A Primer on Aging

Interior Changes

Exterior Changes

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Using the information in those pages will vastly increase your energy, and vastly increase your ability to deter, delay, or prevent:

• Heart disease
• Osteoporosis
• Diabetes
• Arthritis
• Illnesses in general

Simply put, you make yourself sick--it doesn't just happen. Yes, there are some genetic problems that creep up on you as you age. And yes, age itself takes a toll. But if you work at being healthy, you'll drop your odds of ever getting sick to almost zero. If you do get sick, don't go on a guilt trip--figure out what went wrong and try to fix it.

Here's an analogy: If you lie down on a highway, you stand a good chance of getting run over--this is how most people are with their health.

If, however, you refuse to put yourself into compromising conditions like this, then it takes something almost bizzarre to nail you.

The mental concerns are also of paramount importance. After all, if you don't enjoy life, what is the point in being healthy?

Let's not take this the way drug addicts (e.g., tobacco users) do to justify destroying their health--that is intellectually dishonest. You can enjoy life just fine without ruining your health (or that of others).

A positive outlook is important, but you can't just decide to be happy. You need   develop skills in communication and interpersonal relationships. You need to find activities that are mentally challenging and spiritually meaningful.

And that last part doesn't necessarily mean religious in nature--you are looking for things that make you feel you have added something to humanity, that you have made the world a better place. If that means reading stories to small children, then fine. It never includes belittling others.

When you were younger, you were like a babbling brook--running very fast but really accomplishing much. And people had no qualms about stepping on you, peeing on you, etc.

As you get older, your water runs slower. Just remember, still water runs deep. Imagine a deep lake, high in a mountain top.

What do people do at such lakes? They love the pristine beauty, and respect the lake for what it is. They drop their fishing lines in, and hope the lake will offer to share from its depths. You want to be like that lake. Make yourself into the kind of person you want to be--focus on activities that will meet that end.

And you have the respect of both yourself and others for who you are. Does television help you meet this goal? No? Then drop it.

Does getting angry over small things help you gain stature? No? Then find ways to remind yourself of this.

The most important thing to remember in this life: take important things seriously, but enjoy a good laugh over those that are unimportant. That guy who cut you off in traffic? It's his blood pressure, not yours, that will be a problem.

Tired of long commutes? Get recorded books, so you can feed your mind and make good use of the time.

First, you must take care of those interior changes. Once you have your own porch in order, you'll be in a position to "clean house" with everyone else.

The second thing you must do is analyze with exterior changes you are in a position to make. Certainly, you can't change other people's personalities. But, you can stop engaging in enabling behaviors.

For example, your in-laws drop in uninvited on a regular basis. This really irritates you. And you've told them so. Yet, when they drop in, you play the good host until they leave.

Change your behavior, then they will change theirs. If they welcome company at any time, they may not see why you don't. So, show them.

Most people are creatures of habit. Thus, if your in-laws drop by usually about supper time, make a point of being gone at that time. But, you don't want to alienate them. So, call them and invite them to have supper with you at a specified time on a specified day. Before long, you'll have them trained.

You can approach most exterior situations this way--as long as the gap in power is not too great. Always try to accommodate the needs of the other party by offering to do so on your terms and making it difficult or impossible for this to happen on other terms.

Government agencies can drive us nuts. The IRS, in particular, seems to exist for the sole purpose of making life hell for citizens. Now, step back and look at the situation. You are a citizen--and that gives you power you can use.

When the IRS is unreasonable (they have been known to be reasonable on occasion), it is not the IRS you are dealing with. It is an individual. Make the problem personal.

Find something unreasonable in the person's approach--embellish if you must--and write to that person asking to be reassigned to someone else. Copy that letter to the the District Manager (you can use the same address--just put District Manager on the top line). The person you are dealing with will fear you. And then you have some bargaining power.

Copy each subsequent letter to a growing chain of command--IRS Commissioner, Senate Finance Committee, the Internet, and so on. Don't be a victim--make victims. That is how you handle government agencies that treat you poorly. By exercising the power vested in you as a citizen, you show these people they cannot mistreat you. Do so calmly.

What about time? You can't make more of it. However, you can make excellent use of the time you have. Most people are clueless about this, and don't even realize it.

How much would you pay for an extra week's vacation each year? How much would you pay if you could have two full days each year just for making love? Hmm.

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How most  exterior things affect you depends on how you strengthen the interior you. Acquire new skills and knowledge on a regular basis. Try new things. Meet new people by volunteering to be active in professional or other organizations. Give back.

Be confident that, because you have done these things, exterior things will work in your favor as long as you address problems intelligently.

Most people live with a victim mentality. You can choose to live with an attitude of victory and a persona of strength. And as you age, you can often look back and say, "I have handled worse." Your experience, then, becomes a tremendous asset. As do your connections, your network of people you have been helping throughout your life, and your many years of learning.

Fear of death is the final thing to address, here. If you are taking care of your health, death is unlikely to seize you while your age is in the single digits. And if you make it past that point, you've had a full life.

Aging Books Sampling

The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being bySherwin B. Nuland (Hardcover - February 27, 2007). The septuagenarian surgeon whose brutally honest demythologization of death in How We Die garnered a National Book Award offers a mushier, platitude-filled treatise on aging, calling it a "gift" that establishes boundaries in our lives, making everything within those boundaries all the more precious.

Brief, frank descriptions of droopy penises, declining hormone levels and loss of hearing and bone density are accompanied by reminders that stroke is not a normal consequence of aging and that our bodies are like cars and taking good care of parts extends their usefulness.

A gushing tribute to pioneering cardiac surgeon Michael DeBakey, now aged 98, teaches the importance of knowing one's limitations and learning to function within them, while now-80-year-old actress Patricia Neal recalls how sheer stubbornness and a browbeating husband enabled her recovery from a debilitating stroke at 39. Nuland learned life lessons from two fans, a cancer survivor who understands that it's her response to adversity, and not the adversity itself, that shapes her future, and a formerly depressed octogenarian who now doesn't allow herself the "luxury" of despair.

Although some of Nuland's devotees will be comforted by his hopeful if familiar advice, others seeking more of the bracing, defiant insights that made him famous will be disappointed. (Mar. 6) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development by George E. Vaillant (Paperback - January 8, 2003). Amazon.com review:
"We all need models for how to live from retirement to past 80--with joy," writes George Vaillant, M.D., director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This groundbreaking book pulls together data from three separate longevity studies that, beginning in their teens, followed 824 individuals for more than 50 years. The subjects were male Harvard graduates; inner-city, disadvantaged males; and intellectually gifted women.

"Here you have these wonderful files, and you seem little interested in how we cope with increasing age ... our adaptability, our zest for life," one of these subjects wrote to Vaillant, a researcher, psychiatrist, and Harvard Medical School professor, about how he was using this information. Vaillant took this advice to heart. In Aging Well, he presents personal narratives about people from these studies whom he interviewed personally in their 70s and 80s. He describes their history, relationships, hardships, philosophies, and sources of joy. We learn their perspectives and what makes them want to get up in the morning.

We also learn what makes old age vital and interesting. Vaillant discusses the important adult developmental tasks, such as identity, intimacy, and generativity (giving to the next generation), and provides important clues to a healthy, meaningful, satisfying old age. Health in old age, we learn, is not predicted by low cholesterol or ancestral longevity, but by factors such as a stable marriage, adaptive coping style (the ability to make lemonade out of life's lemons), and regular exercise.

Vaillant is empathetic and sometimes surprisingly poetic: "Owning an old brain, you see, is rather like owning an old car.... Careful driving and maintenance are everything." He freely includes subjective observations and interpretations, giving us a richer picture of the people he interviewed and insights into their lives. Aging Well is recommended for readers who are interested in learning about the quality-of-life issues of aging from the people who have the most to teach. --Joan Price

Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being by Andrew Weil (Paperback - January 2, 2007). Amazon.com review:
Dr. Weil has raised dispensing health advice to an art form. Instead of making his audience feel inadequate or guilty about bad habits, he seems to subconsciously convince readers to do better merely by presenting health facts in a non-threatening way.

Healthy Aging is his most scientifically technical book yet (you'll learn all about enzymes like telomerase and cell division and the chemistry behind phytonutrients like indole-3-carbinol, and the connection between cancer and other degenerative diseases like diabetes) yet by far his most fascinating.

His main mission here is to recommend "aging gracefully," which he considers accepting the process instead of fighting it. As the director of the country's leading integrative-medicine clinic (combining the best of traditional and alternative worlds), of course he disses Botox and the slew of $100-a-jar face creams out there.