Pushing My Comfort Level

From the time I was 12 years old until I was 65 I had a job. Sometimes two jobs. Started with paper routes, ended teaching special ed and science in a high school on the Texas/Mexico border. In between I had social work jobs, teaching jobs, consultant jobs. I spent 9 years teaching people skills to young family practice resident doctors. Mostly, I was good at what I did. Sometimes better than others.

So here I am retired, seventy-two years old, operating with a some spare parts, a new heart valve, a below the knee prosthesis, and a pacemaker and one day I offer to join our local volunteer fire department. Even more surprising, they take me on, outfit me with turnouts and a helmet, and a radio and begin training me to assist on fire and medical calls. My mentor is a nineteen year old fireman, who is also an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician).

Seventy percent of emergency calls to our department are medical calls. My wife a retired middle school principal, is a paramedic who also works for the department. I saw no reason why I shouldn't follow that same path and now I am going to school at the local community college to learn to be an EMT. We started in January and will finish in May. My study partner is a 22 year old fireman. In the class we operate pretty much as peers. Our grades so far are in the nineties.

In spite of the decent grades I often find myself way out of my comfort zone. Most of my life I've made my living, talking. I've been a social worker and an educator. That was comfortable for me. But an EMT has to do much more than talk. An EMT spends most of his time on his knees working on someone who is on the ground or the floor. An EMT has to touch people and make on-the-spot decisions that are often a matter of life and death.

So I'm way out of my comfort zone. But it's OK. Probably good for me. Sure is exciting. Never considered myself an adrenalin junkie, but am enjoying the rush and excitement that is part of answering emergency calls.

Motivation for Getting and Staying Fit

There's a saying in amputee circles (and that's a pretty exclusive club), "Amputees do what amputees want to do." In other words, if you have to face the world without the luxury of one or more of your limbs, your only real limitation is your self. Get to know amputees and you will find them doing all sorts of things, water skiing, running marathons, mountain climbing, that you might have thought were out of the question.

That same sort of thinking also applies to us older citizens. You want to be careful as you get older that you don't let the number of years you have under your belt start to limit your activities. It's easy to begin to shut down and accelerate our own aging. The answer might be to forget about the numbers and just do what you want to do, what you feel like doing. For example racquetball might not be on the menu for most 80 year olds, but I've played with a couple of 80 year old racquetball players who were still very competitive. My mother in law, was still a very good driver in her early 90's.

Both of my parents were dead and gone before they reached their mid-fifties, but in my wife's family everyone is alive and kicking right into their nineties. I'm looking to my in-laws for inspiration and example. Probably makes sense to avoid our peers who are reveling in their ailments and hang out with friends who don't seem to know how old they are. It really is possible to push the limits of our genetic inheritance with a positive attitude.

My version of pushing the envelope at 70+ has been to join the local volunteer fire department. I don't really expect to charge into burning buildings but I am learning how to operate the pumps on the engine and am scheduled to begin EMT training next month. So far the biggest problem has been how to quickly get the bulky "turnout" pants on over my prosthesis.

The down side of this experience has been living with some anxiety about knowing what I'm supposed to be doing on calls, most of which are medical EMT calls, and worry about getting up and out when calls come in the middle of the night.

The pluses are some really interesting and exciting experiences, learning a whole new set of skills, and increased motivation to exercise and to stay in good physical shape. A big plus has been the opportunity to get EMT training. In the past I've been a pretty good student and test taker. Will I, the oldest member of the department, be able to handle the training and the testing? Oh yes, it may be difficult, but I know how to study, and have the time to do it. And I expect that the course work will help keep the synapses in this old brain of mine firing and connecting.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

Losing Your Job Could be a Gift

Michael Gates Gill lost his six-figure advertising exec job. He made too much money. He was told someone younger would work for less. Gill was devastated. But when he stumbled into Starbucks for a cup of coffee he found himself in the middle of a hiring fair that saved his life. He loves his new $10/hour job and is now the author of a best selling book, "How Starbucks Changed my life." For more of the story go to CNN.com

Cup a Coffee - Live 30.9 Years Longer

Fill up your cup, sit back, enjoy the aroma, and take a moment to have fun with some great information from . . . studies.

Statistics can be a constant source of amusement. A little newsletter titled Bottom Line/Health showed up in the mail yesterday, with an article called Drink Coffee... Eat Chocolate... & Other surprising ways to Live Longer. Michael Roizen, MD (coauthor of You, Staying Young) was interviewed and here is what I learned we need to do.

1. Sleep deep. Deep restorative sleep can add 3 years to your life.
2. Dance at least 30 minutes a day. Live 6.4 years longer.
3. Learn stuff and do puzzles. Good for 2.5 more years.
4. Get a dog and live for another 3 years.
5. More sex. Twice a week, 2 more years. Once a day, 8 more years.
6. Rest more often, (Seems to me like you'd have to) 8 more years.

Other good news is that studies have found that caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee are a main source antioxidants in the average American's diet. Caffeine in your coffee decreases the risk of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases by 30% to 40%.

Roizen also recommends eating one-half ounce of dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) twice daily. Chocolate has powerful antioxidants know as flavonoids. You can also find these flavonoid guys in your brussel sprouts. Wonder if anyone is making chocolate covered brussel sprouts?

These look like great recommendations to me. I don't have a dog (wouldn't be fair to the dog), but I am going to work on 1, 2, 3, and 6. Number 5 ? . . . that would be just TMI. So do the math. Looks like another 30.9 more years are possible (if you are up to it ;-).

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Apologies to Dr. Roizen and Bottom Line for messing with some really good recommendations. Don't you just love studies and statistics. Anyone know where I can get some chocolate covered brussel sprouts?

Extending Our Stay on the Planet - Part 3 Unloading Extra Pounds

We want to stay on the planet for many more exciting years. We've got an intense desire to be around when those grandkids graduate from college and we're pretty good at adapting to the changes that lurk beyond every bend in the road. Does that guarantee we get to watch that kid throw his or her cap in air? We know better. No guarantees. But we are going to take reasonable steps to tip the scales in our favor.

And it's that bathroom scale, the one we climbed onto this morning, that we need to tip in our favor. Carrying too much weight, will shorten our life span. Too much weight is too much fat and too much fat means big-time health risks, that can include heart and blood pressure problems, muscular skeletal problems, breathing problems, self esteem problems and on and on.

So here's my take on getting skinny and staying there. If you want to lose weight you need to do three basic things.

1. Eat less fat
2. Eat less sugar
3. Shake your bootie
   

How you do that? Well you could go on a diet. There are lots and lots of diets. You could try a grapefruit or sauerkraut diet or you could eat lots of paper tasting rice cakes. You could live exclusively on magic protein powders that you mix with water. You could try the Atkins diet, or the South Beach diet, or sign up for Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig, for a price, will deliver breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to your doorstep. Dr. Phil who knows exactly what to do about everything, will sell you his book The Ultimate Weight Solution. I found a list of 24 diets and diet descriptions at a site called Evaluate the Latest Diets. Check it out.

Do diets work? Sure they do. Stick to the plan and you will lose weight. So what's the problem? The problem is: after the weight comes off and the diet is done, the weight comes back and the cycle repeats.

What works better? Life style changes or, diet and life style changes, works better. Say, every day before you go to bed you have a 300 calorie bowl of ice cream, but one day you say, "Hey, I'm going to stop eating that bowl of ice cream at night." And you actually do stop. That's more like a life style change than a diet. Your routine doesn't include ice cream at night anymore. The result, if you keep the same eating pattern, except for the ice cream, and continue the same activity or exercise patterns, could be a weight loss of about 30 lbs in a year.

Weight gain or loss is a matter of calories consumed balanced by calories burned. So to lose weight you can consume fewer calories (eat less) or burn more calories (more activity/exercise) or both. That works. But if you want to keep the weight off you need an approach that you can literally use for the rest of you life.

The Old Salt approach works like this.

Fat = calories. I know I can reduce the amount of fat in my diet. I used to eat a steak about once a week. A really fine, nicely marbled steak, tastes great but has lots of fat, fat that I don't need. Now I have a steak about once a month, and lately, especially when the steak is a big 6 to 8 ounce piece, my wife and I split one steak.

Sugar = calories. I'm the guy in the ice cream example. After heart surgery, I had no appetite, everything tasted bad. But I could eat ice cream, and I did. Gradually my appetite returned, and two years later I was still eating ice cream and everything else in sight. Gradually I had gained about 25 to 30 lbs. Now I've almost stopped eating ice cream. Sometime in February I stopped keeping ice cream in the fridge. Gradually and slowly I'm loosing weight.

Both the steak and the ice cream are life style changes I can maintain. Much easier (for me) than dieting and counting calories. Weight loss will be slower than dieting, but more likely to be permanent.

Walking or running or bicycling, or just working at a job that requires a high level or activity are ways to shake your bootie and keep burning those calories. Maintaining an increased activity level, over an extended period of time, will change the amount of calories burned, and, assuming you don't increase your intake, will result in a weight loss.

So life style changes work for me, but not everyone is like me. I know that different approaches work for different people. Some folks, like my friend Joel, do very well with a very systematic, diet. Joel keeps records of what he eats on a daily basis and carefully limits both calories and sodium. He also keeps track of his workouts. And he is losing weight. Joel's blog has his daily records and lots of other interesting information.

So find an approach that works for you. If you love diets, go for it, but remember that to keep the weight off, to keep on wearing those new skinny clothes, you will need to make life style changes that impact both calories consumed and calories burned.

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Coming Soon - - Muscle Mass . . . (A religious service for weight lifters???)

Extending Our Stay on the Planet - Part 2 Adaptability and Goals

Today, while were walking down the road in a Spring snow storm, and while trying not to get blown into the ditch, Sarah says to me, "Not everybody is all that worried about how long they are going to live." And I thought, "She's right." Teenagers think they're immortal. Young adults are busy with jobs, mating, families, recreation. A fair number of adults workout and pay attention to what they eat, but their immediate issue is probably not how many years they are going to live. But when you wake up one day and realize that you are the oldest person in your clan (that's me) you really do start to pay attention.

So what is the key to sticking around as long as possible while still being able to remember your name and being able to find your way home on your own? I would have voted for genetics, or possibly a positive outlook, but one of my favorite experts, Deepak Chopra, tells it this way:

Emotional adaptability is the most important single factor in keeping a person well and living long. Everyone undergoes crises, but people who can bounce back, who look toward the future instead of dwelling on the past, and who demonstrate emotional resilience are the ones who survive best.

And that makes sense to me. Lance Armstrong gets a cancer that knocks him flat on his back, invads his brain, takes one testicle, and almost takes his life. What does he do? He marshals every possible resource, learns everything he can about the cancer, submits to frightening surgery and months of nauseating chemotherapy and gets well. He calls his cancer a "bump in the road." Then what does he do? He wins the Tour de France seven years in a row.

Put positive spin on what some would call disaster and it's not hard at all to move on. My own experience having a rotten smelly leg amputated, seemed like a relief to me, an opportunity to get on with my life, a "bump in the road."

If we can change our perceptions about old age we may also be able to extend our own lives. We've all heard that we are what we eat. Take that a step farther and know that we all create our own realities. If we truly believe that old age begins at 65, we will behave in ways that will make that come true. Old rocking chair will get us. Hearing about 102-year-old Elsie McLean, made me realize that I was thinking that anyone over a hundred years old was probably drooling, and in a rocking chair. Not Elsie, she's out playing golf and making a hole-in-one.

For me, the most important keys to extending my own stay on the planet are goals and a sense of purpose. I've got 16 grandkids. One of my goals is to stick around long enough to see everyone of them graduate from college. My intention is to show up and be sharp enough to know what's going on and fit enough to locomote under my own steam.

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Up next - An Old Salt's take on unloading those extra pounds.

Extending Our Stay on the Planet - Part 1

My dad died when he was 53. My mom died when I was about 4 years old. I'm already in my 70th year and my medical records are the size of a Chicago phone book. So what does that say about my life expectancy? Some would say I'd best not buy any green bananas. But I'm not listening. I've got 16 grandkids ranging in age from almost two to 16 years old, and I intend to see each one of them graduate from college.

So what can we do to outrun crappy genetics and whatever else already ails us? What can I do to give my self a chance to attend my youngest grandson's graduation while still reasonably sound in mind and body?

There's hope. We can begin by taking steps today to extend our stay on the planet.

1. Start by knowing that there are folks out there sneaking past the century mark who are still coherent and who get around on their own locomotion. My wife's mother and aunts and uncles make it into their eighties and nineties in pretty good shape. How about 102-year-old Elsie McLean, whom you might have seen on TV a last week. Elsie made a hole-in-one playing golf with the “girls” on a 100 yard, par 3 hole at a golf course in Chico, California. Maybe you and I won't make a hole in one, but we can extend our stay.
2. People who live the longest tend to be sort of narrow. They don't carry around much adipose tissue, that greasy yellow stuff we call fat. We have to unload those extra pounds to give ourselves a chance.
3. Aging = loss of muscle mass. If I want to see my grandson graduate I will have to get out there and walk and I will have to push myself to find a way to lift some weights to keep and increase my upper body muscle mass.
4. We're going to need a maintenance program. If you had a new car you would probably follow a maintenance program. Our bodies are more important than cars or trucks. We need regular checkups, and good medical care when we are ailing. We need nutritious foods and maybe a vitamin or two.
5. We need to manage the stress in our lives. You may not be able to change what is happening around you, but you certainly can change what you say to yourself about what’s happening. “Ain’t if awful,” will raise your stress level. Finding a bit of humor in a stressful situation will lower your stress level. When I had a leg amputated my four-year-old granddaughter had us all laughing with, “Now grandpa will be like a weal piwate.”

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To be continued. In days to come we'll expand on specific steps we can take to extend our stay on the planet. Know that I write about these topics with a dual motive. These notes often serve to remind me of what I need to be doing. If they ring true and are helpful to some of you out there in cyberspace that makes me smile. Please comment or send me an email.