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Longevity and Aging: Don’t make a big deal about getting older

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Aging Beyond BeliefDon Ardell’s tips for aging well are from his book Aging Beyond Belief, 69 tips for REAL Wellness. REAL wellness stands for Reason, Exuberance And Liberty. Don says you can’t buy pills or treatments for REAL wellness−it’s a mindset and lifestyle you control. It’s never to early to let Reason, Exuberance and Liberty be your guide…these tips are for folks of any age. Enjoy.

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Longevity and Aging
Don’t make a big deal about getting older

Everybody does it, it can’t be avoided and there is no cure. Each day is an opportunity to enjoy being younger than you ever will be again, so think and act as vigorously and with as much exuberance as you can muster. Billions are spent annually to slow or, more often, disguise the inevitable markers of aging. Such a waste. All this is futile. As Ecclesiastes would say, “a vanity of vanities, an incomparable excess.” I personally have a soft spot for excess, but not to the point of being incomparably self-delusional about my vanities.

Want in on a little health secret? Move to Canada. An impressive array of data shows that Canadians live longer, healthier lives than we do. What’s more, they pay roughly half as much per capita Americans ($2,163 versus $4,887 in 2001) for the privilege.” (Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2004).

Did you know there’s a mathematical formula that predicts maximal age? There is—and the formula is the basis for the agreed-upon maximum human age being set at 120. (This means I could be writing a second edition to this book in the year 2058.) The formula for maximal age is six times the number of years from birth to biological maturity. Humans take about 20 years to reach maturity, so multiply that by six and there it is—a 120-year limit. (The oldest well-documented age ever was 122.)

Remember, many factors affect longevity, particularly lifestyle choices (e.g., exercise, diet), personality, social life and genetics. Approximately “one-third of aging is heritable, the rest is acquired—that means you are responsible for your own old age.” (Tara Parker-Pope, “What Science Tells Us About Growing Older—And Staying Healthy,” Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2005; Page R1.)

Longevity in this country is nothing to cheer about. When compared with other Western nations, the U.S. is doing worse now than 50 years ago! We are currently losing ground, not making longevity advances, relative to other countries. This might surprise you. Yes, we live longer but our relative position is poorer compared with comparable societies than it was when Eisenhower was president. This despite our having the costliest medical care system on earth!

A World Health Organization study released last year put Canadian life expectancy at birth at 79.8 years, Japan’s at 81.9 and America’s at 77.3!

In 1900, the lifespan in America was 47.3. I shudder to think of all my friends who would be dead now if that figure had not improved over the course of the past century. With no advances, there would be few to no competitors in my 65-69 age group in road races, duathlons and triathlons. A similar 30-year gain in life expectancy into the future would render the average lifespan in the year 2112 a robust 107.3 years.

How might that come about? Perhaps from a wide range of social changes over time, like more nutritious foods and challenging but fun phys ed in schools, campaigns for safer sex and more effective ways to end insane behaviors, like smoking. (It will help also if humanity refrains from setting off any thermonuclear devices.)

Imagine the excitement of watching men and women in their 120s crossing finish lines at road races and multi-sport competitions, to the cheers of the multitudes, with “Rocky” music blaring from loudspeakers. It would be inspirational.

However, it’s also implausible. Wellness is good, wellness is great but I still don’t believe that there will be dramatic advances in phys ed in schools, better diets or other social changes. I hope I’m mistaken about this. If there were such changes and many others consistent with the spread of wellness mindsets like some positive contagion, even that might not produce really dramatic increase in lifespan, though quality boosts would be remarkable. If there are any significant increases in lifespan, the more likely impetus will be improved scientific understanding and attendant manipulation of biological aging processes. But, I’m not wildly optimistic about this scenario, either.

Nor does the U.S. Social Security Administration project dramatic gains for the next century similar to that realized over the last one. Their projections foresee life spans into the mid-80s, which is still pretty impressive. Unless, as some fear, the obesity epidemic gets worse.

In any event, getting older is not such a big deal if you stay younger than nearly everyone else your age! The remaining tips will offer plenty of ideas for doing just that.

-from Aging Beyond Belief, by Don Ardell

Donald ArdellDonald B. Ardell was a pioneer in the Wellness movement. He wrote High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs, and Disease, first published in 1976 by Rodale Press, with editions over the years by Bantam Books and Ten-Speed Press. Since then Don has written a dozen additional wellness books, including Die Healthy (with Grant Donovan), 14 Days to Wellness and most recently, Aging Beyond Belief.

Real Wellness: Insist upon reality-based health promotion

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Aging Beyond BeliefDon Ardell’s tips for aging well are from his book Aging Beyond Belief, 69 tips for REAL Wellness. REAL wellness stands for Reason, Exuberance And Liberty. Don says you can’t buy pills or treatments for REAL wellness−it’s a mindset and lifestyle you control. It’s never to early to let Reason, Exuberance and Liberty be your guide…these tips are for folks of any age. Enjoy.

 

TIP 1
Real Wellness
Insist upon reality-based health promotion

Much has been written about the nature, principles and applications of a term made popular in just the past couple decades called “wellness.” Nobody is authorized to make the rules of what it is and what it isn’t, but that is not to say someone ought not to step forward to give it a try. I volunteer.

I began writing about wellness in the 1970s. I was the director of a health planning agency in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time I started learning about a wide range of ideas and principles that would shape what became a modest movement within and then well beyond the medical system. Our planning organization and others like it in metropolitan areas around the country was designed by committees of politicians and health experts over several years to improve health status and to bring order to the health care system.

Alas, two prominent factors kept such agencies from being effective: 1) We had almost no authority, so medical leaders and others who were supposed to be guided by our work paid little attention to the plans we devised for coordinated health care facilities and services; and 2) We were going about it the wrong way. We were trying to change the way the medical system worked. Even if we had succeeded we would not have succeeded! We did not recognize at the time that the way to promote health and save costs was to inform, motivate, convince, inspire, guide and otherwise support people to take better care of themselves and rely less on the medical system.

From this realization came a period of reflection on my part that prompted a career change—from health planner administrator to doctoral candidate and, a few years later, to a life as a writer, lecturer and consultant promoting wellness. To this day, 30 years after publication of my book High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors,

Drugs and Disease (Rodale Press), I believe the wellness concept, if it is the REAL wellness concept, is the most promising approach available to society and to you to boost health status AND save medical costs.

During the formative years of wellness in the 70s and 80s, there were a good number of conferences and seminars, policy papers, scholarly articles, books and so on devoted to the concept that eventually morphed into a wellness movement. Not surprisingly, the wellness concept was given a slightly different spin by nearly everyone who came into contact with it. To this day, variations abound.

What follows is my idea of a wellness mindset, translated into terms suited to everyone who wants to age well. In my view, wellness should be an evidence-based mindset geared to high levels of well- being and life satisfaction. I believe such a lifestyle is associated with countless benefits, if given half a chance. My advice—learn about what wellness can be for you, at it’s best, and don’t even think about aging without it.

Let me mention a few key ideas about wellness and a number of wonderful benefits to get things started.

Wellness is positive. The focus is not on hazards and risks, but rather on satisfactions and pleasures. It is comprehensive, not about just fitness, nutrition and managing stress but also entails critical thinking, humor and play, emotional intelligence and the quest for added meaning and purpose in life—and much more, which I’ll highlight in these tips. It is based on science and reason, not New Age wishful thinking or reliance or even inclusion of “alternative” or other therapies, modalities or healing systems. It is also a mindset or philosophy founded on personal responsibility and accountability. There is more, as you will learn in the coming 68 tips.

Six benefits that I find especially appealing about real wellness are:

1. Better health.
A wellness lifestyle boosts energy while lowering risks of illness.

2. Better appearance.
You’ll look thinner and fitter, even more interesting, if you follow such a lifestyle.

3. Better sex.
Unclogged arteries facilitate blood flow to all body parts.

4. Better decisions.
You develop a greater desire for reason and science, sound evidence and other critical thinking skills associated with genuine maturity.

5. Better role model.
In non-verbal ways (e.g., style/appearance and value commitments) you convey a superior message to your impressionable relatives and others.

6. Better perspectives.
Some things are important and deserve a lot of energy, but most are not a big deal. Finding satisfying, energizing meaning and purpose in life, for example—now that’s important. Dealing with little vexations, silly people, worries about things you can’t change—not so important.

Naturally, it is better to be young than old, other things being the same, which they never are, just as it’s better to be rich than poor, fit than fat and alive than dead. But, so what? As noted in the chorus of John Prine’s immortal Dear Abby, “You have no complaint—You are what your are and you ain’t what you ain’t.” Not so grammatical, but so very true.

Aging is not always pleasant but, like gravity and evolution, it’s more than a theory. It’s part of life, at least for everyone fortunate enough to attain such status.

-from Aging Beyond Belief, by Don Ardell

Donald ArdellDonald B. Ardell was a pioneer in the Wellness movement. He wrote High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs, and Disease, first published in 1976 by Rodale Press, with editions over the years by Bantam Books and Ten-Speed Press. Since then Don has written a dozen additional wellness books, including Die Healthy (with Grant Donovan), 14 Days to Wellness and most recently, Aging Beyond Belief.