We Can Save Us From Ourselves. COVID is Teaching Us How. Are We Listening?

I had a dream this week.

I dreamed that Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed Donald aside from his podium charade, looked the viewing public in the eye, and said:

Stop listening to the media and politicians, get off your asses, change your diet, and stop whining about being a victim! We’re not coming to save you!

And he walked off. All channels cut to commercials.

OK, I didn’t really have that dream. I wish I had. Or, better yet, that it really happened.

This week, Reuters Health News published an article “Why COVID-19 is killing U.S. diabetes patients at alarming rates.” Read it here if you’ve got 10 minutes you would like to waste.

For those with a higher value on your time, let me summarize:

A  government study reveals that 40% of people who died with COVID-19 had diabetes. Among the deaths of those under 65, half had the chronic condition.

In the 1,537 word Reuter’s article, the phrase “type 2 diabetes” appears ONCE! No reference to type 1 diabetes or to the difference. Or to the fact that amongst diabetics, 91.2 % have type 2 diabetes and 5.6 % have type 1 diabetes

In 1,537 words, the word obesity does not appear once!

In 1,537 words, the word diet does not appear once!

In 1,537 words, the word exercise appears once, and only in the context that COVID is disrupting our ability to exercise. WHAT?

God forbid there should be any mention of the fact that type 2 diabetes is largely a lifestyle disease – mostly self-inflicted, preventable, and often reversible.

No mention that roughly 30% of overweight people have the disease, and 85% of diabetics are overweight.

Or that the AMA estimates that 50% of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it.

But then revealing painful truth has never been a narrative amongst the politically-correct or victim crowd. Or politicians. Or ratings-seeking media.

I’m reminded of the Winston Churchill quote:

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

We stumbled across the truth about diabetes, lifestyle, obesity, diet, immobility, etc. I would guess about a half-century or more ago.  And, yes, we continue to “hurry off as if nothing happened” or, more accurately, as if revealing the truth would mean we’d have to say something hurtful, or unkind, or racist.

 

 

Since the establishment seems given to owning our every move at this point, would it be too much to alter the dialog to something like:

“OK, everybody now must mask up. Oh, and now you are required to eat your vegetables and walk around the block after you do.”

Yeah, when hell becomes an ice-factory.

But what if we carved off about 1% of what we pay China for the PPE we outsourced to them years ago and used it to ship a handful of “truth conveyors” into the diabetic states, starting with W. Virginia. People like Dr. Michael Greger or Dr. David Katz. With a simple message of truth similar to “get off your asses, change your diet, and stop whining –“. You get my point.

If we must have a podium parade of purported professionals, can we add at least one other with causal knowledge and credibility to join Dr. Fauci?  Someone like Dr. Greger with a message like this one – watch this video.

Someone that isn’t afraid to say “we are what we eat.”

This past year, early deaths due to poor diet surpassed smoking as the #1 cause of early death in the U.S. So, after several decades of pounding the smoking message we got a little smarter (that is until Juul and their ilk came along to further confirm that adolescent brains stay adolescent until the mid-20’s). But, we’ve filled that newly available intelligence space with “I’ll just Big Mac my way to an early demise instead of Marlboro it.”

Pete Seeger wrote it, Peter, Paul, and Mary sang it: “When will we ever learn?”

Probably never, as Churchill so aptly pointed out. We’ll wait for miracles from medical science rather than let health science take the podium. Because to mess with medical science is to disrupt a medical/pharmaceutical cohort that knows only “cure” and fears the impact a “prevention” message would have on their profit model. And a factory farm/chemical food industry complex that doesn’t give a hoot about our health and isn’t gonna change.

Forgive my rant.

Then again, don’t. Can we collectively get a little pissed and begin to understand that government and corporations can’t and won’t save us from ourselves? And that, in fact, many of their motives and missions are counter to our well-being.

Our healthcare and pharmaceutical industries would collapse if we started thinking like the ancient Greeks. Twenty-five hundred years ago, they had it right.  They identified that medicine had two components – Hygeia and Panacea.  Hygeia equals health preservation and Panacea equals repair.   For the Greeks, Hygeia held precedence.

Do we fully appreciate how far we have strayed from that model?

Hygeia means prevention – it happens on the front end.

Panacea means “fix it” – it happens because of bad “front end” decisions. Type 2 is the accumulation of a lot of bad “front end” decisions.

We can’t expect our healthcare and pharmaceutical industries to start pounding the prevention drum.  Their existence depends on –  thrives on – our self-care naivete and neither attempts to alter that naivete. And certainly, crafty food engineers figured this out long ago and capture our taste buds early with food-like substances that ultimately push us into the fix-it mill.

We’re smarter than this!!

I’ll wrap by repeating this insight from “Forks Over Knives”:

The Standard American Diet (SAD) is deplorable and is killing us early.

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

Let that last bullet point sink in.

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

Why did we need COVID-19 to confirm something we already knew? What are the chances that we will further confirm it when the next virus comes to town?

And it will.

Leave a comment. And join the “truth squad” and spread the word.  But first, eat your vegetables.  That is, after signing up for our weekly articles at www.makeagingwork.com if you haven’t already.

 

How Old Would You Be If You Didn’t Know How Old You Are?

I believe it was Satchel Paige that asked the question that is my article headline.

You may have heard of (or remember) Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, American Negro League pitcher who is notable for his longevity in the game. He became a Hall of Famer, died in 1982 at age 76, and was known for his quotes in addition to his baseball prowess.

Like this one:

“Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

I like both quotes. At 78, I think you can understand why I like them.

Last week, I talked about starting a revolution to stamp out ageism. With a bit of a twist, I continue the quest.

This week, I sucked down a large dose of Steve Chandler, life and business coach extraordinaire and one of my favorite authors. I had loaned one of my favorite Chandler books to my son some time ago and it found its way (miraculously) back to my house recently. Read? Unread? He’s not saying – doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had a chance to dive back into it and complete my fifth reading (not a typo) of it since 2016.

The book is entitled “The Story of You.- And How to Create a New One.”  One of his most popular books. And, for me, a real gut-punch of reality about life and what we make it.

It’s classic Chandler. As in:

Get over yourself!!

The whole book is about how our lives are nothing more than made-up-stories with us as the authors.

In Chapter 8, “The Story of Growing Old”, Chandler says bluntly:

“Our age and attitude toward it is simply a made up story – influenced by listening to the stories told around us. You can’t be old unless you have a story about how old you are.”

Chandler keys off a prediction by celebrity alternative medicine doctor Dr. Andrew Weill who has predicted that the baby boomer generation will return focus and dignity to aging.  Like Chandler, I hope he’s right because, in Chandler’s words, “-it’s just a made-up story to say that young is better than old.”

Weill makes the point:

“Why are old wines and whiskeys valued much more than young ones? Why are we moved in the presence of old trees? When you age cheese, it improves the cheese. Antiques are valuable because they are so old. Older violins are the most treasured.”
Can’t we consider all the qualities of aging that make these things more valuable and apply them to people – and change the story we have about older people?
We’re up against it when it comes to changing the narrative, the story about aging. But it starts with us. We have to resist the negative aging story which can become very convincing because it’s so prevalent around us.  Chandler puts it this way:

“This negative aging story soon becomes convincing. It even entrances the old people themselves! Some older people, when they retire, start walking differently. They hobble and shuffle along. They speak differently, too, as if in a play with new parts to play. They stop exercising because their story is that they’re old now. Their voices get high-pitched, thin, reedy, and weak. How much of that is the physical decline, and how much of it is living into the pre-scripted story.”

There are legions of those who have rejected this pre-scripted story.

Warren Buffet hasn’t slowed much at age 89 – he still reads 5 hours a day in his office.

William Shatner, also 89, still travels, performs, creates as if his hair was on fire.

Norman MacLean rejected the idea of retirement and, at age 73, wrote his highly acclaimed masterpiece “A River Runs Through It.”

John Housman won an academy award for his performance in The Paper Chase but hadn’t started acting until he was 70.

Chandler had convinced himself for years that he was too old to write books until he changed the story he was telling himself at age 50 and has since turned out over 30 books. His new story? He would keep writing until his dying day. And he was making it up as he went.

It’s like deja-vu all over again, for me. My reinvention to write for the rest of my life is my changed story and I, too, am truly building this airplane in flight. And can’t wait to get up each morning and add one more little part.

Part of that new story is that I started posting responses on Quora.com about 15 months ago answering questions in my sweet spot of health and wellness, aging, longevity, career transition, etc.

On a whim, my first post was an answer to the crazy question: “What is the cause of the common odor many senior citizens have (despite good hygiene)? I know something about it because I had researched it for a book that I have written that remains in what is beginning to look like terminal draft stage.

You can read the Quora post here. If you do click on it, you will see, as of today, it has garnered 306,000 views and over 1,500 upvotes.

Whaa? About why old people smell?  Really?

Since that article, I’ve posted around 350 articles with 1.8 million views, nearly 10,000 upvotes, and earned Top 10 writer in a couple of categories. All of which, together with $2, will buy me a cup of Starbuck’s horrid coffee.

Why do it? Because I changed my story. I want to write. I feel I have a voice and a message and it’s a chance to maybe touch somebody, somewhere.

I get a lot of feedback on those posts, nearly all positive. There is one comment, however, that remains permanently ensconced in my brain because, well, the truth hurts. One gentleman didn’t line up with one of my arguments about something and simply just referred to me as an insufferable p***k.

I relayed that incident to my roommate of 49 1/2 years who responded with a “YES” and a fist pump.

I’ve kept a log of most of the comments (38 pages of them, in fact) because many of them have stories that I find educational and help guide me with my content. I want to share one with you:

A Harrington commented on your answer to: “What is the best advice you can give to someone who recently turned 60?”

6/9/2020

“Thank you Gary. I am female, 52 and have ‘missed the boat’ on a fulfilling, promising career. I did manage a bachelor’s degree after high school but then dropped the ball and simply took various jobs just to keep money coming in and survive. A very big mistake of which I have only myself to blame. (However, I did conceive a beautiful child and had many happy years as a stay-at-home Mom.)

So now I sit with the pain of missed opportunity and a feeling of loss at never having made more of myself. I have been toying with the idea of additional schooling to complete a teaching certificate. It would take me 16 months to do so and I would finish at the later side of 53, but after reading your post I think maybe I am not so crazy for considering it? Possibly someone would benefit from this older gal becoming a teacher?”

That’s why I write, why my story changed. Maybe A. Harrington will move from “victim” to “owner.” Maybe she will pull off a story change from the story she’s been telling herself (missing the boat) and move from toying to doing and touch many young people’s lives.

There are many like it in my comment log. People needing, wanting a story change. Each an affirmation that we are all made up stories, telling ourselves what we think others want us to be.

We are truly masters of lying to ourselves. And we’ve had a lot of help.

So, am I really 78?

Or can I be 45? Or 92? Some would L-O-L at the 45. Most wouldn’t care.  This morning, as I write, it feels like 45. My lower back says 92. But 45 wins.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

What’s yours?

Got a thought or comment about all this?  Share it below or with an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.  If you aren’t on our mailing list for each week’s free article, you can join in a heartbeat at www.makeagingwork.com. Stay safe, be sensible.

There’s a Longevity Revolution Brewing.  Are You Going to Be Part of It?

 

Do you get the impression that millennials still don’t seem to like us so much, we COVID-susceptible, creaky, white-haired relics?

The “OK Boomer” wave seems to have fizzled but there is still a bubbling resentment. No better demonstration of that than the virus-flaunting that’s taking place by the youngers at bars and beaches.

I suspect if I were to engage a group of millennials in a conversation about a “longevity revolution” in which we “geezers-in-progress” will be living even longer, it wouldn’t be welcomed news.

After all, their general narrative is that we are the big reason life can tilt toward miserable for a lot of them, right? Hoarding the wealth; setting the stage for planet destruction; not vacating the jobs they want/are entitled to; creating the technologies that have reduced their opportunities; creating police departments.

To which I say: “Heads up, whippersnapper!!  It’s gonna happen – let’s get in step together and team up!”

Who knows what is going to emerge from the economic COVID rubble. But one thing is unchangeable. Even with this microbe monster picking off the low-hanging fruit of co-morbid seniors, the 50+ demographic will remain one of the fastest-growing demographics in America.

There are 109 million of us over 50 in the U.S.  Boomers, who make up about 78 million of that, are now being joined in this 50+ group by the front edge of GenXers.

What to do with all us “geezers-in-progress?”

What if we started our own revolution, we prototype “geezers?”

A “longevity revolution.”

If there is some room for optimism in this pandemic, I’m thinking it may come from having the best minds across 150 countries focused on finding answers and that there will be serendipities galore as we gain a deeper understanding of how to protect our biology and extend our time on this mudball.

In other words, we could end up continuing to get even older for longer. We are already living, on average, about 10 years longer than we were a mere 50 years ago.

That possibility scares the s*** out of ageist politicians, corporations, and governments. And millennials. And those who fear aging.

But what if it means solutions to many of the ills that have beset us globally.

Now there’s a mindset with chalkboard/fingernail screechy dissonance! Geezers solving world problems? Really?

C’mon. You getting to 50 or 60 or 70 – or me to 78 – took some level of talent and moxie, right? OK, some luck, too. But, where does it say that it’s supposed to fizzle out at 65? Outdated models would have you to believe it, but don’t tell your body and mind that. They’ve both got a lot of fight left if we’re willing to put on the gloves.

Look, all of us pre-boomers, boomers and early GenXers have a choice. Just be older for longer taking up space and using up oxygen – or do something with this longevity bonus.

We can tack those extra years on the end and continue to cling to the 85-year old FDR model designed to send us to the sidelines to be “consumers supported by society.” Or we can be “producers adding to its strengths.”

I borrowed those words from Joseph F. Coughlin in his book “The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest-growing, Most Misunderstood Market.” I’m on board with Coughlin who says that the FDR-spawned concept of government-supported and sanctioned retirement seized upon by the insurance industry for the creation of leisure-based “golden years” is a “narrative whose time is done.”

The 20th-century idea that “the aged” are inherently unhealthy and uniformly incapable of economic production admittedly led to some important government programs e.g. Social Security, Medicare.

But now, in Coughlin’s words,

“- that narrative has become a liability. it has taken us as far as it can, but it is now holding back innovation in a way that’s proven hard for many to recognize, let alone solve. [The] invention that once served us well must be replaced.”

It’s encouraging to see that we are gradually rejecting the glamour of leisure-based retirement. With the artificial finish line established 85 years ago, we shoved people into a space with “- – no institutions or instructions for how to live, no economic production roles to differentiate one retiree from the next, and nothing to tell them what to do with their time.”

So we invented something – the “we” being insurance companies and the Del Webb’s of the world. The result? Legions of self-indulgent consumers sequestered in large luxury ”warehouses” with atrophying skills and talents, hanging with others with atrophying skills and talents.

No youth allowed to interfere with this planned early demise.

The revolution is starting. Join the fight.

The revolution against this has legs driven by demographics, changing attitudes, a drop in immigration, the changing retirement landscape, and the fact that companies will have no choice but to reconsider their positions on hiring or rehiring older workers.

What does a longevity revolutionary do? They start with a commitment to changing attitudes and undermining the rampant ageism in the marketplace.  Not with a sign on the street corner, or mob protests in the streets, or a book (with all due respect to Ashton Applewhite’s fantastic book on the subject), or some other form of a public rant but rather through an individual commitment to preparing for and engaging in the fight smarter and more effectively.

 

Here are ten things you can do to prepare and be a part of the “revolution”:

  1. Protect your health. Get healthy, stay healthy. Become a student of your biology and what it needs to operate optimally and with renewed energy. (HINT: Start with an evaluation of your diet – bad diet is now the #1 cause of early death in the U.S., having surpassed smoking.)
  2. Continue your education, never stop learning. Stay sharp. Keep up with the basic technology. Check out free/inexpensive resources like Senior Planet or One Day University.
  3. Have a proud physical condition and presence. See #1. Be visibly in shape and sport a current wardrobe.
  4. Be an active networker, building relationships outside of the old, tired inner circle. Take a millennial or two to lunch and LISTEN! No lectures allowed!!
  5. Commit to a purpose and build your personal brand around it, using life’s accomplishments together with talents, and strengths. Don’t waste that first two-thirds of life!
  6. Put yourself “out there.” Use social media -professionally, not just socially.
  7. Add speaking skills. You’ve got a voice and lots to say.  Join Toastmasters and learn to speak, build confidence, and hang out with inspiring, positive people (most of them younger than you). It’s a “double-dip” environment.
  8. Get rid of your ageist language. No more “aging is a bitch” or “aging isn’t for sissies” or “whassup, old-timer” or “you certainly don’t look your age” or “I just had a senior moment” or “you’re not retired yet?”
  9. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to show up at the fitness center (when they return) and work on #1 above amongst the tattoos, tank tops, and lulu lemons.
  10. Adopt a “Modern Elder” mindset and not a “Senior Citizen” mindset. See my 10/21/19 article on this movement here.

We can “whine and wait” for the industrial complex to come to their senses and start reconsidering the role of over-60 people in their organizations.  Or for that fistfight on the Potomac to find some chill and smart pills.  Or we can make it impossible for them to ignore us by how we prepare, present ourselves, speak out, and defend our space.

Viva la revolution!

Not ready to join a revolution? Then at least join our mailing list if you haven’t, at www.makeagingwork.com. And leave us a comment, below or at gary@makeagingwork.com. Stay safe.

Sixty-years-old or about to be? Here Are Some Experience-based Suggestions for the Path Ahead.

As a 78-year-old I’ve been there and done the 60-year-old thing.

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

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

I’d like to share just three thoughts that may help pave a healthy and purposeful path for this “third age”.

1. Reject the conventional, decades-old cultural expectations for what lies ahead.

By that, I mean rejecting the view that this next phase is a time to “wind down and come in for a landing”. At 60, we are carrying forward decades of “retirement indoctrination” e.g. time to slow down, kick back, indulge ourselves.

With COVID, many more of us will join the growing number who are unprepared financially for traditional full-stop retirement – perhaps as high as 60% of us, according to some recent reports. With that may come the joint fear of running out of money and the subtle condemnation that our culture lays on us if we don’t retire on or before that sacred number 65.

Yes, there remains a significant number who are “financially prepared” and still anticipate a full-stop retirement convinced they have earned and are entitled to the self-indulgence it allows. Although declining, it’s still an attitude that 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 that established an artificial finish line of 65 when the average American didn’t make it past 62.

Facing 3–5 years of retirement, it made sense for your parents or grandparents to head to the beach, 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 sense.

Whether you are financially prepared on not, my suggestion for this life juncture is to consider redefining retirement. Consider 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 you are pursuing for the balance of your life.

If you agree, or this interests you, here are three solid resources that you will find helpful:

There is considerable duplication across all three books but each also contains unique and powerful suggestions and preparatory activities.  Read all three, and you have the equivalent of a master’s degree in “non-financial retirement planning.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: Should you buy any of these by clicking on the live link, it will be at the regular price but I will earn an Amazon Affiliate commission – about enough to buy a quarter cup of Starbuck’s awful coffee.

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 the one that really stung me years ago: “Is it true that the number of people attending my funeral will largely depend on the weather?”

If so, you are at 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.

Then start asking yourself even tougher questions.

I’ll reuse the important quote I used in my 6/15/20 blog from author Laurence C. Boldt:

“All imaginative journeys are prompted by questions. The mind runs on questions. Questions form a kind of skeletal structure upon which your life is built. New questions, deeply asked, will shape a new life.”

Questions like:

  • Is there a story to my life?
  • Do I have a basic philosophy of life that is my own?
  • Do I have a purpose for the rest of my life?
  • What is my part in this grand play of life?
  • How can I make a difference?
  • What do I want to do?  What must I do?
  • What can I realistically achieve in the span of my life?

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 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 consider doing 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. 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, and professors.

I finally had to acknowledge all this in my mid-sixties after leaving corporate life at 60, starting my own recruiting business and realizing that my corporate sales and marketing experience – although successful by monetary and title standards – was not ideal for how I was equipped.

I ignored the results of multiple assessments that consistently suggested 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.

For instance, I took the Strengthsfinder assessment THREE times, refusing to accept the results, which, BTW, were always consistent.  I just knew that the Gallup organization would have come to their senses by the time I took it the third time.

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 have a term  “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.

Quick reality check: have you done your body and brain a lot of favors up to this point?  I didn’t think so.

I hadn’t, despite being a gym rat for 25 by the time I hit 60.  The statistics on length of life and the level of extended morbidity and early frailty amongst our general population in this third age bears out the fact that we generally do a pretty crappy job of taking care of ourselves – especially through those grinding years of accumulating stuff, titles, image.  You know what I mean – that period where we let a culture that isn’t friendly to good health dictate our lifestyles.

We can make all the grand plans we want for this new period of extended longevity. It will be meaningless if we 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 the brashness, but collectively we are very health care 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. convenience, and conformity. We view good health as the absence of sickness and have turned healthcare into a $35 copay experience with our 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.”

Over 60% of early death in our culture is due to an inappropriate diet. Early death due to poor diet just passed smoking as the #1 cause of premature death!!

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 countervailing forces to maintain optimal health.

That’s why, regardless of age –  and especially at 60 and beyond –  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 establish 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. You may find them enlightening as well.

“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 the late 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 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

Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.

Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.

Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.

Spend less than you make.

Quit eating crap!

Care.

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.

Agree or disagree? We’d love to know. Scroll down and leave a comment or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com. If you aren’t on our weekly email list, you can join at www.makeagingwork.com.  It’s free – we publish a new article every Monday.

Is COVID a Cataclysm? Or a Catalyst? I’m Going With the Latter

 

 

How’s your whiplash going? Mine sucks!!

I’m coming off a bad week. Actually, two weeks of funk.

Last week was the first time in over two years that I missed a Monday 5 p.m. blog post.

Couldn’t do it. The draft that I ran by my first-level “copyeditor” (my roommate of 49 1/2 years) got me a diplomatic groin kick.

As in: “Are you serious?”  “Who are you trying to be?” “Reel it in, Bucko!” “I don’t know you!”

Seems the article was a tad political and wholly judgmental – from an old dude who is in no position to be judging anybody on anything.

It had to be the whiplash.

I’m blaming COVID whiplash for resurrecting my arrogance, thinking my poison pen would move the societal needle. Never has, never will. Always backfires.

Which WHO/CDC directive do I believe or follow this week?

One rogue cop = elimination of police departments.  Whaaa?

A death in Minneapolis = free big-screen TVs at Walmart in California.

Stock market or wet market?

Hannity or Maddow? (Both are nuts!)

Open, don’t open.

Return to work, don’t return to work.

Retire, don’t retire.

All but the last two will fade away from our immediate consciousness. I’m guessing the last two represent a couple of the most pressing and lingering questions facing us going forward, especially in the 50-55+ demographic I enjoy working with as a life transition coach.

Emergence from adolescence?

Some have suggested that COVID may be a catalyst, perhaps the last vestiges and the most painful growing pains of us growing out of “adolescence” and maturing into “adulthood” as a society.

Surely, you’d think over two-and-a-half centuries would be long enough to mature into adulthood.

But then, maybe we need a few more adolescent tantrums to get there, to fully expose how we’ve lost our way culturally.

As much as anything our uncertainty reminds us that we have less control over life than we think we do, especially as we navigate through pervasive risk which may be the new normal as we get more globally interdependent, get sicker environmentally, and less healthy as individuals.

We’ve been swimming naked.

Warren Buffet famously said:

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

I know – he was talking about the scamming that goes on in the financial services industry. But, something in my gut tells me COVID is a receding tide and much of what we’ve become culturally is standing naked.

As in, what work has become for many.

As in our pre-occupation with retirement.

Are we finally beginning to drive a stake through the heart of meaningless employment and traditional retirement?

Let me extract some stats from this Forbes article that would say maybe we have at least bought the stake and the hammer when it comes to employment:

  • A recent study by CareerBuilder.com shows that a whopping 58 percent of managers said they didn’t receive any management training.
  • Fifty-eight percent of people say they trust strangers more than their own boss.
  • Seventy-nine percent of people who quit their jobs cite ‘lack of appreciation’ as their reason for leaving.
  • American workers forfeited nearly 50 percent of their paid vacation in 2017. The fear of falling behind is the number one reason people aren’t using their vacation time.
  • The Conference Board reports that 53 percent of Americans are currently unhappy at work.

Do we really want to continue to mix the above with one-hour commutes, drab-towers of cubicles, stupidly-high parking fees to pay for ecologically destructive lots, bad fast food at our desks, stress?

Better questions = better lives.

It’s a good time to remember that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of the questions we ask of ourselves.

I was reminded of that this week trudging through a re-read of “Zen and the Art of Making a Living” in which author Laurence C. Boldt states:

“All imaginative journeys are prompted by questions. The mind runs on questions. Questions form a kind of skeletal structure upon which your life is built. New questions, deeply asked, will shape a new life.”

If nothing else, COVID is at least shaking trees and raising quality, transformational questions at a time when the quality of our health, relationships, and ecology are declining.  The quality of the questions starts getting really good and deep at mid-life and beyond for many.

I’m confident that COVID and the cousins that follow will move us down a path of more wholesome, purposeful, less-materialistic, planet-replenishing ways of life. We’re finding out quickly how we can do without what we thought we couldn’t do without that we busted our humps to avoid being without.

Aren’t we getting a big gulp of the shallowness of accumulation? Are we realizing that all this “getting” has an endpoint that we are approaching rapidly?  What if, instead of a $75,000 Beemer, I bought a $35,000 Honda Accord and two used Hondas for two families in need?

Are we finally going to acknowledge that retirement and the fast-track, at age 62, to a 1,000 unit high-rise retirement community – advertised as “cruises without the motion” but in actuality, cleverly-disguised virus petri-dishes  – might not be the wisest decision?

What is the story of your life?  Is there a “Quest?”

Your life – my life – is a story. And they are changing, this time in pretty big chunks.

Chances are if you are at or beyond midlife, you are asking these types of questions (Sourced from “Zen and the Art of Making a Living”)

  • Is there a story to my life?
  • What am I doing here?
  • Do I have a basic philosophy of life that is my own?
  • What is my part in this grand play of life?
  • How can I make a difference?
  • What do I want to do?  What must I do?
  • What can I realistically achieve in the span of my life?

Big, important questions, all accelerated by something we can’t even see.

Let me wrap with more from Laurence C. Boldt as he writes about crafting the story of your life:

“If I could look at it objectively, would I want to read the story of my life? Does it grab and hold my attention? Does it have the elements of a good story: challenges to overcome, growth, direction, confidence, a larger-than-self purpose? If the answer is no, then perhaps the main character needs development; the plot needs to be clarified, expanded, sharpened: or excitement needs to get generated by increasing the tension between what could be and what is. If you can honestly answer yes, then – where is your next chapter going?”

Be safe. Stay with the “guidance” despite the whiplash,

Crank up the intensity of the questions!

I, for one, have determined the main character in my story needs serious development. That’s why I write. You, as a reader, are a player in that development. I appreciate you and thank you for joining the list. And especially for your comments.  If this resonates – or not – let me know what you think with a comment below.

If you are not on the list, scoot over to www.makeagingwork.com and hop on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your Bucket List Just Got Blown Up – Now What?

 

2020 COVID-19 bucket-list revision:

Daughter’s country club wedding

  • Backyard, limit to 20 guests, buy masks, cancel caterer, saved $45K.

Bahama/Mediterranean cruise

  • Vision of floating petri-dish won’t go away – cancel, try to recover deposit.

Early retirement

  • Hmmm – maybe these non- or semi-retirement heretics are on to something. Buy some books. Find therapist to help with the adjustment.

Upscale condo at upscale retirement community

  • Get off the waiting list, kiss off the deposit. Sounds very much like cruise petri-dish but without the motion.

Trips to Machu Picchu and Buddhist ruins, Sri Lanka

  • Masks in that heat – yuck! Neighbor’s 2-hour presentation of pictures of same – incredibly boring!! Replace with discovering our own state, driving.

BMW X-7

  • Timing belt and new tires for 2016 MDX wins this one.

Use current bucket list to start charcoal grill

  • Start over – refocus on what’s important.
  • Don’t expect a return to “normal” – what is normal anyway?

I’m not much of a bucket-list guy. It goes with my stoic personality and increasingly hermit-like and insufferable nature. Get me my $5,000 Martin acoustic guitar and I’m pretty well complete. Oh, and a set of custom-fitted Taylormades/Pings/Callaways while you’re filling the bucket. I won’t bother you again after that.

I get a strange satisfaction nudging my decades-old Ford Exploder (that’s not a typo because it could, any moment) past 180,000 miles.

I’ve never understood buying one vehicle for what you could buy three Honda Accords.

So, I’m not having to adjust much but I know most are – and I’m sympathetic. Bucket lists have a goal-setting tone to them, positive visualization, hope and encouragement.

Until they don’t. And I suspect they are now just the opposite. And in need of the revisit.

I suggest it’s time for the revisit and a capitulation to the fact that this “new normal”, whatever it ends up being, is not going to support heavy consumerist bucket lists. Something’s gotta give. Something’s gonna change.

An outside perspective

I’m lateraling the ball this week to one of my favorite bloggers, Susan Williams at Boomingencore.com. Her latest post (see it here) was full of gems, including a 12-minute podcast interview with Dr. Sean Hayes, a clinical psychologist who shares some important perspectives on where we are, including dealing with bucket lists.

Here’s a link to the entire interview. I think you’ll find it enlightening and helpful.

Do you have a bucket list? If so, are you revisiting it? How has your perspective changed regarding a bucket list? Tell us where you are – we’d love to get your feedback.

OK, you’re over 60 – what do you know now that you’d like to tell your 40-year-old self?

Recently, a questioner on Quora.com asked me to answer this question:

“For people 55 and older, what would you tell your 40-year-old self? What do you wish you knew then that you know now.”

I’m deep into the demographic so I took a shot at it. I found it hard to keep it short.

So, if you know a 40-year-old that is patient enough to listen to an insufferable septuagenarian, here’s what they would hear from me:

1. Get healthcare literate and take control of your health.

Since you are living in the U.S., there is a good chance that your lifestyle has already done some damage to your long-term health. That is unless you are one of the few outliers that have lived a disciplined life of good diet, exercise, low/no stress, and have chosen to understand how your biology works and how best to treat it.

I grew up in an era in the 50s and 60s where our health habits were marginal at best. We lacked the knowledge, awareness, and access to the healthy living information that we have today. I smoked for 18 years until age 37. In the 1950′s, smoking was considered healthy and promoted by doctors, dentists, and movie stars. Diet was built around meat and potatoes. We knew little and lived accordingly.

Although I’ve been a gym rat for 40+ years since then, I didn’t pay attention to my diet and continued on the S-A-D (Standard American Diet) until into my late 50s.

At age 73, a routine heart scan revealed I was in the high-risk category for cardiovascular disease with significant artery calcification. But, I’m lucky. Mine appears to be distributed because subsequent echo and nuclear stress tests showed normal blood flow (my left ventricular artery – the widow maker – is clear).

My six-day-a-week exercise program continues and I have radically reduced my intake of meat, dairy, and C-R-A-P (calorie-rich-and-processed), the major components of our S-A-D still today.

My point is that if you choose to live a normal American lifestyle, you likely:

  1. Are too sedentary.
  2. Are eating badly.
  3. Are stressed out.
  4. Have a 65% chance of being overweight, 25% of being obese.
  5. May be one of the 50% of our American population that is pre-diabetic and one of the 70% that don’t know it.

We know all we need to know to take full advantage of our birthright of good health. But, as a society, we choose to continue to remain naive about how our bodies and minds work and choose to abuse our immune system with poor health habits, failing to appreciate the slow, insidious damage that is being done until, often, it is too late to stop or reverse.

Consider a few important facts:

  1. We have a food industry that doesn’t give a rip about our health and a healthcare industry that doesn’t care what we eat.
  2. Our antiquated healthcare system does not spawn practitioners that know or care about nutrition. They are trained in “cure” (as in drug it or cut it out) and not “prevention.” That’s on us.
  3. It’s also important to understand that the bio-pharmaceutical world is not built with your good health in mind, although they would lead you to believe it. They come forward with few solutions or drugs for “preventative health.” The pharmaceutical industry would collapse if everybody took care of themselves. It’s built on the cure concept, in alignment with the similarly trained physician community.

Once I understood how my biology worked at the cellular level, I began to change up many things in my life: increased my exercise, changed my diet, and radically reduced stress in my life. I recommend you read the source that kickstarted my increased awareness and motivation:  the best-selling, transformational book “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond.”

The authors convinced me that I inherited a magnificent immune system of some 35 trillion cells that works 24×7 to keep me healthy. It doesn’t ask for much to do its job and will reward me if I follow the simple guidelines of what it needs i.e. good glucose, oxygen, fewer harmful stress hormones in my bloodstream, and rest.

Knowledge is power, especially in protecting your health. Take charge on your own, be distrustful of a profit-driven medical, pharmaceutical, and food industry to be doing what is right for your optimal health. Believe me, they are not.

2. Discover/rediscover your strengths and talents.

Most of us “olders” are a product of the 20th-century linear-life model that looks like this:

We were squeezed into a learn-earn-retire model built on conformity and heavy cultural expectations: getta degree; getta job; getta wife, house, kids, two cars and a golden retriever; getta title; getta 401K; getta gold watch.

Here’s where that has ended up happening for many of us from that era:

I’ll confess to having drunk this 20–40–20 Koolaid, spending 35 years operating outside my essence and my deepest talents and strengths in the corporate world building someone else’s dream and doing the “normal” accumulation and conformity thing. While I did OK, it took separation from that and a venture into my own business to slowly begin to reveal that I was wired for something different.

I ignored several personal/psychological assessments and personal experiences that were telling me that my core strengths were in learning, writing, teaching, speaking, coaching.

I’ve arrived where I need to be, but late in my life. So my suggestion to you at 40 is to start, or restart, thinking about what you are really, really good at, what you really, really enjoy doing, and what the world needs and ask yourself if that fits what you are doing now. If not, it’s a good time to start thinking of where you can best use your talents, skills, and experience and fill that hole that I’ll call “lack of purpose.”

3. Plan for a “third-age” with a sense of purpose.

The level of disengaged employees in the workplace is at an all-time high. I was there for years in the corporate world. Few people enter their careers with a solid grasp of what their deepest core talents, strengths, and desires are. Or if they had a sense of what those were, they entered the system that our culture expects of them where those innate inner drivers get shuttled to the background in favor of accumulation and conformity, meeting cultural expectations.

For many, these drivers never resurface. And they plod on through an unexciting, unmotivating career with the expectation of reaching that nirvana stage called “retirement” mostly unaware of the downsides of that decision.

This sense of “lack of purpose or meaning” tends to surface at mid-life, usually in the 40s and 50s when one faces the reality of more days behind than ahead and struggles with questions like “Why am I here?”; “What will be my legacy, what footprint will I leave?”

Here the one that really hit me hard: “Is it really true that the number of people that will attend my funeral will largely be determined by the weather?”

At 40, I suggest it’s a time for serious reflection on where you are, how that aligns with your deepest desires and talents and begin to think in terms of a “third age” and what you want it to look like. And 40 certainly isn’t too early to start. That “third age” is the period between end-of-career and/or end-of-parenting and true old age where we come full circle back to full dependency. You’re “third age” isn’t that far off.

That life-stage today is extending, for many, to as much as 30–40 years. That’s a long time to function without purpose which is where many in the self-indulgent retirement model find themselves discovering that 30 years bingo, bridge, and boche ball isn’t healthy or fulfilling.

Fortunately, we are seeing a rising tide of mid-lifers beginning to grasp the importance of a plan for the third-age that involves continued work, contribution, and sense of purpose as opposed to the traditional narcissistic, self-indulgent, consumer-only concept of retirement.

4. Get rid of the mental junk. Never stop learning.

By 40, you’ve been exposed to – perhaps succumbed to – many harmful, life-inhibiting myths and messages. Such as:

  1. I will automatically lose cognitive ability as I age.
  2. Or, my DNA is my destiny.
  3. Or traditional, leisure-based retirement is good for my health.
  4. Or work in older age is harmful.
  5. Or my creativity declines as I age.
  6. Or my physical decline is automatic and irreversible.

It’s a long list of disproved messages that we allow to entrench in our minds, much of it junk that holds us back. Ignore them – go the other direction.

We’re learning that our creative powers don’t diminish as we age unless we allow it. They may slow, but we can build brain power and create as well as when we were younger. So, don’t buy the line that says senescence is automatic. It isn’t.

We start dying slowly when we allow our dreams and desires to fade in the face of the myths about aging.

Henry Ford had it right:

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning today is young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. “

5. Get strong, stay strong.

Aerobic exercise should be keystone in your lifestyle. Optimally, from age 40 forward, your week should include six-days-a-week of aerobic exercise of 30 minutes or more with your heart rate in an aerobic zone of 220 minus your age x .65 and .85.

But it shouldn’t stop there. It’s vital to have a strength training component along with your aerobic exercise – at least two days a week.

Here’s why. Beginning in our mid-30s, our bodies begin to lose muscle mass at a gradually accelerating pace. The clinical name for the condition is sarcopenia and it really accelerates when we reach our 50s and ends up becoming one of the major causes of early frailty and premature death in our culture unless compensated for. The only antidote is strength-training – there are no drugs to effectively treat sarcopenia/loss of muscle mass.

Failure to compensate for loss of muscle mass is a major contributor to the “live short and die long” referenced above. Falls and broken hips, which are major contributors to early frailty and premature deaths, are a consequence of lost muscle mass.

Get a gym membership (if they are able to come back after COVID) or build an at-home gym (here’s a photo of my current in-home set up – treadmill, upright bike, Bowflex, weight-bench and assorted free-weights). Boring but effective.

Get with a trainer to get started properly and to avoid early injury that may discourage you from staying with the program. Put heavy emphasis on your core, quads, and ankles – keys to avoiding falls later on and for avoiding back problems as you age.

6. Rethink retirement.

You may have bought into the Euro-American concept of leisure-based retirement and perhaps are convinced that retirement is an entitlement and a nirvanic end-goal filled with exotic travel, golden sunsets, and total freedom. And it can be all that but at the risk of experiencing some of the subtle, hidden downsides of a self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement.

There is an encouraging, but slow, shift taking place in our awareness of the downsides of the traditional, off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure retirement model that we have cherished for decades and is so effectively marketed by the financial services industry.

Part of it is because we know so much more about what comprises good health and the growing awareness that our biology offers us only two choices, regardless of age: growth or decay. There are many aspects of the traditional retirement model that violate this biological principle and can accelerate our physical and mental decline.

Historically, there has been a tendency for retirees to become more sedentary and move less. Satisfying the dream of spending less time in the kitchen promotes a lifestyle of eating out more where food content is less healthy – 30–40% higher calorie content and generally heavy in sugar, salt, fat.

Netflix, voice-activated remotes, and the Laz-y-boy become increasingly tempting.

Continued learning diminishes.

Social isolation is a major concern post-retirement and is said to be equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The new trend for this “third age” is away from self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement and more toward continuing to stay engaged with work of some sort, be it volunteer, part-time, full-time, or by starting a new business. The largest number of new businesses over the last decade or so have been started by folks over 50.

In my coaching practice with folks over 50, I encourage them to consider their third age as a time to strive toward achieving a balanced lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning.

I believe it is a healthier formula and can lead to “living longer and dying shorter” versus our current predominant “live short, die long” model.

7. Connect and commit.

A recent random survey by Cigna revealed that nearly half of those surveyed “sometimes or always feel alone” and that 40% “feel their relationships are not meaningful and that they feel isolated.”

These are alarming numbers because of the health and mental health risk associated with social isolation and loneliness. AARP recently revealed that the health risk of prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

There is substantial evidence that social isolation and loneliness increases the risk of early death. Social isolation is a threat as many retirees exit from the work environment and lose the major part of their social life. They often find themselves without much of a social network outside of that environment.

We are wired to connect, to be in community.

Let me wrap by quoting Chris Crowley, co-author of the aforementioned book “Younger Next Year.” As a successful attorney, he offers up the following which I feel is golden advice for a 40-something that is considering “what’s next.”

“It was nuts to immerse myself so completely in my old professional life before retirement. In particular, it was foolish not to have other hobbies, communities and commitment – things I care about and people who care about me- when my work life ended. If you’re going to do well in this country, you have to make a massive commitment to your job. No question about it. But don’t make your job your only commitment, because it will go away. You need to get a life that will last a lifetime. It makes sense to start on that project as early as you can. Today would be good.”

Your comments are important. They help us stay on track.  Scroll down and let us know your thoughts about this.

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

Change Your Four-letter-word Selection to Get Through This Mess

I’m watching more movies these days than ever. I suspect you are too.

We’ve never been movie-goers/watchers. Watching a half-dozen movies a year is a busy year for us.

I’ve watched more than that just this month. End-of-day, late-night surfing the wasteland of HBO/Showtime/Epix, etc. and settling on one from the endless selection of mind-numbers.

Occasionally Shawshank or an equivalent will be available and I’ll ride it to the end, for the umpteenth time.

More times than not, it’s falling asleep to today’s’ fare of incessant gunfire, explosions, and f-bombs.

F-bombs are no longer bombs – it’s now just regular dialog mixed into virtually every sentence. I hope I never get comfortable with it.

I’m also continuing to read a lot during this crazy time -keeping my daily commitment to read at least an hour each day.

I decided to save the expense of buying more books and have gone back to my bookshelf and re-reading – in some cases for the third or fourth time – books I consider to be five-star in terms of impact.

Thus it is that I’m into the third reading of another of Steve Chandler’s many books, this one entitled “Time Warrior: How To Defeat Procrastination, People-pleasing, Self-doubt, Over-commitment, Broken-promises and Chaos.”

Whew! Any of those energy-drainers resonate with you? They all do with me. So it’s back into the book looking for that life-changing magic pearl.

Chandler is a long-time favorite. He’s a renowned business and life coach, coacher-of-coaches, author of over 30 books, sought after speaker, and a recovering alcoholic now over 30 years sober.

Chapter 24 in Time Warror (his book chapters are rarely more than 2-3 pages) jumped out at me where Steve encourages “risking your identity” and “letting your cherished, built-up personality fade away“, suggesting that egos and personalities “are finished being made up for most people in junior high school. Therefore, they are just full of adolescent fear, worry, and anxious hope.”

See those two four-letter gems in that last sentence – fear, hope.

Is there more than a little of both of those around right now?

Well, yeah. Huge doses of the former, too much of the latter.

Too much hope? Really?

I side with Chandler on this. I put “hope” and “wish” in the category of useless, harmful four-letter words that are a wasted response to the most damaging four-letter word of all – fear.

Here’s why – and I’ll quote Steve again:

“Here’s the problem with hope. Hope is always producing a longing .. a longing for external circumstances to change while ignoring the beautiful internal resources already there.” He quotes another source, attorney and high-performance business coach, Fernando Flores, who once wrote: “Hope is the raw material of losers.”

Yikes – pretty strong, counter-culture, contrarian, anti-religious stuff.

But does that make it wrong?

Not when you think of where “hope” and “wish” take us. They take us to a place that doesn’t exist – the future. They take us to a place over which we have no control other than what we do today – the future.  They take us to a place where fear is the main resident – the future.

“Hope” and “wish” and “fear” are made-up words that keep us from the two four-letter words that will render all three of them invalid and useless.

Drum roll, please.

WORK & LOVE

If I’m hoping and wishing, I’m also fearing. And I’m stuck, frozen.

If I’m working, I’m moving. And I’m in the only place where fear can’t exist.

Drum roll, please.

THE PRESENT

We have hope and fear, fear and hope. Back and forth.

Interchangeable.

Unsustainable.

But when we take some form of decisive action, right here, right now, fear has no place to reside. That’s called living in the present moment.

The regrets of the past and fear of the future cannot exist in the present moment.

One of the other five-stars that came off the shelf this last month was Steven Pressfield’s quick-read classic: “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.” The book is about an unwelcome but always present companion we all have – the “Resistance”, that thing that freezes us, the author of procrastination, that small voice that questions us at every turn.

In his chapter entitled “The Ego and the Self”, Pressfield believes “angels make their home in the Self, while resistance has its seat in the Ego. The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are.”

To Pressfield, the Ego believes:

  • “There is no God. No sphere exists except the physical and no rules apply except those of the material world.”

The Self believes:

  • “God is all there is. Everything that is, is God in one form or another. God, the divine ground, is that in which we live and move and have our being. Infinite planes of reality exist, all created by, sustained by and infused by the spirit of God.”

All the great religions of the world encourage us to bring ourselves to the present moment. Jesus reminded us that “today has enough problems of its own.”

These times will test the theory.

Will we freeze in hope or will we create in love? Will we wait and hope for the revealing of a “master plan” or will we create one of our own.

Making good use of hard times

That’s the title of Chapter 36 in Time Warrior. Chandler reminds us that “sometimes hard times and recessions can return us to the principles we always wanted to live by anyway. The principles that give us pride and satisfaction. Like this one: a penny saved is a penny earned. Or, self-reliance.”

It’s been quite a ride over the last 10 years, hasn’t it – riding these multiple rising tides?  And now comfort, complacency, convenience, conformity have been interrupted faster and deeper than ever in history.

What are we left with? Simple. The same things that got us here before: work, love, creativity, self-reliance, principles.

Donald, Nancy, and Mitch are not coming to save us – let’s stop waiting for them.

Let’s climb back into the present moment, create, work, and resurrect the uniqueness God gave each of us and shed the barnacles that accumulated on that uniqueness as we “enjoyed” the aforementioned four C’s.

And leave hoping and wishing with their sidekick, fear, in the devil’s toolbox.

 

Your comments are important. They help us stay on track.  Scroll down and let us know your thoughts about all this.

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

 

 

The Only Sensible COVID-19 Solution – We Gotta Get Sick!!

Aren’t we all wishing for a clear, sane voice in this COVID-19 wilderness?

I hope you’ve given up on trying to find it on either Fox News or MSNBC or CNN (or the Comedy Channel which I consider an upgrade from the aforementioned). I’m thinking answers are somewhere other than Trump news conferences and the ridiculous media stone-throwing that follows.

In my April 6, 2020 blog post (click here to read), I posited that there seems to be nary a mention of our best defense against this pesky little monster –  our own immune system which, by the way, we are masterful at ignoring and abusing.

On April 20, I shared with you that our New York City COVID experience has revealed that obesity is nearly as high a predictor of COVID-19 morbidity as age.

Last time I checked, obesity is an acquired condition, a product of choices, not time. And a violator of the immune system.

Simple solution then, huh? Let’s isolate and protect the old and – pardon my bluntness – the rotund among us. Maybe we reach so far as to isolate those with asthma. We should have enough disease management data in our healthcare system to be able to identify that population.

I won’t belabor the point but must restate that 65% of the American population is overweight, 25% is obese. Just as with old people, they are pretty easy to pick out of a crowd. Asthmatics, not so much.

Given that backdrop, the “sane voice” I’ve heard recently is that of Dr. David Katz, whom I have referred to and quoted repeatedly in previous articles.

This is likely to be old news to many of you, but I want to throw it out for those who haven’t heard the idea and to reinforce the sensibility of it for those who have.

Dr. Katz says we’ve got to get big-time sick if we are going to defeat this virus.

Dr. Katz has considerable cred and his profile is rising, as it should, as an outspoken and very articulate advocate of “lifestyle as the best medicine.”

Here is a link to an article that contains links to two interviews Dr. Katz had with gentlemen at polar opposites of the political spectrum: Mark Levin, Fox News, and Bill Maher, he of profane, comedic, informed liberalism espoused on his own HBO show. (NOTE: Be sure to click “Read more” on the page to get to both interviews if they don’t load on first click. They will take a few seconds to load).

Dr. David Katz explains how the US can reopen safely and why the lockdown is dangerous

Although chided by Maher for appearing on Fox News, Dr. Katz maintains a very diplomatic, apolitical position and stands firm on his message that we will only defeat the virus by resorting to “herd immunity.”  In other words, let’s let the non-vulnerable – which is the vast majority – get sick and build massive immunity while protecting the aforementioned vulnerable until the virus fades away.

It’s being done in other countries. Why not here?

Well, we would have to move Trump and crew and nearly 50 governors out of the way – and, get (oh, horrors) non-political.

I’m all in. So is my wife. We’re in the vulnerable group (the “old” segment, not the “rotund” segment, thank you very much).

I’m preaching to the choir

Hey, I get it. You are probably all in now that we are 6-8 weeks into the intentional collapsing of the world economy. It’s hard, isn’t it, to not at least give an ear to one or more of the proliferating conspiracy theories swirling around this. Like the one about this being the last leg of the plan for a world-wide totalitarian government.

I’ll pass on those time wasters. But, I don’t think Dr. Katz and “herd immunity” fall in line with any conspiracy theory. I do think it makes sense NOW so we can get people back to work.

I say, go ahead and keep the fence up around my wife and me.  (NOTE: my daughter did that several weeks ago and marches it like a soldier on guard duty, God love her and we do).

Now the issue of your “fat” brother-in-law?  That’s a tougher deal. But maybe with an awareness of his vulnerability, he will concede and (don’t hold your breath) maybe even change his lifestyle.

Let’s get rollin’.

We’re cutting too deep – I think we all sense that. It’s time to get back. Build a fence around me and my age counterparts, hog-tie us through the herd immunity if you must, but let’s get the rest of the world back onto some semblance of our former life, imperfect as it is.

The fence for me is tolerable. I don’t need to be shoulder-to-shoulder in a noisy watering hole. I (‘er, my wife) can live with senior hours at King Soopers. I can still do the sensible and not go stir-crazy.

I played 18-holes of golf this week – first time in weeks.  I admit it was outside the fence a bit, but sensible. I’m almost a week past the experience and the only thing that hurts is the front-nine number on the scorecard. I felt perfectly safe with the safety measures the course put in place to shield patrons.

  • Load your own clubs.
  • One-person carts only, carts thoroughly swabbed down.
  • Ball removal without touching flagstick (my suggestion for a permanent change.)
  • No water dispensary on the course.
  • No ball cleaners
  • No sit-down bar or restaurant service

How tough was all that, really? Not so much. The golf game felt the same. And the course is staying alive.

The way I play golf, it was easy to always be 6′ or more from my playing partner.

We are all experiencing a wake-up call – mostly healthy. There’s some major “flushing” going on. Won’t it be interesting to see how much of it stays permanently flushed? As in two-hour commutes and new parking lots. As in promising careers in commercial real estate. As in small independent colleges and universities. As in the imbalance between work and family life.

Personally, I shudder to think that this may become our standard response to every virus that emerges – and we all know another one will emerge.

Can we, at some point, acknowledge that this has been going on forever and that we’ve managed to survive each mutation because we have a thing called an immune system?  Maybe the biggest flushing from all this – we can only hope – will be the culturally-induced naivete we have about our bodies, how they work, and the nature of that very system that ultimately defeats the viruses.

It’s crazy to envision that swirling drain carrying large swaths of our food industry (especially Carl’s Junior, Dominoes Pizza, and their ilk), TV remotes, motorized scooters, Roombas down with it. But maybe we will start inching in that direction and begin to acknowledge the abuse we render on our birthright of good health that has been defeating these pesky microbes forever.

Let’s give our cells the best chance to do their thing. They’ve been doing it forever. And they don’t ask for much – good glucose, oxygen, less cortisol.

And some plain ‘ol common sense. It seems that may be in shorter supply than masks and ventilators.

As always, your comments are encouraged – even if barbed. Scroll down and let me know your thoughts about all this.

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Wait! Don’t Open That Restaurant! We’re Getting Healthier. Well, maybe.

“The mythology of nutrition is immense and confounded by culturally acquired eating habits and prejudices. For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, nutritional supply and mobility were tightly linked. Today we have uncoupled this relationship.”

That’s a quote from one of my favorite virtual health and wellness mentors, Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician. At 89, he is still “out there” pounding the drum in favor of sanity restoration regarding lifestyle habits.

The quote came from one of the seven books he has written: “We Live Too Short and Die Too Long: How To Achieve and Enjoy Your Natural 100-Year-Plus Life Span.”

What a coincidence. Front-page Denver Post today features this headline and story from the New York Times:

“Obesity tied to severe coronavirus, especially in young.”

A “new” study now says that obesity may be one of the more important predictors of severe coronavirus illness, second only to “old age”, whatever that is. Always quick to CYA, the report is based on “anecdotal reports” from doctors who have been shocked by how many seriously ill younger patients are obese.

Anecdotal or otherwise, I’ll bet showing up at the ER with a dry cough, fever, body aches, carrying 30 pounds of extra weight and being over-60 won’t put one high on the ventilator wait-list.

The article then proceeds to explain why obesity may have compromised respiratory function with a list of what I would call “duhs” that aren’t exactly revelatory but still cautiously called anecdotal.

Things like: ” – abdominal obesity, more common in men, can compress the diaphragm, lungs and chest capacity. And obesity causes chronic, low-grade inflammation and an increase in circulating, pro-inflammatory cytokines” which they now think may contribute to fatal COVID-19 outcomes.

I think we’ve known most of this for a long time but are hesitant, for some reason, to confront. We don’t seem to like to admit that we Americans are getting really fat. It’s a trend that has continued and is now endemic.

According to the American Medical Association, with most of our population overweight, 50% of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it.

I’m not trying to put that on all restaurants but for many of them, if the shoe fits – – -. Truth is, it’s mostly on us.

I’m gonna try to link some things up here, so bear with me.

  • American purchases of restaurant and bar food crossed over and surpassed food purchased in grocery stores in 2015. So what?  We’ve got a much better chance of getting good nutrition at the grocery store than at most restaurants, depending, of course, on how we shop the grocery store. We can just as easily load up on C-R-A-P (Calorie-Rich-and-Processed) foods there if we hang out in the interior aisles.

  • Forty-two percent of American adults (80 million) are obese. What is obese? Here’s the body-mass-index calculation formula and scale from the CDC:

Calculate BMI by dividing weight in pounds (lbs) by height in inches (in) squared and multiplying by a conversion factor of 703.

Example: Weight = 150 lbs, Height = 5’5″” (65″”)
Calculation: [150 ÷ (65  x 65)] x 703 = 24.96

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Underweight = <18.5
Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
Overweight = 25–29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

Confession time: I’m at 26.4 – and embarrassed.  This “fat” thing is easy – and we don’t eat out. I’ll blame it on the virus if that’s OK.

  • Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption, respectively, was associated with a net increase in daily total energy intake of 190.29 and 186.74 kcal, total fat of 10.61 and 9.58 g, saturated fat of 3.49 and 2.46 g, cholesterol of 10.34 and 57.90 mg, and sodium of 297.47 and 411.92 mg over home-prepared meals.
  • We weigh, on average, 15 pounds more than 20 years ago but we didn’t get any taller, just a lot rounder.
  • The Standard American Diet (SAD) is deplorable and is killing us early.  According to the website Forks Over Knives:
    • 63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)
    • 25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods
    • 12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods
    • Unfortunately, half of the plant-based calories (6%) come from french fries. That means only 6% of America’s calories are coming from health-promoting fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

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

Here in Denver, our brown cloud of air pollution has been absent for several weeks now as the highways have emptied. Grocery stores are booming. People are rediscovering their cookbooks, spice shelves, and cooking utensils. We seem to be outside, moving more.

People might just be getting healthier. And, for sure, saving money.  That is if they don’t resort to delivered food.

How Much Money Do You Save by Cooking at Home?

This is a pipe dream.

OK – I know this isn’t going to happen. We love our little favorite, secret restaurant haunts -and the convenience – too much to ever think of giving them up. Plus, what normal red-blooded American woman today would redon a Donna Reed apron to prepare three squares?

Red-blooded American male stepping up?  Yeah, right!

The restaurant business is a tough business run by a lot of great people, and sustaining livelihoods for a lot of hard-working people. I’m not intending to rag on restaurants in general but more on our own individual lack of awareness of how we eat impacts our endemic obesity. It’s a rare restaurant that hasn’t taken note of the increase in health consciousness and modified their menus to accommodate the more health-conscious.

I’m guessing, however, those “healthy” meal options aren’t the big sellers. Our sugar-salt-fat cravings ignite at the first step into the restaurant – clogged arteries be damned.

But, just suppose this forcing of families together for home-prepared food puts us on a healthier track for the long run. If we knew what we were doing to our systems insidiously with each undisciplined restaurant visit, we probably wouldn’t be doing it. But lifestyles are hard to change, taste-buds hard to retrain. And the food manufacturers have been incredibly clever and successful in capturing ours. Restaurants are their most effective medium.

Over 60% or early American deaths are due to poor diet, pandemic or no pandemic. Will we take advantage of this “new” awareness of how vulnerable our lifestyle decisions leave us when the next virus rolls around?

P.S. It will roll around.

We’ll all be older when it does. But we don’t need to be rounder. Let’s hope we pay attention and learn something about waistlines while we keep our six-foot separation.

Like getting reacquainted with the perimeters of our local grocery store – or selecting the salad option at your irresistible restaurant.

Perhaps we could even go neanderthal and get back to the ELMM diet:

Eat Less, Move More.

Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com. We’d love to know how you are doing through all this mess.

Thanks for tuning in. If you haven’t joined our growing list, trip on over to www.makeagingwork.com, sign up and receive a copy of my free ebook “Achieving Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”