Our Perspective on Aging
How We Reconcile it
The Age of Disability
Feeling Alive
The Main Rub

“We now face the prospect of living to the ‘age of disability’.”   It was Governor Mario Cuomo who I heard say that on a radio talk show about 15 years ago.

Not all that long before that, many folks passed on before they became disabled.  With modern diagnostics, surgical procedures and drugs, many are living longer now, thankfully.  Long enough to become physically disabled,  leading to a drastic change in lifestyle with a loss of independence, in many cases.

Our (my and JoAnne’s) goal is to push our age of disability out as far as possible.  That takes being proactive, eh?  It was that thought pattern that lead us to discover the link between good nutrition and good health.

About seven years ago, or so, we discovered quite by accident, a whole food dietary supplement that seems to be doing the trick for us.  It’s for people who are in good health and have wondered what else they could be doing for themselves to stay that way, like we were.

We now believe our level of nutrition is better than it ever was.  It just seems logical to me, mainly because I know we could never consume enough food to match what we get from the supplements.  As a result, our immune systems seem to be serving us well. I have on average, only one cold per year vs. the 3 or four I used to suffer.  Our blood chemistry is where it should be.

We also realized some improvements in the short term -in the beginning, that caught our attention and kept us wondering what other benefits we might realize.  For example, we are about as regular as the average gull.  That alone, we find, is life changing.  I noticed early on I was doing well on less sleep.  JoAnne gets a boost during the work-day and doesn’t drag around anymore.  The higher level of nutrition, for us, seems to have taken care of a lot of ‘little things’ -for example, I see hardly any hair in the sink anymore.

I am of the opinion that if your gastro-intestinal tract is in shape, everything else will in line -your immune system, your blood chemistry, bowel regularity and everything  related -mood, energy level, the degree to which we feel alive, generally.

 

The Main Rub: The plateau

Now that we’re over 60, the less this is about good nutrition (it is, of course, but it goes beyond that).  It’s about staying alive and maintaining our independence for as long as possible (as in NO CAREGIVERS).

Dr. Andrew Weil writes that, in terms of stages of our lives, that we grow quickly as a child and mature.  Then we reach a plateau that we travel across, coasting along the top for many years.  Ideally, we maintain our course along the top elevation of the plateau for as long as possible, inching toward the point on the plateau where a rapid decline in elevation occurs.  As we step off the edge of the plateau, our health quickly declines and we pass away.

There’s a whole generation of people saddled with the task of giving care to elderly relatives (the sandwich generation) and a multi-billion dollar industry of elder care.  It’s for people who have slipped off the edge of the plateau too soon into a slow, protracted descent.

Our focus is to avoid caregivers as long as possible; to postpone the ‘age of disability.’  To that end, I think proper nutrition and exercise are the cornerstones of wellness for the long-term.

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