Two Stories That May Save Your Life – Part One of A Two-part Series

I was stunned.

Three weeks ago, I received this email on a Monday morning from a new friend, a retired airline pilot that I had an extended phone conversation with a year ago following his response to one of my health and wellness-related blogs.

Good evening Gary,

Last April I did a sprint triathlon and started training for an Iron Man 70.3. I am retired and 67 years old and I thought in excellent shape with a change to a whole plant-based diet. In my excitement for my newfound energy, I decided to get my FAA pilot (license renewed). Well. I failed my EKG. Fast forward, testing etc. I am at this time sitting in my room at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston Florida, just had quadruple open heart bypass performed on Thursday. There is too much to share on an email – feel free if you’re still up give me a call till 2 AM another 55 minutes from now on my cell phone and I can discuss these matters.

Fly safe

Paul

I picked up the phone and called. I had to know more.

My conversation with Paul a year ago had centered on his adjustments to a healthier lifestyle following retirement. He was adapting to a new retired life, coming down from decades of being glued to a cockpit chair, sleep deprivation, free but unhealthy airline food, and strenuous schedules that come with being in the first seat for a major international airline – a career that spanned 46 years.

He told me it took him 4-5 months to emerge from a constant fog and be able to sleep 7 hours after years of averaging far less than that. He was proudly attacking the accumulated weight issues related to limited physical activity and marginal diet that accompanied a work schedule that, on occasion, covered 24 time zones in one international round trip.

He took both exercise and diet seriously just before retirement, moving to a whole-food-plant-based diet and elevating his exercise to the point of completing a sprint triathlon soon after retiring, which his wife filmed and turned into this YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8mqpvEHlQs

With his newfound confidence in his health status, he decided to get his FAA license renewed, really for no other reason than to just prove that he could.

That decision saved his life.

He flunked.

An abnormal EKG  came with the suggestion that he arrange for further testing.

He met with cardiologists at a local hospital and didn’t feel comfortable with the way they were handling his situation.

He did more research and connected with the local branch of the renowned Cleveland Clinic where tests suggested an angiogram to isolate the anomaly. His cardiologist felt that the worst-case scenario from the angiogram would be placing a stent in the affected area during the procedure.

He was – thankfully – wrong.

The angiogram revealed 90% blockage in the left anterior descending artery (LAD), commonly known as the widowmaker.  It’s called the widowmaker because the blockage, usually a blood clot, stops all the blood flow to the left side of the heart, causing the heart to stop beating normally – or at all, which is usually the case. 

The intended stent placement gave way to immediate CABG (coronary artery bypass grafting) or, as we know it, quadruple bypass surgery.

What’s the big deal? We do 340,000 of them a year!

I suspect most all of us have heard somewhat similar stories, or at least know someone who has had their chest cracked open for this procedure.

How is Paul’s different? Why should I care?

One of the key differences in Paul’s story – and the point I want to convey to anyone who cares to read or listen – is the proactive nature of his actions. In his words:

“Because my issue was discovered through volunteering (to do) testing, I was then allowed to be part of every decision i.e. what hospital, what doctor, what rehab, etc. If I would have had an event, then all decisions would be made by someone else! Being proactive in health produces a much more preferred outcome.”

I suspect that the vast majority of those 340,000 procedures occur after “reactive testing” in response to some sort of event, be it chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, upper back or neck pain, indigestion, extreme fatigue, of God forbid, an actual heart attack.

Heart disease remains the #1 killer in the U.S. with 805,000 occurring annually. Someone dies of a heart attack every 36 seconds in the U.S.

And 1 in 5 heart attacks is silent – the damage is done but the person is unaware of it. 

That may have been Paul’s fate had he not been proactive.

70.3 Ironman triathlon in March

Paul is undeterred. As I write this, it’s been 25 days since his surgery. He has worked up to walking 5 kilometers daily and is nearly free of needing help with any of his daily activities. The March triathlon is still his target. (Note: 70.3 is half of a regular ironman – they don’t like the “half” part in the name). I believe he will get there.

His diet remains fully vegan.

He has engaged a concierge “lifestyle practitioner” as a partner in his self-care going forward. The practitioner is a full-on medical doctor who practiced for years at one of the large local hospitals but could no longer tolerate the way he was expected to care for his patients by the system he belonged to.

As a concierge, he limits the number of patients and is providing individualized preventive care for a $250 enrollment fee and $150/month for unlimited access to his services.

Paul reported that his first visit was two hours long discussing the most extensive battery of tests that he ever experienced.

Raise your hand if you’ve come anywhere close to a 2-hour conversation with your doc.

And the physician actually talked diet and knew what he was talking about.

My own “heart disease” story

I’ve written of this before. Six years ago, at 73, I had a heart scan that revealed I am in the high-risk category for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

In a way, my heart scan was proactive. Not because I pushed for it, but because my PCP encouraged it.

Despite being a septuagenarian, I’d never had a scan. My doc didn’t recommend it because he saw something that concerned him but rather he felt it is a good thing to do as a precaution at my age.

The results scared the s*** out of me – and my wife.

Although my total calcium score was high, the scan showed the LAD (see above) was clear and a subsequent echo and nuclear stress test didn’t reveal any blood flow issues. So, it was life as usual, including my aggressive exercise regimen.

So far, so good.

How proactive are you about this silent disease?

Paul’s experience, and the one you will read about next week, illustrate the merit of being in charge of our health by being proactive.

If you are over 40 and haven’t had a conversation with your PCP (please tell me you know his/her name) about a CT Coronary Artery Calcium scan (CAC), then initiate the conversation.

A multi-state study of more than 28,000 people hospitalized for heart attacks from 1995 to 2014 showed 30 percent of those patients were young, age 35 to 54. The unfortunate truth is that heart attacks are happening to younger adults more and more often. This is partly because the conditions that lead to heart disease are happening at younger ages.

My calcium collection didn’t just pop up – it likely has been with me for a few decades, silently, insidiously doing what it does – collect.

I’m lucky that it apparently hasn’t clumped, which it can have a tendency to do and turn people’s lights out.

If you have reached your 5th decade, you’ve collected it too.

Maybe now would be a good time to find out how much you’ve collected. And to get to know a cardiologist that can help you achieve good heart health.

Don’t wait for an event. Be proactive. Seventy-five percent of heart attacks are first-time events and 40-50% are fatal.

I’ll end by requoting Dr.David Katz, specialist in Preventive Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine, who reminds us:

“We know all we need to know to reduce the major killers in our culture by 80%. We don’t need more fancy drugs, or machines, or more Nobel prizes. We know all we need to know right now.”

Part of that knowing is proactively taking advantage of available testing technology.

What’s your proactive health plan? If you have a story like Paul’s, let us know. We’d like to talk with you about it. Email us at gary@makeagingwork.com or leave a comment below.

What do you call a person aged between 70 and 79? (Please don’t call them OLD!)

Technically, we are called septuagenarians. That’s too big a word for most to memorize and use, so most people (under 70) just call us “old” or “over the hill” or “irrelevant” or “geezers” or yada, yada, yada.

We seem to have a need to put ourselves in categories. A century-and-a-half ago, we had two age categories – child and adult. When you started working the farm, you transitioned to adult and stayed there.

Then creative social scientists/engineers and clever marketers came up with age categories with the first one being “adolescence” which was the brainchild, in 1904, of psychologist and educator G. Stanley Hall.

From there we’ve progressed to as many as seven “age portals”: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age, each bringing with it a cadre of exploitive marketers and continued employment for an oversupply of psychologists.

This portal list has received even further refinement and deeper categorization, including the old age category. My favorite, as a late-stage septuagenarian, comes from the late, great author and executive career coach, Ms. Helen Harkness, Ph.D., who died in March this year as a nonagenarian just shy of her 93rd birthday.

Here it is:

  • Young adulthood: 20-40
  • First midlife: 40-60
  • Second midlife: 60-80
  • Young old: 80-90
  • Elderly: 90 and above
  • Old-old: 2-3 years to live

It feels good and right to still be in the “second midlife” category. Come March, I step into the Young Old category.

But that still feels good. It fits for where I feel I am mentally, physically.

It’s really all about mindset.

We’ve created one mental category (old) and a pivot point to irrelevancy by clinging to the irrelevant, illogical artificial finish line of 65 established by the government and the traditional retirement community.

That’s unfortunate because it’s a mindset that takes us to the wrong side of the mental and biological ledger.

Think old = act old.

No, brain deterioration and senescence are not automatic. We can add neurons and build lots of new synaptic connections for as long as we choose.

No, extended morbidity and early frailty are not our destinies. We can “die young, as late as possible” if we understand our biology and neurology and do the simple things they require to hang in and support us.

No, this is not new information. We’ve known these things like forever – and ignored them just as long.

D-A-R-E

I can’t avoid coming back to Dr. Walter Bortz’s simple formula for longevity from his book “Dare to Be 100”:

D=Diet

A=Attitude

R=Rejuvenation/renewal/learning

E=Exercise

While it’s a pretty simple equation, don’t be fooled into believing it’s easy, especially the “A” part. It’s the toughest because the other three don’t get enacted unless the “A” is in place and working.

As Dr. Bortz says:

“D-R-E are biological compass points for aiming for 100, but A – attitude – is most important. Within attitude lie all the planning and decision-making that facilitate the biological steps. It is possible to reach 100 by chance, but it’s not likely.”

With rare exceptions, we were given a vehicle that should carry us to yet another category – centenarian. As Dr. Bortz points out, there is no biological reason that we all should not live to 100 or beyond.

Alas, we’ve gotten really good at disproving Dr. Bortz’s claim with our self-care naivete and resulting lifestyle choices despite having the antidotes to frailty and early death staring us in the face.

Kickass Centenarian

Yeah, it’s a personal goal. It’s a repulsive thought to most and has squashed a few dinner conversations.

Why shoot for 100+?

Because I can.

Because I might just get there. I have self-care awareness and the awareness that the human body can last 122+ years.

So what if I fall a few years short, like Dr. Harkness. Better than just hitting the current average U.S.male lifespan of 78.5 years.

The criminal part of accepting “old” early is that an ailing culture is deprived of the wisdom, talents and accumulated skills and experiences that a septuagenarian can bring to the table to make a difference.

There’s lots of life to live in Ms. Harkness’s last four categories. She proved it, as are more and more septo’s, octo’s, and nona’s.

Feel free to call me a septo or an octo – please, just don’t call me old.

How Much Do Doctors Actually Know About Nutrition? You Won’t Like the Answer.

“The mission of medicine is to protect, defend, and advance the human condition. That mission cannot be fulfilled if diet is neglected.”
Dr. Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM

Another boring annual physical exam last month.

We both like it that way, my doc and I. He and I have been doing this thing for nearly 25 years.

That’s a lot of digital exams. Neither of us enjoys those. At least, I don’t think he does. His facial expression doesn’t change during the probe.

The session wrap is usually something like: “Everything looks good. Keep doing what you are doing.”

Thing is, he doesn’t really know what I’m doing.

Across 2 1/2 decades, he’s never initiated a conversation about diet or exercise.

With no disrespect intended, my doc is 25 pounds overweight, walking on two replaced knees in his mid-60s.

I’m 79, only slightly overweight with two mildly arthritic but fully functional knees, despite 17 years of 5X/week pick-up basketball and five years of running before that.

I understand why neither of those topics would be initiated by him proactively.

Y’see, that would suggest prevention.

Prevention doesn’t line up with his training, nor does it fit the business model of the profitable “not-for-profit” health system he recently joined.

Offer preventive advice? Then I might stop showing up. That’s a problem with a staff payroll and two pontoon boats on Lake Powell to support.

The history of our medical system isn’t helping us in the 21st century

There’s no mystery here. He grew up in a medical system that grew up fixing things over the last 110 years – a job they did quite well. The problem is that the methodology didn’t change and it all turned into a huge, expensive drug and surgery dispensary we erroneously call a healthcare system.

Want advice on prevention? Don’t expect it from a healthcare and pharma system that would collapse if we all got self-care savvy. Or from a government that, well – can you spell “clueless?”

We’re on our own!

Here’s an example:

As Doc was typing some final notes into his electronic medical record, he did comment on my lowered LDL and total cholesterol, commenting rhetorically that it was a good thing.

I seized the opportunity to comment that I had been working to swing my diet more and more away from meat and dairy and more to a plant-based diet.

Thinking that it might spawn a discussion, it just drew out this comment: “I like my meat. I don’t think much about that.”

I rest my case.

I really do love the guy. We have great conversations. It’s easy to light him up with a topic like politics, climate change, state of the country – virtually anything outside of healthcare. And he’s a smart guy with a broad awareness outside of healthcare.

I’ll stay with him as long as he practices. But his role is that of a partner in my self-care, not the arbiter. I understand the shortfall of his expertise because of the system in which he grew up and chooses to remain in.

I’ll get what I need in the diet and exercise realm elsewhere.

To that end – – –

I’ve long been a fan – as I suspect some of you are – of Dr. Michael Greger, M.D., a general practitioner, clinical nutritionist, and founder of the popular Nutrition Facts website.

He released a 5-minute video recently that I want to share with you that takes this topic of nutritional training within the medical profession deeper. I hope it will further elevate your understanding of this shortfall and inspire you to consider the importance of taking control of this component of your health.

Our diet is the #1 cause of early death in our country. Our healthcare and pharma system is doing little to change that but is profiting mightily from it. It’s time we took control.

Click the picture and enjoy the link:

 

The Best Advice For Someone Who Recently Turned 60. (P.S. The Best Is Yet To Come!)

It feels weird.

I’m only nine months from the twentieth anniversary of my 60th birthday. OMG, how did that happen?

I was recently asked on a forum what advice I would have for someone turning 60. Granted, they say advice is worth what you pay for it and it was a free forum, but since I’ve been there and done the 60-year-old thing many times over I felt reasonably qualified to riff on the topic.

It’s been a 19 1/3-year journey that has earned me a Master’s degree in Screw-Ups and a Ph.D. in Toe Stubbing. Which forces me to invoke (hide behind?) a fundamental success principle:

There are no failures – only research and development.

The experiences and decisions in my late 50s and early 60s played a big role in developing the roadmap for the rest of my life. I’m sharing some of what I’ve learned in hopes that there may be a pearl or two for those at this juncture to help develop a roadmap for their own “third age” or “post-mid-life-transition” phase of life.

The late 50s and early 60s present us with some of the most critical and significant decisions we will make in our lives.

Here are three pieces of advice to those 60 years old or greater that have been part of my two-decade discovery journey:

1. Reject the conventional, decades-old cultural expectations for what lies ahead. By that, I mean viewing this next phase as a time to “wind down and come in for a landing.” At 60, we are typically carrying forward decades of “retirement indoctrination.” We may be part of the growing number who are unprepared financially for traditional retirement and fearful of the subtle condemnation that our culture lays on us if we don’t retire on or before that sacred number 65. Or we may be financially prepared for this anticipated nirvanic experience and convinced we have earned and are entitled to the self-indulgence it allows.

Either attitude has peril embedded in it.

The traditional leisure-based, “vocation-to-vacation” model for this post-mid-life or post-career phase of life still persists, with the help of a powerful but relatively unchanged financial services industry. It’s a model with 85-year-old legs, conceived for political reasons in 1935 and establishing an artificial finish line of 65 when the average American didn’t make it past 62.

Back then, facing 3–5 years of retirement, it made sense for your parents or grandparents to head to the beach or the golf course or Leisure World. Today, with us living 20–40 years longer, the model doesn’t fit. Thirty years of golf or bingo, bridge and boche ball, and the bulging waistline that accompanies it doesn’t make any sense.

My advice for this life juncture is to re-define retirement. Understand that you may be going forward with a mindset that is out of step with the world around you – not to mention your biology – if traditional retirement is the model for the balance of your life.

2. Take some time to reflect, reassess, and resurrect. Have you had questions like these bouncing around in your head? “Why am I here?” “Is this all there is?” “Is it too late to leave a footprint?” Or my favorite: “Is it true that the number of people attending my funeral will largely depend on the weather?”

If so, you are in a healthy spot. This is the perfect time to respond to those healthy questions and carve out some time – alone or with a supportive partner – to reflect on what your life has amounted to. But, with an eye on the positive.

We don’t reach 60 without doing a lot of things right. We got there consciously or unconsciously using some skills that were wired into us at conception.

There is also a chance that some of those natural, inborn skills or talents were “barnacled over” as you dedicated yourself to “provision” rather than “aspiration” and helped build someone else’s dream with your career.

It’s a good time, if you haven’t, to do some basic personality or strengths assessments (DISC, Strengthsfinders, Enneagram, etc.) to uncover or remind you of how you are wired up.

Chances are fairly high that you have been operating outside of your core talents and strengths.  I certainly was, for the better part of 35 years chasing the 20th-century linear life model (Learn-Work-Retire). We all do it in the interests of providing and meeting cultural expectations defined for us by the “big Ps” in our lives – parents, peers, professors, preachers, politicians, and pundits.

I finally had to acknowledge that fact in my mid-sixties after leaving corporate life at 60, starting my own recruiting business, and realizing that my corporate experience – although successful by monetary and title standards – was never aligned with my core “uniqueness”, my “one and no other.”

I ignored the results of multiple assessments that were consistent in suggesting that I was at my best in a learning and teaching mode. My career in sales and marketing wasn’t ideally aligned with that. Yet I forged on, yielding to cultural expectations and rejecting the input of the assessments.

My venture into the recruiting business gradually moved me in the direction of these core talents and strengths to where now I feel that I am achieving the intersection of what I’m best equipped to do, what I’m good at, and a need that exists in the marketplace.

The Japanese called it “ikigai” – a reason for being. Or a reason to get up in the morning. I’m getting closer to “ikigai” day-by-day. But I had to shed some deep-seated cultural influences.

Based on experience and feedback from others, I’ve learned that the process of reflecting, assessing, acknowledging, and resurrecting latent talents and strengths can effectively put one on a path that will turn this extended period of life into the most productive, fulfilling, and purposeful time of your life.

3. Get serious about, and take control of your health. Let’s be honest – you probably haven’t done your body and brain a lot of favors up to this point. I say this with confidence because (1) I’m guilty; (2) the statistics on length of life and the level of extended morbidity and early frailty amongst our general population in this third age bear this out: (3) we let a culture that isn’t friendly to good health dictate our lifestyles.

Plan all you want for this period of extended longevity. It will be meaningless if you don’t feel good.

Dr. Mario Martinez, in his book “The Mindbody Self: How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health Are Inherited” makes an important point when he says:

“We inherit millennia of wisdom on how to achieve optimal health. Rather than mechanical products of our genes, we are the coauthors of their expression. With few exceptions, illnesses are only genetic propensities, not inevitable disruptions waiting their time to unfold.”

In other words, we start life with a birthright of good health. Our bodies are a collection of 35 trillion cells, or thereabouts, that have somehow been kludged together into this amazing 24×7 immune system that works its butt off to keep us healthy. That’s our inheritance.

Through our culturally-influenced lifestyles, we choose to screw that up.

Excuse my brashness, but collectively we are very healthcare illiterate. We don’t know how our bodies work and what they need to carry us through life optimally.

We succumb to a lifetime of seeking comfort and convenience and conformity. We view good health as the absence of sickness and have turned healthcare into a $35 copay experience with your doc when things skid off the tracks, within a healthcare system that only dispenses medical advice, not health advice.

Rather than adopting a lifestyle of “proactive prevention” we turn to a system designed to provide “reactive cure.”

For example, we know that over 60% of early death in our culture is due to an inappropriate diet. Yet, doctors receive no training in nutrition. So we are functioning within a healthcare system that doesn’t care much about what we eat. Or doesn’t seem to because you won’t get nutrition counseling in our “drug it or cut-it-out” system.

Couple that with a profit-driven food industry that doesn’t give a rip about our health, we are fighting challenging countervailing forces to maintain optimal health.

That’s why, regardless of age – and especially at 60 – it’s important to become the CEO of your health, become literate about how your body works at the cellular level, take charge, and change to habits that will support you with good health going forward.

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

The five top killers in our culture – heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, dementia – have not changed in decades. These are all lifestyle diseases and all are preventable.

We have a “whole-life potential” benchmark already established for us. We know that the body is capable of lasting 122 years and 164 days because Jeanne Calment of Paris lived that long – the longest living human on record.

Yet, on average, we fall seriously short of that benchmark, achieving only 66% of it on average.

The gap is lifestyle.

I was heavily influenced, in my 60s, by two books that helped me deepen my commitment to protecting my health, although I have been a strong health advocate and avid exerciser for over four decades.

“Dare to Be 100” by Dr. Walter Bortz, semi-retired Stanford geriatric physician helped me understand why “there is no biological reason that I shouldn’t live to 100 or beyond” and what I can do to enhance my chances of getting there.

The other was “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond.” This perennial best-seller helped me understand how my body works at the cellular level and what those cells need to support me with good health.

Let me quote Dr. Henry Lodge, co-author:

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

I’ll also leave you with this guideline, also from Dr. Lodge. It’s called “Harry’s Rules” and it is a simple, hard-hitting set of rules that will enable good health and successful aging.

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.

Good luck on your journey. You are about to step into the most exciting, most exhilarating, most impactful, and fulfilling time of life.

If you so choose.

How are your 60s – or your post-60s – going? Let us know what you think about these three suggestions and PLEASE add to them. You can do that with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com

Are You Fearful of Old Age? What Age is “Old” to You?

I guess I’m supposed to be concerned about my advancing age. I get a daily reminder as I roll out of the sack every morning. But, so far, I’ve been able to keep it off my mental calendar.

Maybe someday, when all seventy-eleven balls I have in the air come down.

I don’t believe in “time travel” so I don’t travel to the future where fear is the main resident. I certainly have the option to sit here, at 79, and be fearful of my aging but to what purpose? It’s an easy trip to take, especially when your body reminds you daily that the feet and back won’t allow you back on the basketball court or your knees prohibit a 5K or 10K run.

I’m old by current cultural standards. Heck, if I were beholden to living the average male American lifespan (78.54 years, according to World Bank), you would have missed my funeral, which is OK because most people will anyhow if the weather is bad.

Early checkout is not on my radar.

I look, act, and feel younger than what I think most people call “old.” It’s not an accident.  Since my 40s, I’ve felt that it wouldn’t be difficult to avoid being considered old before it actually happens, whenever that may be. I’ve worked to be increasingly aware of the lifestyle choices that slow the aging process and more diligent in putting them into action in my own life.

Those center around the acronym D-A-R-E, which I learned years ago from reading “Dare to Be 100” by Dr. Walter Bortz, a transformational book for me.

  • D = diet
  • A = attitude
  • R = renewal/rejuvenation (for me, this is continuous, daily learning).
  • E = exercise

It’s a pretty simple equation but not one to be considered easy, especially the “A” part. It’s the toughest because the other three don’t get enacted unless the “A” is in place and working.

As Dr. Bortz says:

“D-R-E are biological compass points for aiming for 100, but A – attitude – is most important. Within attitude lie all the planning and decision-making that facilitate the biological steps. It is possible to reach 100 by chance, but it’s not likely.”

He also reminds us that chance favors the prepared person.

In my opinion, early old is largely a choice. We’re pretty good, especially in highly-developed (and supposedly more educated and aware) western cultures, at devising ways to bring “old” on ourselves ahead of schedule.

On average we die at an age that is only 2/3 of our current benchmarked full-life biological potential (Google up Jeanne Calment of Paris). Most of that is due to the lifestyle choices we make early in life and carry into mid-life where they manifest into an accelerated downward slope of aging unless compensated for.

What age is “old” to me? I guess I personally would probably have to start giving in to some “oldness” around 95–100. I haven’t, however, programmed that into the 25-year plan that I try to keep rolling in front of me.

Here’s the “die young as late as possible” model for aging I subscribe to that I borrowed from the late executive coach, Ms. Helen Harkness, and that I featured in one of my blog articles.

  • Young adulthood: 20-40
  • First midlife: 40-60
  • Second midlife: 60-80
  • Young old: 80-90
  • Elderly: 90 and above
  • Old-old: 2-3 years to live

At 79, I like the sound and feel of still being in my second mid-life. It feels right since I’m finding a surprising reserve in the old gas tank (knees and feet notwithstanding).

I also like the brevity of the “old-old and 2-3 years to live” except that I favor 2-3 minutes instead of years.

I still envision going face down in a trout stream having just fooled a 20″ rainbow.

At somewhere around 110.

What is “old” to you? Share your view with a comment below.

Is It Possible For Scientists To Add 20 Years To Life Expectancy?

I get questions like this a lot lately:
  • How far are we away from reversing the aging process?
  • Have scientists or anyone found a way to stop aging?
  • How would society evolve if we found an affordable way to stop aging, becoming virtually immortal?
  • I am 42 years old, will I live to see the cure for aging?
  • How realistic is a cure for aging within the next 50 years?

Reverse? Stop? Cure?

Do we really think about how ridiculous the idea is? Why is it such a common question? Why do we seem to be unable to accept the realities of our existence and show such a fear of dying?

With death a natural part of living, how about accepting it as a new adventure?

Reversing aging defies physics and, last I heard, physics still seems to be pretty solid science.

I’ll hand it to the Kurzweil’s, de Gray’s, Venter’s, Diamandis’s, Sinclair’s of the world – they’ve found a way to keep the venture funds coming, the book sales cooking, and speaking engagements going as we flock to the intrigue of their claims.

Let’s dial it back a notch.

Scientists began telling us decades ago how to add more years to our life and more life to our years.

We choose to ignore it.

We sit back and hope that medical science will continue to come up with miracle solutions to extend our life expectancy when we already have solutions.

I get sideways quickly with this whole mindset that seems to want to count on science to come up with solutions to problems that we generate because of our crappy lifestyles.

We want science to develop a magic pill or shot or kryptonite substance that will allow us to live a longer life of comfort, convenience, and conformity while ignoring the fact that it is that very lifestyle that keeps our life expectancy relatively short.

We come equipped with the solution – it’s called the birthright of good health.

Consider this: we are born healthy, with the rare exceptions of those unfortunates who start life with ”blueprint errors” or birth defects. Nearly all of us have a birthright to good health. It’s a magnificent assembly of 30-40 trillion cells that are miraculously kludged together into an incredibly complex 24×7 immune system committed to protecting us from all the nefarious creatures and habits that threaten that good health.

We are magnificently talented at screwing up that birthright.

Let me count the ways:

  • We eat badly – over 60% of early deaths in our western culture are due to bad diets. Our Standard American Diet (SAD) is killing us slowly, insidiously!
  • We eat badly, part 2. I can’t offer up this diatribe without saying something about what I consider to be the true “elephant in the room” when it comes to our failure to maintain good health practices. The elephant is actually – wait for it – a cow! Or a cow/pig/chicken, if you will. (Excuse me as I go slightly off the rails here). In all of my extensive reading and studying about health and wellness, one consistent message stands out: An animal-product diet is bad, a plant-based diet is good. Yet the powerful cattle, dairy, poultry industries succeed each year in convincing our government that they deserve protections and subsidies to continue to provide products that play a substantial role in the declining lifespan that we are experiencing. And they seem to have been successful in convincing the ADA to, time-after-time, release dietary guidelines that are favorable to their industry and not favorable to our general health. We seem to be alarmingly unaware of the destructive nature of the meat industry – not just in terms of diet – but also in terms of the physical environment. Does deforesting 3 trillion trees to make room for cattle and using 2,200 liters of water to produce one pound of hamburger make sense even if there weren’t health ramifications. ‘Nough said!

  • We go sedentary and seek comfort and convenience, falling in love with our La-Z-Boys, remotes, electric knives, and snowblowers. Only 22.9% of U.S. adults from 18 to 64 met 2008 guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise.
  • We stop learning and challenging our brains.  Ninety-five percent of the books read in the U.S. are read by 5% of the population. The top-selling Netflix releases outsell the best-selling books year after year by large margins. We soak up, on average, 40+ hours of TV per week.
  • We shrink our social interaction. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg and the financial services industry. We shrink our interaction with real live people with social media and retirement. Social isolation has become a dominant killer in our culture – as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
  • We think someone is coming to save us. We naively turn to a broken, reactive “drug it or cut it out” healthcare system when things skid off the tracks. Instead of looking at our own lifestyle and undergoing the simple changes that will result in good health, we place our hope on the medical and pharmaceutical industry to save us from our wayward ways with a miracle cure for our naivete. Both industries love our stupidity and thrive on our lack of fundamental healthcare literacy. Don’t think for a minute that big pharma wants you to know how to live healthily. And your doc isn’t going to dispense preventative advice because you won’t be coming back if you follow it and that undermines the revenue stream that the entire healthcare industry is built on – along with your doc’s lifestyle.

 

Dr. David Katz is a physician at the Yale School of Medicine and the founder of an organization called the Academy of Lifestyle Medicine. He nailed it with this quote:

“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.”

Sage advice in a world that wants miracle cures but won’t show much interest in the truth about good health.

What Are We Blind To As We Age?

This recently hit my daily feed of questions that I get from Quora.com:

“What are most people blind to in later life?”

I submitted a quick response that kicked up considerable interest so I decided to share it out this week. Hope you’ll find some value. Let me know either way with a comment or email (gary@makeagingwork.com) – or better yet, a suggestion for other things we are blind to that I didn’t consider.

It would seem to me that at the top of the list of things that people are blind to is the long-term effects of short-term thinking, instant gratification, comfort-seeking, and conformity, especially as it applies to their health and self-worth.

In America, for instance, we’ve earned the dubious distinction of having the longest average span of poor health (10+ years) amongst developed countries and a ranking of only #46 of 193 countries in life expectancy, in-between Cuba and Panama. We manage to do that while having access to the most and the best resources and technology.

We are conditioned from childhood to fit in, to conform, and to follow the rules by the “P’s” in our lives – parents, peers, professors, preachers, politicians, pundits. This conformity track succeeds in tamping down the uniqueness, the inclinations, the core talents that we were gifted with at birth in our pursuit of keeping up with and being like the Joneses.

We get our education, our jobs, and then spend half our lifetime building someone else’s dream for the money and in the pursuit of accumulation and the temporal and extrinsic rather than the intrinsic.

We adopt poor pleasure-seeking lifestyle habits being unaware of the slow, insidious damage that they do. Then we wake up at 55 or 65 with a failing mind or body and a realization that those extrinsic pursuits have consequences and there is limited time to right the ship.

In step with this is a blind eye to the potential dangers of retirement and separation from things that give us purpose. Work is an essential component of longevity. However, we’ve drunk the Kool-Aid for over 50 years that has convinced us that we are entitled to retirement, that separation from work is positive, and that rest, leisure, and winding down is a good thing.

We are naive to how our biology works – mind and body. We are blind to the fact that we either grow or decay and, for a host of wrong reasons, are anxious to begin the decay process and accelerate a process that had an early start due to poor lifestyle choices in the first half or two-thirds of life.

We continue to be blind to the fact that continued growth is possible as we move into our 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th decades. Later life, for many, becomes a meandering, purposeless, sedentary, comfort-seeking time where learning takes a back seat, the physical decline accelerates, and regrets accumulate.

We are blind to our susceptibility to prevailing attitudes and platitudes regarding the elderly and adopt the platitudes into our own destructive ageist thinking and self-talk. We may have forgotten the power of “self-fulfilling” prophecy and the words we use.

Heard or used these before?

  • I just had a senior moment.
  • This aging thing is for the birds/is no picnic/sucks!
  • What do you expect at your age? (If this comes from your doctor, change doctors!)
  • You certainly don’t look your age.
  • When are you going to retire?
  • How’s it going, gramps?
  • Whaasup, old timer?
  • Old dogs can’t learn new tricks.
  • You shouldn’t be doing that.
  • Good to see you are still up and around.
  • You’re still working?

– or laughed at jokes like this?

“At four, success is not needing diapers. At 12, success is having friends. At 17, success is having a driver’s license. At 20, success is having sex. At 35, success is having money. At 50, success is having money. At 60, success is having sex. At 70, success is having a driver’s license. At 75, success is having friends. At 85, success is not needing diapers.”

Most of all, we seem to be blind to the fact that it is never too late to resurrect that innate talent, that uniqueness, that essence that we were gifted with at birth and to deploy it, combining it with accumulated life skills and experiences, to continue to produce in an impactful way instead of just being a self-indulgent consumer.

 

Retirement, Entropy, and the Fast Track to Frailty

“The greatest part of human life potential has been wasted by people dying before their allotted time was up.”  Peter Laslett

I know I must sound like a broken record. But, I’ll say it again: we western-culture humanoids are notoriously naive about our biologies and live too short and die too long.  We, with very few exceptions, start life with a birthright of good health and proceed to teach ourselves, with the help of a culture obsessed with instant gratification and a few highly exploitive industries, how to destroy that birthright.

I’ll invoke, once again, the dismal statistics for how that manifests, citing the WHO data which shows us the worst amongst developed countries in our years of poor health. The U.S. is stuck between Cuba and Panama at #46 out of 193 countries in terms of life expectancy – a stat, by the way, that is going backward in the U.S.

Retirement: Solution? Or part of the problem?

I don’t believe I’m a crowd of one thinking that there is a connection between retirement and this dismal display of unhealthy later years? There is little doubt that much of the foundation for this early and extended journey to frailty began decades earlier with our propensity for poor lifestyle decisions in our youth and in our striving, accumulating years. Unfortunately, the retirement mindset that still prevails isn’t generally conducive to slowing, halting, or reversing these first-half damages. Rather, continued entropy by default would seem to be more prevalent than an attempt to use retirement’s extra time and deeper knowledge to get off this track to early frailty.

Taking risks offsets entropy

We persist in hunkering down knowing that it brings on protracted decay and dependency and leads to living short and dying long. I don’t think that’s what we signed on for at birth but we seem to have allowed ourselves to be taught to head in that direction, unaware of the consequences.

Dr. Walter Bortz, author, and retired Stanford University geriatric physician is one of my favorites sources of experienced-based logic and knowledge in this area. In his book “Dare to Be 100”, he states:

“The best strategy to make long life happen is to take risks. Opportunities for creativity vanish when risk-taking is abandoned. Your aging should have as much creativity left in it as possible. Risk taking increases staying alive until it’s over.”

Much of that risk-taking means going against conventional wisdom, advice, and cultural norms. Avoiding full-stop retirement is one of those.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How’s your “health space” holding up.

I find it helpful to think about my “health space”, that space between 100% of my health (birth?) and only 30% of my health, below which I’m a short time and a few steps from the crematorium. At 79, I know that I have lots of options to keep my percentage as high in that health space as I possibly can. To do that, I have to “intervene” into the generally expected and accepted lifestyle for someone my age and avoid the “hunker-down/wind-down” that can accelerate my inevitable decline. As the Bortz chart above illustrates, my options are to “intervene” and slow the decline or hunker down and accelerate it.

I’m hearing from some readers who aren’t buying the “hunker down” Kool-aid in their retirement years. Check out the comments at the bottom of last week’s article. My 67- year old friend John is sneaking up on 100 pushups in a minute. Jerry L. is a 74-year-old “gym rat” committed to three intense 2-hour workouts a week. Friend and author of “Retirement Heaven or Retirement Hell” Mike Drak retired once and gave it up and is now on a quest to drop big-time weight and participate in a 2021 Ironman competition.

It’s really just about “guts and smarts,”, especially in our later years.

Here’s some additional Bortzian wisdom to ponder:

We get what we set. Life can be thought of as a game, but one that is won by finishing last. It is a struggle and a contest of skills held over time. It can be won or lost, and by big or little scores. But we all live better if we have a game plan. It’s the person who slows down last that wins! Set the destination and the course, know how far you have to go and then don’t slow down.”

Traditional full-stop retirement = entropy = early frailty

It doesn’t make me many friends, but I’ll stand by the above statement. We don’t need to be dying before our allotted time in a country with our resources and knowledge. We can be making more better-informed decisions.

A Gym-rat at 79? There’s Not Much Peer Pressure!!

Harry’s a long-time friend of mine. We’re the same age (79); we shared a few decades of corporate experience with the same company; we helped him and his wife in their search for a home when they made their final relocation to the Denver area around 40 years ago. We’ve broken bread together and shared family challenges openly for many years. I’ve tried in vain to match his skills on the golf course.

It’s been a good relationship – and we expect it to continue. We’ve shared our complaints of aches and pains and creeping debilitations along the way. Harry, in particular, has recently experienced some very frustrating upper and lower back issues. So it was encouraging to get a call from him announcing that he had decided to take advantage of his Medicare Advantage “Silver Sneakers” option that covers the monthly fee at his local 24 Hour Fitness (yes, a few in the area have remained open). He’s now becoming a “regular” in the weight room.

That’s significant because I knew Harry to be a consistent aerobic exerciser but recalcitrant on the weight lifting front. I had suggested to him a few times that he should include some strength training with his exercise.  So I saw the announcement as an important breakthrough for him although one would think that 79 is a bit late to start throwing around weights.

There’s this condition we all contract called loss-of-muscle-mass (often tagged with the clinical name “sarcopenia”) that we know a lot about but do little to defend against.

I’ve written on this topic of sarcopenia and the importance of weight training in the past. Here are links to a series on the topic that can elevate your awareness of the condition and the importance of adding strength training to your lifestyle:

Aging Without Frailty – A Series

Aging Without Frailty – A Series (Part 2)

Aging Without Frailty – A Series (Part 3)

 

Is Harry wasting time and energy hanging with the tattooed, tank-topped, and tiny testicle mirror-muscle crew at 24?

Not in the least. Besides, they won’t even know he’s there – that is unless he comes between them and the mirror.

Harry is taking on one of the most important health-enhancing activities he can take on, even this deep into his eighth decade. I’m putting my money on his back issues improving dramatically as he teams up this weight training with the therapy techniques he’s learned in physical therapy.

It starts in our thirties.

We’ve known like forever that we start losing muscle mass on an accelerating basis starting in our mid-to-late thirties. It really kicks in as we move into our 50s and continues to accelerate unless counteracted. It’s the main reason that people end up in nursing homes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the ONLY antidote is strength training. No pills, no magic potions – only putting the muscles up against resistance.

Why do we ignore something this important and avoid the antidote when we know so much about its effectiveness? I have a few thoughts:

  1. It’s preventative, so we won’t hear much about it from our healthcare providers. Since they can’t drug it or cut it out or charge for the advice – and because it isn’t a line item in the EPIC electronic medical record – it isn’t likely to come up.  If it’s not part of the health discussion, how important can it be? (BTW, my PCP is 40 pounds overweight and has had both knees replaced at 65).
  2. It’s inconvenient, often giving in to the allure of extra sleep or the devilish combination of La-Z-Boy and Netflix.
  3. It’s painful, especially starting out. Much of that is because of starting out wrong, as in too much, too early, and/or not getting professional athletic trainer advice and inducing injury, a sure step towards avoidance.
  4. It’s intimidating, especially if your start point is 79. Where to start? Machines or free weights? Which machines? How much weight? And then there’s the mirror-muscle and lululemon crowd that you just know is looking at you and smirking (P.S. They could give a #$*@).
  5. It’s without quick results and grinds against our culturally-driven need for instant gratification. Most of us aren’t programmed for slow and steady which is the fundamental reason that athletic clubs like 24 Hour can even exist. I’ve been a weight-room “gym rat” for over 30 years. I’ve been through 30+ January-through-February ” blooms” where club occupancy explodes with new signups. By mid-March, things are back to “normal” along with uncrowded access to free weights and machines.
  6. It’s not fun. Athletic clubs lie to us and tell us that enrollment and participation will be fun. It’s not. See #2-#5 above.

It’s one of those healthy, longevity-extending lifestyle choices

But, unfortunately, largely ignored.

Maybe if we knew more about the benefits, we would endure #2-#6 above. Consider this shortlist:

  • Better posture
  • Building calorie-burning muscle tissue, enhancing weight loss
  • Building better endurance/strength/power
  • Strengthening your bones, avoiding osteoporosis
  • Better balance, better mobility
  • Fall avoidance
  • Lowering your body fat percentage
  • Lowering your medications
  • Actually making your body younger inside by many years

Maybe you can come up with a cogent argument against strength training. If so, please share it.

Mikey likes it!!

I came across this article in my Evernote archives that I want to share with you about 81-year-old Mike Harrington and his venture into strength training.

Exercise Advice from a Powerlifting & Planking 81-Year-Old

I particularly appreciate what he has been able to accomplish in maintaining his core by doing planks. On the advice of an online athletic trainer, I abandoned crunches and sit-ups in favor of planks as my main method for strengthening my core about a year ago.

There’s a video in this article in which Mike does a ten-minute plank. That’s insane. I’ve worked up to a three-minute plank and it is flat out grueling.  He got to ten in under a year.

I hope you enjoy his story because he’s a poster boy for what can be done and the benefits therein.

Guaranteed that Harry isn’t doing that – yet! Nor am I – yet! But we both know we could. Most all of us could. But most all of us won’t.

And warehouses for the elderly will continue to be a growth industry.

Do you have a strength training regimen? Leave a comment and tell us about it. Help us learn from what is working for you.

 

Dealing With the Fear and Regrets of Aging

I recently had a reader pose a question to me that I fear may be on the minds of far too many folks.

Here was her question:

What are books for someone with a fear of getting older? I feel scared of aging and having the feeling that time is slipping by and I haven’t really “lived” yet.

–and here’s my response:

Although I don’t think books are the answer to what really ails you, I will recommend books written by life and executive coach and prolific author, Steve Chandler. In particular, consider investing in:
  1. Fearless: Creating the Courage to Change the Things You Can.
  2. Crazy Good: A Book of Choices
  3. The Story of You (and How to Create a New One)
  4. Time Warrior: How to Defeat Procrastination, People-Pleasing, Self-doubt Over-Commitment, Broken Promises, and Chaos.

One of the themes you will pick up from Chandler, if you choose to invest in his writing, is the idea of avoiding “time travel.” In other words, avoid living in the past or the future.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. The main resident of the past is regret; the main resident of the future is fear. Neither can exist in the present moment.

I’m going to take a wild stab here and assume that you are moving through the mid-point of life i.e mid-40s to late 50s. That’s when these types of uncomfortable questions begin to surface. Why am I here? Is this all there is? Does anybody know I’m here? Do I matter? Etc., ad infinitum.

The thought choices you are making are something that is under your control. We can’t control all the circumstances we encounter but we have total control over how we respond to those circumstances. You are creating fictitious circumstances in advance and allowing that to create fear (false expectations appearing real).

One of the circumstances you can’t control is that you will be older tomorrow than you are today. But you can control how you deal with that. You may be surprised that research has determined that the lowest point of happiness for most people is in the late 40s and the happiest periods are when they are in their 60s, 70s, 80s.

Most fear is manufactured

Your fear of aging is an example of a manufactured thought that has a weak basis for existing. It may be based on your observation of people who have experienced health issues in later life. Those people aren’t you and it’s not healthy to project their situations into your world.

Your health in your later years is heavily influenced by the decisions that you make from this point forward. Substitute your fear with action and commit to doing the things that will grant you a better chance of avoiding the things you fear. Diet, exercise, continuous learning, and social engagement are essential components of that doing.

It’s helpful to remember that time can’t be managed. It’s fixed into seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc. We can only manage ourselves within the context of inflexible time. That’s why “time travel’ out of the present moment is so wasteful and unhealthy.

One of the gifts that we are all given is imagination. Fear suppresses imagination. Fear generates worry which is the grossest misuse of imagination possible.

Resurrect your giftedness

You were gifted at birth with a level of talent and uniqueness that, like most, has been tamped down by meeting the conformity that is expected of us by our culture.

Let me share a quote from another favorite author, Seth Godin, from his book “Linchpin”:

“Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It’s fear about fear that means nothing. The difference between fear and anxiety: anxiety is diffuse and focuses on possibilities in an unknown future, not a real and present threat. The resistance is 100 percent about anxiety. Anxiety is an internal construct with no relation to the outside world. ‘Needless anxiety’ is redundant because anxiety is always needless. Anxiety doesn’t protect you from danger, but from doing great things. It keeps you awake at night and foretells a future that’s not going to happen. Fear is about staying alive. There’s not a lot of genuine fear here in our world. Anxiety, on the other hand, is dangerous paralysis. Anxiety is the exaggeration of the worst possible what-if, accompanied by self-talk that leads to the relentless ‘minimization of the actual odds of success’.”

Suppose you accepted the fact that the days ahead of you are an opportunity to dust off that uniqueness and put it to work doing something you are really good at and that you really enjoy doing and that makes a contribution to what the world needs.

Do that, live in the present moment and you won’t leave space in your mental bandwidth for fear and worry.