reporting having had a bad day by 27%, while Barnes and Noble just reported soaring sales for books that help people deal with anxiety and find happiness. Life Time Fitness, a gym chain with locations in 27 states, recently decided that tuning their TVs to FOX News and CNN was antithetical to their mission of making people healthier, so they’ve banned the news from the gym.”

So, I’m going public. 

I’m giving up the morning newspaper (except for the sports page) and avoiding TV news altogether.

You are welcome to hold my feet to the fire on this.  Stop by for breakfast or an evening beer anytime to check me out.

And since I work out there 5-6 days a week, I’m going to suggest to 24-Hour Fitness that they block Fox and CNN just like Lifetime Fitness.  I’m not sure the Lululemon or the tattoo, tank top, and tiny-testicle crowd pays all that much attention, much-preferring mirror-viewing.  But I think it would be a good symbolic gesture, don’t you?

Maybe they could upgrade their equipment and replace all the burned out overhead lights while they are at it.

 I just went through my annual physical check-up with my PCP (If you don’t know what that stands for, we really should talk).  He’s been doing the stethoscope, pointy thing up the nose and in the ears, rubber hammer and rubber-gloved, “roll over on your side” exam on me for 20+ years.

I’m lucky – I usually get 30-40 minutes with him.  For two reasons, I guess.

One, with my 16 years as a healthcare recruiter, he and I invariably end up spending a little time “talking shop” about the challenges he faces running a very busy primary care practice.

Yes, he’s frustrated with the bureaucracy, the electronic medical record requirements, the constantly changing rules, the dropping reimbursement, the paperwork, the patient complacency. He truly loves what he does and just wants to be a doctor.  But, as with all primary care physicians, that’s harder and harder to do

Second, I know I ask more and deeper questions than he normally gets because I’m more tuned into my biology than most of the patients he sees.  I decided over ten years ago to become a student of how this 24 x 7 immune system of 35 trillion cells that I walk around in is designed to work.

Well, the exam went quite well – except for one small glitch.

Elimination of meat and dairy and a 12-lb weight loss have lowered my total cholesterol 15 points to 135 in a year. (P.S. Below 150 is the truly safe range, not just below 200 despite what your pharma-company-influenced PCP will tell you.)  Blood pressure safe – almost too low.   All components of the blood panel safely within range.

All systems go.

Then the glitch.  He said: “You are a very healthy 76-year old – more like a 65-year old.”

Whaa????  65?  How ‘bout 55?

OK.  Ego aside – I’ll take it. Thanks, Doc!

I intend to live to 112 ½ so this body is what I’ll be living in for another 35  34 ½ years.

I know – that’s nuts.  Some of the people I know hope to be taken out back and shot if they get to 90.

If I don’t pay attention to this cellular house I live in, maintain it, help it do its thing – well, I guess where I end up living could get sort of ugly for a long time. My intent is for that “ugly” period to be real short – perhaps like a finger snap.  But certainly no longer than a season.  My progeny don’t deserve a protracted period of needles, nursing homes or neurological nonsense.

I’ll get old and die, just like you.  But, that’s different than aging.  Getting old and dying is immutable – how I choose to age is optional.

No warranty, no trade-in, no owner’s manual

At current chemical prices, you can trade your body in for $3.50.

Organ donation or giving it up to a cadaver lab for aspiring PCP’s to probe is the closest thing we’ve got to a trade-in.

Health insurance isn’t exactly a warranty, although we seem to think of it that way. Oh, look, Mabel – I can get that fixed for a $35 co-pay!!

And still no owner’s manual accompanying dismissal from the newborn nursery.

A century ago, we didn’t know enough about our biology to write an effective owner’s manual.  Today we do, but I suspect it would be soon ignored if it were written.

Suppose we did have a warranty, or a trade-in, or an owner’s manual.  Would that change our tendency to know more about how our Ford Explorer’s catalytic converter works than how our endocrinology can lengthen or shorten our lives?   Or how our digestive system impacts our thinking ability?  Or how – well just about anything about our biology?

Color me skeptical.

The owner’s manual for my wife’s aging Acura MDX is 298 pages.  I can replace the engine in that car for about $2,000.

An easy-to-follow owner’s manual for good health could probably be contained in a half-dozen pages – in large, double-spaced type.  To replace my heart in the U.S. can approach $1.4 million, my liver $813,000.

We know to put good oil in the pan and good gas in the tank of our car.  Yet we persistently dump junk food and bad chemicals into the most expensive transport system on the planet to repair, pound for pound.

Maybe an owner’s manual would change that, but I doubt it.  Our taste buds are held captive by a food industry that knows and cares little about our health. And our commitment to really simple health and wellness habits have succumbed to comfort, convenience, and co-pays.

What a way to treat the most magnificent machine ever developed.

So, for many of us, a protracted period of frailty is in the forecast.  Oh yes, we are living longer.  A 65-year-old today has a 50% chance of reaching 90.  What that stat doesn’t reveal is that for far too many of us, this extended longevity that we rave about is lived in technology-supported agony, isolation, and immobility.

We have the option to be “Younger Next Year” regardless of age.  The book by that same name is a great place to start to understand why and how.  Or “The Roadmap to 100” and his earlier book “Dare to Be 100” by retired Stanford geriatric physician, Dr. Walter Bortz are tremendous no-holds-barred, easy to read “owner’s manuals” for longer, healthier living.

You can also pick up a few wellness pearls from my free e-book: “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”  Click here to download it.

Thanks for being a loyal reader.  If you like the articles, tell a friend about us.   Your opinion and insight counts, so leave us a comment below.