What Can We Do or Not Do to Better Our Odds in Old Age?

Ken Anderson

Greeter
Staff member

Cheat Sheet: Sedentary Lifestyle, Medication Dependence, Poor Sleep, Dehydration, Stress

Suggestions:
  • Include a palm-size portion of protein with every meal.
  • Every 30 minutes, stand up.
  • One hour before bed, drink a full glass of water, look at tomorrow's medications (Do I know what this is for? Do I need it?), and place your phone in another room.

This thread is not limited to this podcast, but I think everything he says here makes sense.
 
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Thus far, I have not had to wake up to go to the bathroom at night. Even if I feel the urge to go to the bathroom while in bed, as long as I can hold it long enough to get to sleep, I'm good. If I happen to wake up for something else during the night, like if I hurt somewhere or feel itchy, for reasons that I haven't figured out yet, then I might get up and use the bathroom. I can drink water, juice, coffee, or whatever before going to bed, and I'm good until I wake up for some other reason, or in the morning if I sleep through.
 
I was reading an interesting article today. According to the article, back in 1979, a psychologist invited a group of older men, in their 70-80’s to a retreat.
At the retreat, everything was like it was 1959, 20 years earlier. The television played the old shows and the news from that time period, the radio had songs from the 50’s era, and all of the furnishings where they were staying looked like they fit that time period.

They said that the men began talking about how their life was back then, and discussed their careers as if they were still working, and spent the week re-living how their life was when they were 20 years younger.
At the end of the retreat, the men were walking more like they did as a younger person, and had less body pain, and they agreed that they felt younger again.

This is not to say that we should all return to living in 1959, but that the men started feeling younger inside, and their body followed along by responding to being more like a younger body, so the article said it is better to think of ourselves in that kind of a positive way.
Sometimes, we say to ourselves that we can’t do something because we are “too old”, and this is what the article said we should avoid, as much as possible.
Naturally, we can’t expect our body to be able to do the things we did when we were younger that are not safe for us to do now, but we should try and see ourselves more as the younger, healthier person we were back then, as much as possible.
It can’t hurt to try.
 
I truly believe sugar and processed carbs are injurious to the body. Food companies research the 'bliss factor' to find a way to get people hooked on their products. People are at the point that they 'don't like' vegetables and it is so much easier to grab a prepared meal without reading the ingredients. I was kind of that way until I 'met' Dr Berg who recommended a large salad to get my nutrients. I tried it. I tasted all the vegetables I put in in individually. Didn't need dressing. They were great. It was definitely not just a lettuce salad. Steamed broccoli tasted amazing. Of course things I grow taste better because they are fresh.
I don't know how I made it to 75. I ate very badly in my youth and drank like a fish after my husband died. I made deserts that can kill. ;)
My mom was a tiny, thin little thing who did not eat well to stay that way. My paternal grandmother was a stately woman. Both had dementia in later life. Hopefully that is not hereditary but now it is considered type three diabetes.
Fortunately it is getting warmer so I can get out and do things that require effort because I sit too much in the winter.
 
I truly believe sugar and processed carbs are injurious to the body. Food companies research the 'bliss factor' to find a way to get people hooked on their products. People are at the point that they 'don't like' vegetables and it is so much easier to grab a prepared meal without reading the ingredients. I was kind of that way until I 'met' Dr Berg who recommended a large salad to get my nutrients. I tried it. I tasted all the vegetables I put in in individually. Didn't need dressing. They were great. It was definitely not just a lettuce salad. Steamed broccoli tasted amazing. Of course things I grow taste better because they are fresh.
I don't know how I made it to 75. I ate very badly in my youth and drank like a fish after my husband died. I made deserts that can kill. ;)
My mom was a tiny, thin little thing who did not eat well to stay that way. My paternal grandmother was a stately woman. Both had dementia in later life. Hopefully that is not hereditary but now it is considered type three diabetes.
Fortunately it is getting warmer so I can get out and do things that require effort because I sit too much in the winter.
I agree with you, @Mary Stetler . There is some kind of sugar and usually seed oils in almost everything that we buy that is processed food, and since the cigarette companies now own the food companies, they also add the chemicals that addict people to tobacco.
Back when it was pure tobacco smoked in a pipe, it was not addictive, and a person just enjoyed a pipe in the evening, and didn’t have the all day cravings that cigarettes have.
Once the cigarette companies started adding the addictive chemicals to tobacco, people had a lot worse addiction to it, so now they are adding the same chemicals into processed foods.

It makes a big difference what we eat as to how hungry we think we are. Since I have been doing the starch solution diet, I find I am not hungry nearly as often or crave foods if i am not hungry.
Of course, if I am looking at an apple fritter, my mind thinks I am hungry, and if I am looking at a cold boiled potato, then it tells me I am not really hungry right now.
I think that any food plan helps if it gets people off of the processed foods and eating real foods.
 
I truly believe sugar and processed carbs are injurious to the body. Food companies research the 'bliss factor' to find a way to get people hooked on their products. People are at the point that they 'don't like' vegetables and it is so much easier to grab a prepared meal without reading the ingredients. I was kind of that way until I 'met' Dr Berg who recommended a large salad to get my nutrients. I tried it. I tasted all the vegetables I put in in individually. Didn't need dressing. They were great. It was definitely not just a lettuce salad. Steamed broccoli tasted amazing. Of course things I grow taste better because they are fresh.
I don't know how I made it to 75. I ate very badly in my youth and drank like a fish after my husband died. I made deserts that can kill. ;)
My mom was a tiny, thin little thing who did not eat well to stay that way. My paternal grandmother was a stately woman. Both had dementia in later life. Hopefully that is not hereditary but now it is considered type three diabetes.
Fortunately it is getting warmer so I can get out and do things that require effort because I sit too much in the winter.
I suspect carbs are related to some forms of dementia, but it irks me a bit to call it "Type 3 Diabetes". The doctors who use the term are ignorant of the origin. Diabetes refers to excessive urination, not sugar. and that is how elevated sugar was once diagnosed. Diabetes insipidus is totally unrelated to sugar or carbs and is due to a hormone deficiency. An acquaintance just died a few weeks ago. He had been thought to have dementia for over a year. Turns out, he had a brain tumor that killed him shortly after he was diagnosed, not regular dementia at all. Of course, this is Alaska where poor medical care is prevalent.
 
While it seems old folks focus more on diet, I think exercise is more important than diet for us oldies.
I'd recommend a combination of both, but I agree that exercise is probably the more important of the two. It is my non-expert opinion that a large part of the reason we could eat whatever we wanted when we were young - some of us - and not get fat, is that we were more active than we are as older adults. In our time, in many cases, the first jobs we got were ones that required a lot of activity on our part. Then, as we became better educated, gained experience, and worked our way up whatever ladder we might have been on, we found ourselves behind a desk, slowly gaining weight unless we made a conscious effort to work out often. After retirement, activity was not a requirement for our daily lives, and we eventually convinced ourselves that we were too old do to a lot of things. At some point, it becomes too late.

If we were able to burn off whatever extra calories we took in, I think we'd be better off than we are by trying to achieve weight loss and health by restricting calorie intake alone.
 
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You should probably look to your parents to gauge your own possible longevity. It's not absolute, cuz lifestyle might trump their contribution.
That can be a good gauge of what to expect, but I'm nearly twice the age my mother was when she died of a stroke, and I'm about twenty years older than my dad was, but his life was shortend by a major fire; although he lived another ten years or so, his health was greatly affected by burns. But that's anecdotal.
 
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