Blog

Blog Posts are Short “Bites” of information, advice or commentary, usually somewhere between 400 and 800 words, that usually take two to three minutes to read. I try to keep the reading time under three minutes, usually two minutes. You can read it quickly, absorb what’s in it, and get on with other things. I hope you choose to read it.

There’s not a lot out there for Active Seniors, so I attempt to provide useful, inspiring, and sometimes entertaining information about Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Active Adults approaching age 55, 65, 75 or even older. I cover the physical, mental, and sometimes the spiritual aspects of becoming Seniors and how we can be prepared to get the most from our Senior Years. It’s all about how to discover and tap into your own Fountain of Youth. Sometimes I include stories about interesting people and situations.

The information I offer comes from research, experience and opinion (mine and others). Sometimes I have strong opinions. Sometimes you will agree with me, sometimes you will disagree. I try to cover all sides.

Often there is so much conflicting information (Nutrition for example), that I use my own experience as the example. I am reasonably healthy and fit, and try to live what I speak and write about. Most of the time it works, other times it doesn’t.  There are so many theories on nutrition that there are likely to be two new theories published by the time you finish reading this article.

Cutting back on meat, upping the vegetables and cutting out a lot of sugar and processed foods seems to be a workable common denominator for weight loss and healthy eating. I lost nearly 30 pounds in 6 months. But that might not work for you. Remember your goal should not be just to lose weight; there are a lot of unhealthy skinny people. Your goal should be overall health and fitness.

Exercise, too, is a matter of what works for you and what your goals are. Seniors have different abilities than younger people. It takes a little longer to build muscle and a little longer to recover from exercise. Fall prevention is a major consideration. So is injury prevention. Is cardio best? Is weight lifting? Stretching? Running or walking? The real answer depends on your goals. For most of us, our goal is not to be a performance athlete, but rather to have a balanced, healthy and fit body that looks good, feels good, will do the things we want it to do so we will live a long, functional and independent life.

I don’t offer medical advice. I don’t always believe what doctors tell me. Sometimes I’m right. Mostly they’re right.

I’ll always be transparent about what is real, what is opinion and what is nonsense. But don’t forget that today’s nonsense is tomorrow’s science. Science is now getting serious about the whole “mind over matter” thing. Does your body really respond to your thoughts?  What role does your attitude play in your overall health. Can you modify your genes, or do your thoughts just influence the way they act?  “Epi-genetics” is a new buzzword. The possibilities of new discoveries that are being made about our genes can have powerful effects on medical treatment in the future. Much of the thinking and writing of ancient times is being backed up by modern science.

So, I’ll continue to write these “bites” of information about Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Active Seniors. In a few months, I’ll be tossing some video into the mix so look for that. Stay tuned, you should find it interesting, useful, and even entertaining.

Thank you for reading.

Health, Fitness and Personal Energy are more than just Exercise and Nutrition. Your Fountain of Youth comes from a cleansing and refreshing of the mind and spirit as well.

While this article is a bit out of keeping with the normal content of this blog, it is about rejuvenation and how a place like where I am writing this from, can heal and refresh the body, as well as the mind and spirit, and can be every bit as stimulating as exercise and nutrition.

My wife and I are ending a rejuvenating (renewal of youth) week of “housesitting” at the home of a beautiful couple who are off on their own journey of rejuvenation out West. This beautiful home is nestled near the Northern end of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, surrounded on three sides by Virginia’s famous Skyline Drive and the Shenandoah National Park. We are leaving for home this morning and will truly miss being here.

A little history. If you are a long time reader of this blog, you may remember that two years ago I had open heart surgery to replace an aortic heart valve (with parts from a cow). It was not a problem with arteries or plaque build-up or anything like that. It came from the degeneration of a leaky valve (heart murmur) I had since childhood. I was in good physical condition at the time so my recovery was swift and complete.

One of the reasons for the swift recovery was that a very lovely couple we know were going on a trip and they generously “lent” us their home in the mountains thinking, quite correctly, that it would be a great place for me to recover, as well as to have someone in their home while they were gone. This was about a month after the surgery and I was slowly beginning to recover. So we took them up on their kind and generous offer. We discovered a beautiful home with spectacular views, fresh vegetables in the garden, and plenty of nearby places to go to enjoy the surrounding area.

And it was here, two years ago, I started my real recovery from the surgery. We climbed hills, hiked on the Shenandoah River, ate fresh vegetables directly from their garden, and marveled at the views. I actually started renewing my program of regular exercise while we were here. All that at just a month after major surgery and at age 74 (at the time).

It’s been the same the past two years, when they again were so generous with their home. We have again hiked along the Shenandoah River (I wouldn’t really call it a hike — but a whole lot of trail walking). Last year we hiked off Skyline Drive to a local waterfall. This year there has been an outbreak of bears on the trails so we forgo the real hikes in the high country. But we walked the roads and up and down the hills and I have continued daily exercise. We ate squash, lettuce and peas straight from the garden. And two nights ago, the stars at night were as spectacular as I have ever seen stars — I really mean “ever”. In fact our absentee host and hostess are award winning singer-songwriters and he wrote an incredibly beautiful and powerful song about one of the constellations that can be seen so brightly in the night sky from the porch of this mountain paradise – Orion!

And on Saturday night, this being the Independence Day weekend and all, some of the people in the nearby village (pop. about 35 max.) got together privately and put on a fireworks display that could rival the fireworks on the Mall in Washington, DC, and I watched the whole fifteen minute display from the deck.

So rejuvenation has lived up to its definition of “renewing of youth” for the two of us and we return home today filled with the renewal of body, mind and spirit that rejuvenation promises. We have once again discovered our own Fountains of Youth.

And Edie and I send out our heartfelt thanks to a beautiful couple for the unexpected and generous opportunity to once again treasure our time of youthful regeneration here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Thank you for reading.

As Seniors, our health and fitness goals are different from those of the younger set. We want to feel good, be healthy, have energy and look good too. We want to be able to be active and independent. We want to feel young, lose fat, live long, expire quickly and leave a good looking corpse.

When we decide to follow the path of common sense and start including exercise as part of our habit patterns, we want to enjoy the process and feel that we are really accomplishing something and making progress.

Most seniors want to be strong, healthy and fit. We like being able to move. Just don’t call it exercise. So anything that we do call exercise had better work, and work fast, otherwise we will stop doing it.

OK, how about a reality check. To avoid a deteriorating body and mind, we must move our bodies, eat right, breathe deeply, and get plenty of rest and sleep. We also must have a positive attitude toward doing it. That’s not so easy to install as a habit pattern. We are used to sitting in front of the TV watching whatever we enjoy. We are used to sitting at a computer doing whatever. We are not used to moving a lot during the day, and most of us certainly aren’t used to “exercise”.

One way to motivate ourselves to move more is to include a lot of variety in our exercise. We can lift weights, walk, stretch, and do all sorts of other movements to keep ourselves fit, but we don’t want it to be boring. We need variety.

Different kinds of exercises do different things and we need them all as we age. We need resistance exercise to keep our muscles and bones doing their jobs. We need to walk or even run to keep our heart and lungs strong and healthy. We need stretching and calisthenics to keep our joints working right. We need balance work so we don’t fall. We need variety.

There are numerous varieties of exercise and movement disciplines to draw from, each providing one or all of the above. Among these are:

Pilates . . . Yoga or Tai Chi . . . Bodybuilding . . . Olympic Style Weightlifting . . . Martial Arts . . . Gymnastics . . . movement focused programs like MovNat . . . and many others.

The variety and choices are many, and they are not mutually exclusive.

There are very few instructional materials for seniors on the subject of exercise. There are tons of books for younger people and some for middle aged people, but as we become older, our needs and capabilities change.  Exercise becomes more critical to our health and fitness yet we have to adapt our exercise to reflect the realities of aging. Our bodies will adapt to the training it is provided. Most training programs are based on the overload principle called “S.A.I.D.” in the Personal Training Vocabulary. Technically that means “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand” which means our bodies will adapt to increased workloads, as long as we don’t overdo it. If we increase the demand (overload) periodically, our bodies will adapt with more strength, longer runs or walks, and increased range of motion of our joints.

As we get older, we need to reinforce your ability to push things and pull things. We need to be able to lift things and carry what we lift. That means we must do things that will build, or at least maintain our strength as we age. When we build strength, day to day activities are easier to do than if we don’t.

There are many forms of exercise to choose from. Choose one, or better still, combine a couple from the list above, and get started. Check with your doctor first, and then get on with it. And like I wrote at the beginning, you’ll feel young, lose fat, live long, expire quickly and leave a good looking corpse.

Thanks for reading.