Four Steps to a Bountiful Post-career Harvest

“For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of harvest.” Hasidic saying

I’m curious. Has your financial planner – assuming you are working with one, which I hope you are –  ever dropped the word “harvest” into your conversation as you pour over the charts and graphs and talk “what’s next?”

Let’s look at the word first. Merriam Webster says this:

  • Noun: “the act of gathering in a crop; the product or reward of effort.“
  • Verb: “reap.”

I may be wrong, but I can’t imagine that word getting a lot of play in insurance sales school.

Now, maybe you are one of the fortunate few who have engaged a financial planner or adviser that thinks “beyond the numbers” and pays more than lip service to the non-financial components of retirement. Financial planners are important, valuable, and necessary. But, chances are they aren’t going to lead you into a deep discussion of the four biggest concerns that retirees have beyond money: (1) boredom; (2) loss of identity; (3) becoming irrelevant; (4) deteriorating health.

Planners sell financial products, not psychological counseling.

How can we avoid these four concerns, reap a reward for our first-half effort, experience a purposeful “harvest”, and avoid a retirement winter?

Here are four suggestions that may help.

1. Build a new “friends list.” With your retirement, we can safely assume you disengaged from the largest, longest-lasting, and one of the most important sets of relationships in your life when you left work. No problem, you say. I’ll stay in touch with most of them. Guess again – 90% of them forgot your name as they gulped down a slice of your retirement cake and watched you vacate the building. Don’t expect return calls – they are all entwined in their own sets of issues still building somebody else’s dream.

Start now to build a new list. Who can you add to keep it alive and vibrant? Who do you know casually that you want to go deeper with because, well, they don’t have time for ageist, senior-citizen-type conversations and they light up a room when they enter. Who can you add that would agree to a plan to hold each other accountable for not heading to geezerville?

Don’t let retirement become a winter void of sustaining relationships. Social isolation is a killer – ARRP reminds us that it is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

2. Commit to a holistic self-care plan. Sorry, but your planner didn’t get a lick of training on how your or his/her biology works while in insurance school. Oh, I appreciate that you will be advised to “take care of yourself.” But what about some detail? That’s on you. Now, perhaps for the first time, you need to be the true CEO of your health.

Your self-care plan should include a relationship with a primary-care provider that goes beyond the typical “drug or cut-it-out” mentality and can engage you in a holistic conversation about your bio-markers, general health condition, what to include, and what to avoid – a trained clinician who is willing to partner with you in your self-care plan. Your “back nine” years will probably require making up for some marginal “front nine” lifestyle patterns, so it shouldn’t be treated casually. Those bad first-half habits have an insidious nature that creep up and manifest on an accelerating basis in our 50s and 60s unless accounted for and slowed down or stopped early in the retirement years.

Consider a commitment to learning about the basics of your cellular biology. Can you explain to me how your body works as effectively as you can about how your lawnmower or dishwasher works?  Probably not, if you an American. Why should you when the “fix” is only a $35 copay away? A physician once told me that the biggest killer in our culture is healthcare illiteracy. If we did appreciate how our body works, would we still take 35% of our meals through the side window of our cars? Or spend, on average (as retirees), 49 hours a week one with the La-z-Boy and voice-activated remote.

The book “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond” turned the ship for me eight years ago, particularly Chapter Five. Yes, it was written 16 years ago, but your cellular structure hasn’t changed in billions of years. Dr. Lodge’s chapter will help you understand the consequences – good and bad – of your daily treatment of your 100-trillion-cell immune system.

3. Accelerate your learning. Wait, haven’t I done enough of that? Truth is, you probably had pretty well stopped any kind of serious learning a couple of decades ago. Just as you want that physical self to remain vibrant, you need to work even harder at keeping that 2 1/2 pounds of fatty acid between your temples in even better shape.

Fifty years ago, even neurologists believed that neurological senescence was automatic and unalterable. Fortunately, they are all now dead. We’ve learned tons about the brain since then and know that we can build new neural connections for as long as we want. Yep, it’s slower and harder, but what isn’t after 60? What are you not doing that you always wanted to do because you feel it would be too hard or take too much time? There’s your starting point. Stretch yourself mentally with something that takes you outside your comfort zone. Evidence mounts that doing so is antidotal to dementia.

4.Let your purpose find you and go fix something. Have you noticed that a lot of things in our culture are broken right now? What if you headed off the boredom and loss-of-identity that accompanies full-stop retirement and dusted off your peculiarity, your uniqueness and packaged it up with the skills and experiences of 40 years of work and went out and “made a ruckus” aimed at fixing something. What if you got back in the ring – on your terms, at your pace, doing what you may have forgotten you are/were really, really good at and loved doing? You don’t have to look far to find something that needs fixing. Substitute “re-creation” for “recreation” and go change something. And when that’s fixed, go change something else.

Here’s a quote from a recent Chip Conley blog to ponder:

“While recreation and re-creation are not mutually exclusive, the latter promises the elixir of life. An alchemical cocktail of curiosity and wisdom, garnished with fresh sprigs of a beginner’s mind, creativity, and service. To regenerate is to make new again. To retire is to withdraw into seclusion.”

 

I spent a bunch of my formative years engaged in farming activities. I’ve seen a harvest or two. I’ve also seen what happens if the harvest doesn’t happen. It’s called rot. Rot can be a post-career option. It is for many. But you, dear reader, are a harvester. And society will be better for it.

So You Think You’ve “Peaked.” Probably Not – Read On!

A question came up recently on Quora.com that intrigued me and motivated me to put the pencil to paper with a response. The question asked:

“At what age is your prime age?”

Fertile ground for thought and opinion, don’t you agree?

So I stepped up with my two cents worth. Here’s an expanded version.

There would seem, to me, to be two different types of prime: physical and psychological.

Physical prime is easier to define. Generally, we reach our physical prime in our mid-to-late 20’s and a gradual decline begins from there. My understanding is that this physical decline in terms of muscle mass and strength really begins to accelerate in the mid-to-late-thirties and picks up serious speed as we approach our fifties unless offset through strength training.

Mental prime may be more elusive as it would seem to be unique to each of us and have so many dimensions. Your psychological/emotional prime is likely to look different and have a different timeline than mine or everyone else’s.

I did some research and found this interesting article on the topic published in 2017 by Business Insider:

Here Are The Ages You Peak at Everything Throughout Life

Here’s the chart that they developed which shows interesting prime ages for a broad selection of phenomena:

As the article emphasized, this is not a controlled study and the points mark the middle of an age range. So these are averages. That’s important for you, my readers, to know because you are all above average on so many levels.

Some things are pretty obvious. For instance, you’re 60 and deciding to learn to speak Russian. Good luck with that. It appears you are 5 decades too late to expect significant results from that worthwhile mental-gymnastics effort.

Double-dipping “Life Satisfaction”

It’s interesting to note, from the chart, that life satisfaction pops up peaking in two spots: age 23 and again at 69 but with psychological wellbeing peaking at 82. This is all according to science.

At 79, I honestly don’t remember what my life satisfaction level was at 23. I was between stints in college and mostly a “wandering generality” into muscle cars and bar hopping. Maybe it’s saying that there is some life satisfaction in wanderlust which was a pretty popular lifestyle with the reprobates I hung with in mid-1960s Cheyenne, Wyoming. Fortunately, sanity returned and I went back for my third and final run at a college degree (P.S. I succeeded). My biggest contribution through that meandering stretch was to the economic welfare of pubs and gas stations.

I will, on the other hand, attest to there being greater life satisfaction at 69 – and in the 10 years since – than all the earlier times in my life. But then, that’s just me. It was in my seventh decade that I grew to realize that my “good spots” came when I stayed true to my birthright of uniqueness and didn’t succumb to other people’s opinions and the pressure of cultural expectations. Unfortunately, it took me that long to recognize and acknowledge that uniqueness – or, as I wrote last week, my “inclinations.”

That discovery, in and of itself, is not an easy or common one. So few of us ever acknowledge and honor our true inborn giftedness. Our culture snags us with our outdated educational system, pounds us with cultural expectations, and hooks us into a life built around comparison instead of our uniqueness.

I’m reminded of the article written by Australian hospice nurse, Bronnie Ware, who spent many years with patients who were in the last few weeks of their lives and who had gone home to die.  In her article “Regrets of the Dying, she shares the five most common regrets that they expressed in their final days. Far and away, the most common regret was:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Age 82 is a head-fake!

I don’t expect anyone in my cohort to claim they haven’t passed their physical peak. They know my bull**** filter, albeit not great, wouldn’t let that one through.

But what about that “psychological wellbeing” peak at 82? Seems kinda early, don’t ya think? Couldn’t we move that one out another decade or two – and make it a really brief peak, like overnight, maybe? As in “die young, as late as possible.” Sort of like the Okinawans have tended to do – live happy and purposeful close to 100 and then check out with virtually no morbidity period. Unlike we Americans with our average 10 1/2 years of morbidity.

What’s the Okinawan magic? Prior to being invaded and infected with western culture, it was mostly a strong sense of purpose built around community and family combined with non-western lifestyle diet and movement choices. Historically, Okinawans haven’t relinquished their identity and sense of purpose to retirement – they have no word for the concept in their vocabulary.

So maybe we move that 82 to 92 or 97 or – heaven forbid – to 102. Rather than hopping off the cliff from labor-to-leisure at the “obligatory 65”, we turn our retirement into a purposeful, service-filled period that is balanced with labor, leisure, and learning. Your thing, built around your “inclinations”, on your timetable, at your speed, in whatever form you choose but with an eye to changing something that needs changing.

Why not? Remember, these are all averages – and you’re not!

Hope you are coming out of this COVID year unscathed. We appreciate you sticking around and giving us a read. Let us know your thoughts on this peak issue. Scroll down and leave a comment or drop me an email at gary@makeagingwork.com

Oh, by the way. I just launched my new website for the other part of my life – my resume writing, LinkedIn presence development, and career transition and retirement coaching. Give us a visit over at www.turningpointcareerservices.com and schedule a call if you would like to discuss any of the services I’m offering.

The Size of Your Funeral Gathering Will Be Determined By the Weather. Whaaaat?

I remember how that quote rocked my world a few decades ago when I first read it in my mid-50s. I was in that life phase characteristic of most American males where there is this sinking realization there are more yesterdays than tomorrows and the “is-this-all-there-is” questions start surfacing. 

Am I relevant?

Will I ever be relevant?

What is relevant?

Does anyone care that I’m here? (News flash: Most don’t!)

You would think that by 45 or 50 or 55 that we would have most things about life figured out. But, we don’t. We’ve been too busy being heads-down, meeting cultural expectations.

Maybe the timing of this speed bump is built into the male genetic arrangement. Women don’t seem to bother with it so much. More likely, it’s because we’ve pulled up short of the cultural goalposts expected at that age – image, title, boys toys, neighborhood, retirement account, etc.

And there is that sinking feeling that there isn’t enough time or enough gas left in the tank to catch up.

 

The hour-long funeral procession

Coming across this quote reminded me of an experience I had nine years ago. I was doing my recruiting thing ensconced in my 9th-floor office in a building that overlooked one of Denver’s busiest east-west thoroughfares. I was on the phone with a candidate when I heard the “woop-woop” of a police siren. I looked out my corner window and saw a group of motorcycle policemen blocking off intersections ahead of a funeral procession.

From my perch, I could see a couple of dozen cars behind the hearse winding around a curve a few blocks away. I thought nothing of it and turned back to my phone call which continued for another 15 minutes or so. As I hung up, I glanced again down to the street and saw the funeral procession continuing to steadily stream by with the trail of cars still disappearing around the curve.

I remember thinking that there must have been some dignitary that passed but I hadn’t heard or read of any.

I turned back to the paperwork on my desk and stood up a full 30 minutes later to discover the funeral procession still streaming by.

Over an hour passed before the last car and trailing motorcycle cop passed.

As far as I knew, the governor was still alive, as was the mayor. And I hadn’t heard of the passing of any mega-church pastors. Or any Broncos/Rockies/Nuggets/Avalanche sports heroes. Or any of our small collection of Colorado billionaires.

Who was this person?

I still don’t know. The obits revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

This much I know – –

It was a sunny, warm spring day. But good weather didn’t explain this procession. This person, whoever he or she was, had touched a lot of people in a positive way.

This had “silent hero” written all over it.

The event has stuck with me and is a constant reminder that it’s the “internal” and not the “external” and the “give” and not the “get” that ultimately counts.

That’s a hard part of this mid-life transition for many. It’s a point where some of the hardest career and life decisions are made. I’ve written before about the “happiness curve” and the research that has revealed that age 47, on average, is the low point of happiness for most men.

Having been there personally and listened to lots of stories from folks at this stage, I’ll offer up a few thoughts on what one should know or begin to discover at this phase of the life span.

  • You should know if your life quest is aligned with your core essence. By age 45 – 55, you should feel, at the gut level, that you are, or are not, doing what you were designed to do. For most of us, our decisions up to this point have been largely driven by cultural influences and not by recognition and acknowledgment of our deepest talents, strengths, and dreams. It’s important to take seriously those aforementioned questions that are starting to dog us. They are a sign that there may be a misalignment that, if not acted on, could carry us into a second-half full of discontent and the negative biological consequences that can accompany the discontent.
  • You are now on the “back nine” and don’t get to do the “front nine” over. I love the golf analogy. I borrowed it from pioneer exercise physiologist Dan Zeman (see this article) Dan is on a life quest to raise awareness amongst male boomers of the health and wellness impact of decisions made in the back-nine or second half of life, reminding us that we don’t get to play our front nine over. There is a good chance, as Americans, that our “front nine” didn’t do us any favors, physically and emotionally. More than likely, we have coupled the stress of striving to accumulate and meet cultural expectations with a relatively unhealthy lifestyle of poor diet and immobility in a quest for convenience, comfort, and conformity.

We don’t have to look far for proof of the significance of marginal “front nine” decisions. The “happiness curve” seems to confirm that the mid-40s is a point where “turning point” decisions need to be made as one heads into the “back nine.” It’s also a time when the accumulated effects of poor “front nine” lifestyle decisions begin to manifest in the form of health issues. Most of us enter our mid-40s in pretty good shape but beginning to demonstrate signs that a downturn is underway that needs attention. Most common are weight gain, hypertension, increased cholesterol, arthritis, anxiety/depression.

The CDC has announced that over 60% of American males are overweight and 25% are obese. Nearly 70% of the American population is pre-diabetic and 50% don’t know it. This age and later is when all this begins to show up. That alone is a call to action at this point in life.

A few other things come to mind that we should know if we don’t already:

  • Things are rarely as good or as bad as they seem. Most anxiety is self-inflicted.
  • Most of the things we worry about are out of our control. (Reference the Serenity Prayer as a guide).
  • Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. The treasure is in today and doing what’s important to you. Today is all we have.
  • We will rise to the level of the five people we hang out with the most. It behooves us to be careful of our relationships and not be afraid to glean.
  • Our potential in life is limited not by the external but the internal. Live internally and accept that you are gifted in a special way. Don’t let our culture take it away from you.

It’s possible, as medicine and the biosciences continue to advance and we learn more about self-care, that 45-55 may not even be life’s true mid-point (more on this in a future article).  We can seize the opportunity and couple our inborn talents with accumulated life experiences, skills, and knowledge to virtually explode into your second half, be a world-changer, and have the time to do it.

The only thing holding us back is what we allow to happen between our temples.

Maybe the visual of that hour-long funeral procession will help.

Do you really care if you live to old age or not?

Please forgive me for taking a shortcut this week. We have spent an exhausting week moving to another home and I haven’t had the energy or bandwidth to push any creative content buttons.

 

 

I’m reposting an article I submitted a few weeks ago to a question on Quora.com that has been garnering some attention. Hope you find some value in these ramblings.

The question was:

” Do you really care if you live to old age or not?”

My response:

Sure I care if I live to old age, whatever that is. Why wouldn’t I? I’ve been given the gift of life, so why not try to take it to the max. I’m 79, intend to live past 100, and try to gear my lifestyle to doing the things that will enhance my chances of getting there.

Will I get there? I don’t know. My “front nine” lifestyle would say that getting there on my “back nine” might make it tough. Nonetheless, what I do know is that I’ve got today and I’ll live it out and do the same tomorrow. One day at a time trying to do the right things to and for my biology and moving forward with a mission and a sense of purpose.

What is old age?

Can you define it for me? Is it 60 or older as most people would still be inclined to say? Is it 79, like me? To a 50- or 60-year old, I suppose I would be considered old. But to a centenarian, I’m still a “young adult.”

My point is, age is a mindset. It can be either chronological – which is where most people come from – or it can be functional, which is a much healthier perspective.

For most folks, the prospect of getting old is fearful and disturbing. Theirs is a vision of nursing homes, walkers, oxygen tubes, wheelchairs, and drool cups. For others – a minority still – it’s a time of continued growth, vitality, creativity, and contribution, up to the point of true old age where we do a 180 back to total dependence.

Fate vs choice.

There was a time, not long ago, when we considered our lifespan a matter of “fate”, God’s will. We knew little about how to do the things that could affect our longevity. We now know that it’s no longer “fate” but “choice” that can play a big role in determining both the years in our life and the life in our years.

So, I’m going on this ride as long as I can. I know I will need resilience along the way because there will be setbacks, be those losses of loved ones, illnesses, or other calamities. But I know that continued engagement in the form of work will contribute mightily to how well I live out the final chapters.

I started a business at age 60 and am starting another and different one at age 79. I’m truly inspired to get up each morning and, frankly, don’t dedicate any mental bandwidth to thinking about whether I’m old or not. I’m having too much fun.

WARNING! New Virus Alert for Over-50 Adults

It’s Sunday, I’m sitting in my home office, it’s snowing like crazy – and I’m pissed.

At this moment, I’ve become the “grumpy, immobile, smelly ‘ol fart I swore I’d never become.” (That’s the subtitle to a book I wrote several years ago that seems to be stuck in eternal unpublished mode).

We’re in the middle of a two-day major snow dump – probably around two feet by the time it passes through. It’s heavy spring stuff that draws out lots of “heart attack” warnings about dragging out the snow shovel.

My 20- and 30-something nieces and nephews have offered to come over and shovel my driveway and sidewalk “because they love us and want to help.” Then before they could arrive, my next-door neighbor, James, attacks my walk and driveway, unsolicited, with his Toro, making quick work of the first 7″ of the snowfall. Yes, James knows how old I am but not much beyond that.

Mine was the only driveway other than his own that he plowed.

I thanked him, biting my tongue as I did so.

I gave it another hour or so and went out and hand-shoveled the next 6″, extracting a warning from my bride “not to overdo it.”

What am I – an invalid?

Does 79 guarantee a myocardial infarction when at the end of a snow shovel?

So, I’m sitting here feeling put-upon because I’ve reached a certain number.

I’ll go back out again in a couple of hours and attack the next 6″ –  maybe even twice if the front persists.

I’m sworn to never own a snowblower for two reasons: (1) they are, alongside lawnmowers, one of the worst polluters on the planet, and (2) I view snow shoveling as a great aerobic and anaerobic exercise and an excellent back-and core-strengthening event.

C’mon, mother nature just served up a great exercise opportunity and a break from my boring treadmill, Bowflex, and upright bike routine.

Somehow that idea falls on a lot of deaf ears. Because you see, I’m 79.

So, yeah, I’m sitting here in my “cave” selfish, indignant, disgustingly self-centered, ungrateful, grumpy, pouting, and (add your own here_________). I was born with all of those talents.

As fate, the muse, luck, or whatever would have it, as I pout, I end up with my nose into an article on Medium.com entitled “Age is a Mental Virus.” You can read it here.

I have followed the author, Julia Hubbel, for some time. She’s a prolific, profane, Type-A, late-60-something with an edge, especially when it comes to aging. I’ve learned, from her writings, that she’s particularly sensitive about the “your number is your age” syndrome that most of us buy into, saying in the article that “the absolute belief that you deteriorate swiftly with age is, in fact, genuinely deadly.”

Hubbel references a highly-touted research paper by Yale School of Health Professor Becca Levy. In it, Levy says (the bolding is mine):

Exposure to negative and positive age stereotypes over time plays a crucial role in whether people develop signs of dementia in their later years. The central message of the theory, and the research supporting it, is that the aging process is, in part, a social construct.

She goes on to say:

How you and I see ourselves, and how society treats us as aging human beings, has more to do with our quality of life than age itself.

The study is worth reading if for no other reason than it punches missile-sized holes in the notion society shoves at us that age=deterioration, decrepitude, despondency, and depression.

In sum, if we believe it sucks to be older, it will suck to get older. In fact, Prof. Levy’s research showed that those who bought into negative aging stereotypes are far more likely to suffer a cardiovascular event ( congestive heart failures, heart attacks, and strokes) in the next few decades.

There’s the virus. The mental virus. Sneaky. Subtle. Insidious. Self-inflicted.

There’s no Pfizer or Moderna or J&J or Astra-Zeneca solution for this one. No visits to the hospital or ambulance rides. Just a slow but accelerating slide down the slope on the back-side of life, unaware that the tough but simple antidote is a mindset change and a change in language.

Next time you, or someone in your presence, utters something like “getting old sucks” or “aging is for the birds” or any of the plethora of popular but deadly cliches that proliferate amongst post-50 adults, just know that you or they are infected. It’s likely that many of those closest to you have the virus. It will show up in their innocent reference to your “number” with a disregard for the deadly nature of their “social construct.”

I’ll return to the age model I’m adopting that I borrowed from Dr. Helen Harness of Career Design Associates and wrote about 9 weeks ago.

Harkness calls it the “living long and dying fast model.”

I’m adopting it.

Here it is again:

  • 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

Just so you know, you are granted the right to intrude on my snow shoveling domain (maybe) somewhere around the mid-point of my “elderly” period. Until then, leave your “aging sucks” and your Toro at home.

Is Your Last Day On Earth Worth That “Big Mac?”

Twenty-two months ago, I penned out a blog that talked about my Dad’s extended morbidity. And about my intention to not have the same.

You can read the entire article here. Or here are some cliff notes.

My Dad made it to 1998 and age 81 – right on today’s average lifespan. But, a big chunk of the 81 years wasn’t pretty.

Here’s a chronology of his “fourth quarter.”

  • Heart attack – age 59
  • Stopped smoking, ate better, lost some 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 in the nursing home; dead next day at 81

 

Twenty-two years of insidious, creeping morbidity. And early frailty.

Do you suppose 3-4 eggs with bacon every morning for breakfast, smoking for 40 years, and no exercise outside of work may have played a role?

Today, in America, we do a little better than Dad with our extended morbidity. On average, it’s only 10 1/2 years.

Only 10 1/2 years! Aren’t we lucky?

How about a morbidity curve that’s more like this? My 35-years-to-go plan still calls for going out face-down in a trout stream having fooled another 18″ rainbow.

 

Do we think of such things as we enter a Carl’s Junior drive-up window? Or wolf down that breakfast burrito because we are in a hurry? Or rationalize french fries as a vegetable?

We have a deadly combination working in our culture: food swamps and healthcare illiteracy.

Part of my motivation for writing on this topic came this week after viewing a video podcast by Scott Fulton of The Longevity Advantage in which he interviewed Dr. Saray Stancic,  a triple board-certified physician in internal medicine, infectious disease, and lifestyle medicine.

At age 29, in 1995, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and soon thereafter was negotiating life with the help of a cane.

In 2010, she ran a marathon.

Here’s a link to the interview – I hope you will take 45 minutes and experience her amazing story.

 

I haven’t yet read her book, “What’s Missing from Medicine: Six Lifestyle Changes to Overcome Chronic Illness” but I’m ordering it. She sings my tune when she takes her own profession to task for its disinterest in being a conveyer of good health advice. Hers is a message that needs to be spread.

We all would do well to learn from this expert on the brokenness of our healthcare system and the extraordinary power of nutrition.

Dad didn’t have the benefit of what Dr. Stancic can tell us.

Most of us will ignore the advice.

And we’ll thus hit the CDC’s prediction that 44% of our population will be Type 2 diabetic within the next 30 years.

Can we find anything that will be more effective in bringing our country to its knees financially than that statistic alone?

Dr. Stancic confirms that your primary care provider is the last place to go to get health advice and the first place to go when your lack of health advice has taken your biology off the rails.

Or, when your 997th Big Mac (or equivalent) has some of your parts saying they are ready to be sent back to the universe.

I hope you appreciate the podcast and will share it. Let’s all do our part to get this message out:  be the CEO and arbiter of your health.

Eat your vegetables!!

And tell your friends to join our growing tribe over at www.makeagingwork.com.

Ten Good Habits at 60+ That Can Add Ten or More Healthy Years To Your Life

It may seem a bit crazy to be suggesting ways to add to our lives when we are all caught up in holding on to what we have in this COVID madness.

The evidence seems to clarify that the best defense against this nasty bug is to max out our immune system. That’s not something we do really well here in America with our lifestyle of comfort, convenience, and conformity, especially when we combine that with a healthcare system that can’t spell prevention, a food industry that profits in killing us slowly, and a pharma industry that exploits our self-care illiteracy.

In that spirit, I chose to resurrect and retitle an article from 18 months ago that has been the most popular post over the course of 3 1/2 years of my weekly blog.

Ten Good Habits at 60+ That Can Add Ten or More Healthy Years To Your Life

1. Reconsider retirement. 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-stop retirement is associated with a 23-29 percent increase in mobility and daily activity difficulties, an 8 percent increase in illness, and an 11 percent decline in mental health.

Today, the average American endures 10.5 years of illness from multiple chronic conditions before dying, nearly all related to lifestyle decisions. For many, retirement is a lifestyle decision that takes them to the wrong side of the biological ledger – to a decay process rather than a growth process. Growth or decay are the only two options our biology offers us.  Senescence in the later years of life is a choice, not fate.

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 – particularly 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. Follow the money 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 minimum 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.

Weight training is vital. You are experiencing sarcopenia and probably aren’t aware of it. We all fall victim to it. It’s the 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.

4. 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. Don’t be fooled into using over-the-counter sleep medications. They aren’t the solution and have adverse long-term affects.

If you would like a high-level overview of the mechanics and benefits of sleep, spend some time with Dr. Andrew Huberman on YouTube.

5. 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.

6. Maintain a high level of social activity.

This critical component has taken a serious hit with COVID. Find a way to max it as much as possible under the conditions. It may never be the same as before going forward, but that doesn’t change the need to be connected, somehow, someway.

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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.”

10. Don’t be a dinosaur. 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.

11. Find someone to help or mentor.

OK, so I don’t count well. Here’s a bonus. 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.

Up the ante!

Wait a minute! We are shooting too low! Why 10 years? GO FOR 20 – OR 30. You deserve it!

Can We Get to 85 Without Any Ailments? An Opinion.

I’m forced to take a shortcut this week because of a tough schedule. So, I’m borrowing an article I posted on Quora a few months ago that garnered over 50,000 views. It was in response to the question:

How can one live 85 years without any ailments?

I offered my opinion:

It’s not likely you will. It’s really more of being able to live with them. Resilience is one of the characteristics found in those who live longer lives.

I’m 78 with the goal of living past 100. I have my share of “ailments”, some of which I’ve had for years. Both knees ache from 20 years of pickup basketball and two “clean up” surgeries; I have an arthritic left-thumb that hinders my love of guitar playing; a CT scan revealed I have significant cardiovascular disease; I have an under-active thyroid that makes weight control difficult and causes tiredness that I’ve medicated for 30+ years; I have atrial flutter (a first-cousin to atrial fib) for which I take a blood thinner.  And my feet hurt about 24 1/2 hours a day.

Having said all that, I stay firm in my conviction that I can live well beyond the average lifespan for men which is 78.9 in America. If I don’t, I will be checking out next Tuesday. I don’t have symptoms of anything that would say that is going to happen.  I’m remaining highly sequestered to increase the odds it won’t.

Here’s the point.

So much of how long we live and how we live long is between the temples. We aren’t likely to avoid ailments, especially if we are an American since our lifestyle preceding our later years was likely – shall I say – less than stellar. We most likely ate badly because we are beholden, out of naivete, to the deplorable Standard American Diet (SAD). And, we are likely on the bell curve of those who exercised far too little.

Also, let’s be honest. We still aren’t good at releasing this 20th-century myth that disease, debilitation, and dementia are automatic, an unalterable phenomenon – the ‘ol fate/God’s-will myth versus choice.

It’s really pretty simple. As a culture, we don’t really know jack about how our bodies and minds work and how to treat them optimally even though the how, what, and why information is massive and at our fingertips. And then we whine when we hit 60+ and some of our parts are acting like they are ready to be sent back to the universe.

I love the golf analogy. Far too many of us have played a pretty crappy “front nine” with our lifestyles of comfort, convenience, and conformity and find ourselves either remorsing through a dismal back-nine or trying to make up for or reverse it on the final nine holes. If I may stretch the analogy (for you golfers), we can find ourselves 175 yards out with only a 60-degree wedge in the bag.

 

 

I’m the poster-child for that.

I smoked until age 37 and ate badly through my first 60 years. Although I have been a gym rat and avid exerciser for over 40 years, the CT scan at age 73 revealed the truth of how those first five decades+ (my front-nine plus a few holes) had slowly, insidiously taken their toll.

So, resilience is part of the backbone of my existence as I march on this “pollyannish mission” to 100+. I work out aggressively, both aerobic and weight lifting, six days a week. It’s painful at every session but I’ve learned to tolerate the pain in favor of the results. I’ve also moved my diet more to a WFPB (whole-food-plant-based) program and away from the SAD C-R-A-P (calorie-rich-and-processed) diet that we Americans are captive to.

I choose to do the things that I know will maximize my chance of hitting my goal while having no illusions that I could be out of here by the end of the day. I’ve learned that all I have is today and have, with difficulty, learned the value of avoiding time travel into the future or the past.

It’s really all about ATTITUDE (see this article) and RESILIENCE as we age. Do some research on the lives of centenarians and you will find that nearly all of them have two consistent characteristics: (1) they have endured and survived numerous health and mental challenges with their resilience and (2) they have kept a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives, with the majority of them avoiding leisure-based retirement and staying engaged in some form of work.

So, if 85 is your goal (P.S. I suggest raising the bar – the human body can last to 112 years, 164 days), be prepared for ailments but adopt a “second half” lifestyle that will help you keep those to a minimum or give you more physical and mental strengths to live with them.

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

How are you handling your “ailments?” (C’mon, you have some!) Share your thoughts with a comment below.

A New Model for Aging: Subtract 20 Years From Your Chronological Age.

I pulled another book at random off my “A” shelf this week as I wait for Amazon to deliver my latest new book purchase. It turns out the book’s kind of an oldie, published in 1999. As I began my reread, I quickly realized why it was on the “A” shelf even with that publication date. It sat ignored since my first reading in 2013.

It’s worth a second read for me, chock full of timeless wisdom and still-current advice on making something of the second-half of life.

It’s entitled “Don’t Stop the Career Clock: Rejecting the Myths of Aging for a New Way to Work in the 21st Century” and the author is Helen Harkness, founder and CEO of an executive coaching company in Dallas called Career Design Associates.

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I recall placing a call to Helen after reading her three books because I was so impressed with the process she had developed to help executives successfully find their “capstone career” in their second half.

I believe Helen was 81 or 82 when I spoke with her in 2013.

She’s still at it.

Do the math.

Shouldn’t she be doing something other than – gasp! – working?

Ms. Harkness, as you might expect, has some strong feelings about attitudes toward aging. In the late-1990’s, she was at the front of the parade calling for us to “break the mindset that chronological age, the age on your birth certificate, is your real age.”

Twenty-plus years ago, she took to task our bent toward using the calendar to determine our age, saying:

“In contemporary urban society, we have the notion that a precise chronological age marks the transition from one stage of life to another, which is highly questionable. Today, the chronological ages of twenty-one and sixty-five define the lower and the upper boundaries of participation in the adult world, as well as the cultural definition of full humanity. Unfortunately, as it is today, those over sixty-five have no defined active roles in our society. So what are we to do with our highly extended long life.”

“This is an outdated but strongly established system that maintains tight control over our destiny. Yet there is absolutely no expert on aging today who holds that chronological age is a preferred or valid way to determe our actual age.”

Ahead of her time, Harkness was suggesting then that, with our advances in nutrition, fitness, medical services, and scientific breakthroughs, we should expect mid-life to start at sixty, not forty.

We’re still stuck – –

-with a chronological mindset. We’re trending away from it but at a snail’s pace.

Because of our “- social and cultural expectations, we program ourselves to begin to fall apart at a certain designated age, and we oblige.”

We are still dogged by this irrational concept of full-stop retirement as something obligatory and entitled, refusing to acknowledge that the chronological component of age 65 spawned 85 years ago wasn’t relevant then and is totally irrelevant today. And, history is showing us that this outdated concept can put us at the top of a downward slope and accelerate the slide.

Yet, it persists.

Can we perhaps admit that with our average lifespan now beginning to recede and the average American living with over 10 years of multiple, debilitating chronic illnesses that it’s well past time to consider a new “aging model?”

What if – –

-you subtracted 20 years from your current chronological age? Knowing what you know about yourself and the world around you, what would you do? Harkness suggests that if you know what you would do, then go do it now, adding: “Move on with your life. Take action. Forget who or what you are supposed to be because you are a certain chronological age.”

I believe it was Satchel Paige, Major and Negro League Baseball pitcher, who asked: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

Many of us remain frozen in our thinking about what we want this extended period of lifespan to look like without realizing that our chronological age is unconsciously and automatically blocking our thinking about our future.

Harkness goes further to say (bolding is mine):

“We grow old, not by living a certain number of chronological years, but by becoming idle in mind, body, and purpose. We decline and decay by abandoning our flexibility, our ideals, our talents, our life’s mission, and our involvement in our community. We grow old and retire by buying into society’s story that we can be surplussed, junked, and discarded. The most deadly assumptions related to aging are that retirement and old age are directly connected to the chronological age of sixty-five, that mental decline begins at age twenty-one, and that senility is inevitable if we live a long time.”

What do we have left if we abandon our chronological age?

Functional age, which Harkness describes as combining and integrating biological, social, and psychological measures into one active package and the answer to shaking ourselves loose from our fear of aging.

Next time someone asks you your age, ask them “Do you want my functional or chronological?”  I assure you, it gets some interesting responses.

The “live long, die fast” model for aging:

You may know by now that I’m an advocate for all of us  “dying young, as late as possible.” Harkness calls it “living long and dying fast” and she created her own aging model.

I’m adopting it.

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

At 78, 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.

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.

I may have to rent a walker one of these days and see how it would work in a river.

Does this aging model resonate? What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below or email me at www.makeagingwork.com.

Stay safe. We’re getting our vaccinations tonite at 7:30! Yay – maybe a taste of normalcy around the bend.

What is the biggest failure in modern health? Maybe not what you think?

I recently was monitoring an online forum on the topic “Why is our healthcare system failing us?”

It generated some interesting responses, some of them a bit out in “woo-woo” land.

Here’s a sampling:

  • Mega health mergers
  • Big data
  • Obamacare 2.0
  • Private practice doctors trapped in a completely perverted “fee for service” mode.
  • Drug corporations feigning concern with health when even they admit health is bad for business.
  • Corporate medicine creating disease deliberately with vaccinations and maintaining disease by suppressing true health knowledge and cures that would put them out of business. (There have been reports that this guy was seen on the capital steps last week!).
  • The almost religious reliance on antibiotics that replaced ‘barrier’ methods of keeping infections at bay in the last fifty years.

Some legit, some naive, some nuts.

It struck me that it was all about “them, them, them.”

It’s easy to point fingers and say it’s “them” that are failing in our “modern health system” when in fact it may just be US that are keeping it broken – our failure to take charge and accept responsibility for our own health.

When we point, we need to remember we have three fingers pointed back at ourselves.

We can say it’s a busted health care system (which it is) or greedy, profit-driven pharma companies (which they are), or a food industry that doesn’t care about our health (which they don’t). Or we can say I have the option to do a work-around of all that and be responsible for the actions I take that will allow me to avoid being enmeshed in all of that.

Maybe someday we will be honest and admit that it isn’t the failure of a health care system that causes me to take 1/3 of my meals through the side window of my car or cause 25% of the male population in the U.S. to be obese.

Or that pharma has driven me to become one with my voice-activated remote, La-Z-Boy, and Netflix an average of 40+ hours/week.

Or that the health care system has caused me to treat my health care as a reactive $35 co-pay experience when it goes off the rails.

Maybe someday we will just have to admit that we have a magnificent health care system that is supreme at “fixing” and “chasing the horse after it’s left the barn.” That’s the way it grew up over the last 120 years, stamping out diseases, fixing things, drugging and cutting things out.

We really can’t blame it for not being able to spell “prevention”, let alone teach, preach, or practice it.

Consider what would happen to that broken health care system if it taught you and me to be healthy? The entire infrastructure would crumble in a New York minute.

So, let’s stop throwing rocks at our modern health system and hiding behind our own crappy lifestyles. Let’s accept it’s brokenness and work around it.

Wanna change the healthcare system? Get healthy. Think “prevention” not “cure.” If you don’t need fixing, they are out of work, the big expensive machines will rust, scalpel manufacturers will be forced to Plan B, and TV ads will be something other than the latest pill for self-inflicted maladies.

 

Just saying:

THIS is NOT the fault of a broken healthcare system.