After contemplating it for the past few years on the how, when, where and whether of it all, I plunged into the experience of a 4-day wellness retreat in Tuscon, Arizona. Thanks to my family and friends for encouraging me to do so.
The experience was certainly quite worth it! The 4 days were full of medical, physical, nutritional, and mental wellness related sessions and conversations.
As always, I am happy to have a conversation to discuss these learnings and insights whenever convenient.
Below is the breakdown of what I experienced in the rather serene setting of the Sonora Desert.
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| Sonora Desert |
Medical
- EKG - heart
- DEXA – bones & muscles
- Spirometer - lungs
- Comprehensive blood test
- Continuous Glucose Monitor
- Sleep Monitor
Physical
- Posture Analysis
- Max Heart rate estimate
- Yoga
- Pilates
- Core
- Diet
- Vitamins
- Cooking
Mental Health
- Meditation sessions
- Mind-Body session
- Purpose and Meaning
- Roadmap
These tests and services helped establish my personal baseline. Of course, the actions for me to take do key-off these test personal test results. And I certainly do have a personal roadmap that I have come away with.
However, it is possible to extract some general knowledge and insights out of this experience. Here were some interesting insights that I picked up. These notes are certainly not comprehensive, but those that stood out for me in these sessions and worth bringing to the fore here:
- Heart: Heart health has both non-modifiable and modifiable risks. The latter include diet, exercise, smoking, stress, blood pressure, alcohol and weight.
- Bones: We lose bone density with age. Early onset is termed Ostopenia and its severe manifestation is Osteoperosis.
- Fat: While we are familiar with cutaneous fat (fell that belly!), it is visceral fat that surrounds our organs deep inside, is what can get metabolically active and harmful beyond a certain point. More than 2.64 lbs for males and more than 1.76 lbs for females.
- Weight: Healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9 (weight / Height^2 ).
- Blood: We know this from our annual physician visits and the attendant blood tests - Triglycerides, Cholesterol, Vitamins & Iron (and all other ones that docs point out) worth paying attention to.
- Brain: As many of you know, I am quite focused on Cognitive Decline in my professional and philanthropic work. I learned in this visit that "What is good for the heart is good for the brain."
- Muscles: Like bones, muscles attenuate with age. Thus important to focus on strenthening.
- Mobility: Stretching should not be just about flexibility and injury prevention, but also about mobility of our joints and its full range of motion.
- Vitamins: Vitamin supplements are not a substitute but ..... supplements!
- Diet: Red meats carry with them the risk of cardiovascular, coronary artery disease, cancer.
- Carbohydrates: Simple carbohydrates go straight to small intestine. So as we have been hearing, it is best to have complex carbohydrates.
- Alcohol: Our bodies treat alcohol like a toxin.
- Stress: 70% of input to brain is through the eyes. Thus just the act of closing one's has the instant impact of calming us down from external stimulus.
- Meditation: The practice of mindfulness allows us to regulate our attention to gain intimate connection within and without.
- Attitude: Being open to the possibility that the second half of our life can be fully different than the first half is worth bearing in mind. Carl Jung came up in this context.
Carl Jung's perspective on aging is worth sharing here:
Often it is something like a slow change in a person’s character; in another case, certain traits may come to light which had disappeared since childhood, or again, one’s previous inclinations and interests begin to weaken and others take their place.
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.Jung also placed emphasis on the importance of ”individuation” during these later years, where the ego that was so earnestly constructed and held onto in the first half of life, needs to recede in importance, and come into line with one’s larger view of life, incorporating a vital connection with the personal and collective unconscious, a constellation that he termed the Self.
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| Dr. Stephen Brewer |
My overall personal roadmap included specific recommendations on a)
Metabolic Health, b) Physical Health, c) Brain & Mental Health, d)
Sleep Health and finally, e) Nutrition. Extracting from it, here are some basic recommendations from Dr. Stephen Brewer on Healthy Aging. I was personally attended to by Dr. Brewer over the 4-day visit:
1. No smoking
2. Moderate exercise
3. No red meat - substitute with plant proteins
4. Practicing good sleep habits
5. Reduce alcohol to occasional consumption
6. Exercising the brain
7. Stretch one's boundaries, but not breaking them
8. Knowing risk factors (such as the heart risk factors mentioned above) and eliminating them
9. Finding a preventive medicine doctor
10. Not competing with 20 year olds and determining age appropriate activities.
As I went through the week, I thought of this metaphor. When we are young, we are walking on a moving sidewalk in the same direction (like in airports). Thus, just the fact that we are growing, moves us along.
However, in the second half of our life, we are on the moving sidewalk, but now it is moving in the opposite direction. Thus, we need to work, just to stay in place (preventing muscle loss, maintaining bone density etc). And to move forward, we need to walk faster than the speed of the moving sidewalk.
It would certainly be easier, if we have a sense of purpose and a goal waiting for us at the end of that moving sidewalk!
Book / Reference List:
Everything in moderation – Stephen Brewer
Guide to Men’s health – Stephen Brewer
Stay off my operating table – Phil Ovadi
Breath – James Nestor
Mindfulness – Jon Kabat-Zinn
Why We Sleep - Matt Walker
Podcast on value of morning Light - Andrew Huberman
Interesting Terms:
BDNF - Brain Derived Neutrophic Factor
MBSR - Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
TOFI - Thin Outside Fat Inside
DOMS - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
GERD - Gastroesophegeal Reflux Disease
METs - Metabolic Equivalent of Task
1 comment:
This was a fantastic note. A good deal I can take away from it personally. Thanks so much for sharing it. I particularly like the views on second half, later stages of life. Since I am in that.
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