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Your body is pretty smart. It’s full of information. It can tell you a lot about your health and fitness. Tune in to it. Listen to what it tells you.

For example, you can hear and feel your heart beat: “thump, thump, thump”, smoothly and efficiently for all your life. If it goes: “thump, thumpity, thump-thumpity-thump, it’s usually a sign of a problem. An irregular heart beat needs attention. Your body will tell you. Pay attention.

Your breathing can tell you things about your heart, too. If your heart has a problem, you may become short of breath or dizzy. Unusual breathing patterns can signify things wrong with your heart as well as your lungs.

Your breathing can be an indicator of good or ill health. Not only can it be an indicator, good breathing patterns can be a major factor in determining your health. Strong, abdominal breathing is an indicator of good health. Shallow, chest breathing can be an indicator of weak lungs or simply poor breathing habits. Painful and/or noisy breathing could be a sign of a serious internal problem that needs attention from a medical professional.

Hyperventilation is the current big breathing fad. Breathe fast, deep  and hard. While it can be a good thing in the short term, hyperventilation can deplete your stores of carbon dioxide. This can take away the inherent warning that the natural build-up of CO2 gives you when your body needs oxygen. That can be fatal if  you decide to go diving, or even just swimming, after performing deliberate hyperventilation.

Oxygen is a key element that affects every system and part of your body. Very important is the effect of oxygen on the production of ATP, and the health of your “body’s furnace”, your Mitochondria — a topic for another article. That can affect the quality of your aging.

Once again, your body will tell you if your breathing patterns are creating a problem.

And how about your stomach and digestive system. Most everyone knows what a stomach ache feels like. And if  you are nauseous, along with diarrhea, you know you probably have eaten some tainted food, or have or are developing the flu, or some other illness — sometimes quite serious. Your stomach can give you advance warning when something is wrong — sometimes painfully.

Sometimes others hear your stomach too. Next time you are in a quiet room with others, you can often embarrassingly hear the sounds of your most recent meal as it rumbles and grumbles through your digestive system. That’s normal. If there are a lot of people in that quiet room, you might even produce a symphony. If you’ve ever been in a roomful of meditating people, you know exactly what I mean.

Your muscles and joints will warn you about problems too. Sore muscles will tell you if they are overworked. Pay attention. The same with your joints. Overworked, injured or “rusty” joints can be painful. They may be telling you to stop and get them some help. Go get them some help. Chiropractors need your business.

Pain is an indicator of a problem. It’s your body telling you something is wrong. Pain doesn’t mean a doctor is necessary. It could mean just a good rest is needed. Persistent or severe pain probably needs outside help. I suggest that you get it.

The message is simple. Your body has a lot to tell you. It’s loaded with information and is worth listening to. You need to pay attention and be aware of what it is trying to tell you.  When it tells you to stop, stop. When it tells you it needs help, get the help.

Thank you for reading.

America’s ”academia” are finally figuring out what people in other parts of the world discovered a long time ago: The cure for the epidemic of loneliness is to be around other people — preferably “like-minded” people.

This article was on my agenda for a couple weeks from now, but that bastion of “news”, The Washington Post,  had an article in today’s paper, about how Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Academia, are finally figuring out that loneliness can be a real challenge. So I thought it might be appropriate to write about it for this week’s message.

Now keep in mind that these academics relied on surveys that include people who are “always” lonely, or “sometimes” lonely. And they discovered that a “one-size-fits-all” approach won’t work for older adults. Duh! That’s after a study by the National Academies of Sciences, where someone decided that “we need ‘new societal institutions that bring meaning and purpose’ to older adult lives.” Mmm. Gosh. That sounds like Government and Insurance Companies getting involved in solving our loneliness problems.

All kidding aside, the reality is that social isolation among seniors can bring on depression, withdrawal, and suicidal thinking, and needs to be addressed. And the reality also is that other societies have figured it out without insurance companies and governments getting involved.

A number of  years ago a National Geographic writer wrote a terrific article for that magazine about areas throughout the world where there was an abundance of people who lived to be over 100 years old. He delved into the common denominators in the lives of the people in those areas. Dan Buettner, the author of the article, wrote a subsequent book about his discoveries called Blue Zones and I highly recommend you read it.

One of the common denominators that Dan Buettner and his team found was that they all had a way of dealing with the concept of loneliness.

It seems that common to the people populating these “Blue Zones” is very strong concept of COMMUNITY. This community concept can involve family, friends, neighbors, affinity groups, spiritual or religious groups, or any number of ways they form and maintain communities of people with like minded interests.

Examples of these “Blue Zones” include Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia; Loma Linda, California, among others. And among the common traits in these areas are Natural Movement, including a lot of walking and carrying; a sound purpose for their life; a primarilybut not exclusively plant based diet with a lot of beans and only small amounts of meat. But important to this article, the Blue Zones team found that social groups and community were extremely important in eliminating or reducing the detrimental effects of loneliness. This contributed significantly to their longevity.

In fact Okinawans form special groups called moais, small groups of friends who are committed to each other for life. Visit any Asian oriented community today, and you will find similar associations. In my home town, there are groups within the Asian community who gather daily at the local Community Center to just interact and converse within the group.

There are many lessons to be learned from those Blue Zone Centenarianns. Dealing with loneliness is one of them. We can learn a lot from them.

Notwithstanding my sardonic view of the Washington Post article at the beginning of this article, Loneliness can be a serious problem if not addressed. I personally think it is best addressed on an individual basis and not on an Institutional basis. My father was a case in point. When my Mother passed away, my dad was extremely lonely. As a law professor at a local University, he chose to be around his students. He thrived around the young men and women in his classes and he sometimes interacted with groups of them outside of class. He passed away in his car on the way to teaching one of his classes. His last years were happy ones, being around the young students he taught.

There are meet-up groups, organizations, Church groups, and other ways of getting together with your peers and other like-minded people who aren’t part of an Institutionally formed or “planned tribe”. While there may be a place for such institutional organizations in extreme cases, I believe the Blue Zone style of natural gatherings of like-minded people is best. You may have to look for one, but they are out there.

By the way, the Washington Post article is a pretty good tutorial on loneliness and its ramifications, and I honestly recommend reading it. It’s in the Health & Science Section at www.Washingtonpost.com.

And thank you for reading this.

Only vigorous physical movement and good habits will provide us with the energy to really feel good as we get older. 

When I write or speak about exercise, I normally write about strength, flexibility, joint mobility and the ability to use those physical attributes to push things, pull things, lift and carry things and the other aspects of fitness that allow us, as seniors, to remain functional all our lives.

Those are important. But, all too often, exercise is “pushed on us like a prescription drug”.  We are told that exercise will prevent heart attacks, strokes and any number of ailments and diseases, keeping us healthy and fit, as if those are the only benefits.

Those who study these kinds of things understand, and speak or write, about the added mental and emotional benefits that come from pure physical movement.

You don’t read about them in magazine articles or advertisements for exercise equipment.  Yet those mental and emotional benefits are some the most important benefits to any exercise and overall health and fitness program — the feeling that you get after a good, hard, physical workout. You feel alive. Those “feel good” chemicals are moving throughout your system and they will stay there for a while. Psychologically, they put you into an ALTERED STATE — a FLOW state — if you will, that is the after effect of the pure effort of physical movement.

George Leonard, the author of The Ultimate Athlete and The Way of Aikido called it, “The Joys of the Physical”. He said: “This glow I now feel in a body over a half century old — no Gym Instructor ever mentioned that.” — George Leonard, The Ultimate Athlete, p. 20

In his bestseller entitled Flow, author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yes you read that right), said, “When we are unhappy, depressed, or bored we have an easy remedy at hand: to use the body for all it is worth.” He goes on to say, “Most people nowadays are aware of the importance of health and physical fitness But the almost unlimited potential for enjoyment that the body offers often remains unexploited.”

Mihaly C. Also said, “Every person, no matter how unfit he or she is, can rise a little higher, go a little faster, and grow to be a little stronger. The joy of surpassing the limits of the body is open to all.”

This feeling of FLOW is available to men and women, young and old alike. Add a degree of risk to the movements, and the exhilaration is even greater. That’s why extreme sports are gaining in popularity among all ages.

While most seniors are averse to risk as part of their fitness program, learning and mastering new and difficult movement patterns can add significantly to the positive feelings you’ll get from a good workout.

So, it’s up to you whether you will go after the added benefit of the exhilaration and flow state that a vigorous program can provide. But you might want to give it a shot to see how it works for you. Put some “oomph” in your exercise. It can become addictive. Be bold, but be careful.

Thank you for reading.