Stallone Training for The Expendables: What 62 Years Old Looks Like!

Here's the deal, and you know this because you went to the high school reunion: there's about a 28-year swing in normal aging by the time you make it to sixty years old.

Take a look at the website RealAge.com, and you'll see, after you do the number-crunching, that a 60 year old who's obese, with high blood pressure, and an alcoholic, and diabetic, and smokes, has a real age of 74. And his opposite number, who works out a lot, takes vitamin c, and doesn't smoke, has a real age of 46 or thereabouts.

Now, I don't pretend that everybody has the same genetics as Sly Stallone, because that would be silly.

But here he is, working out; and take a particularly close look at his abs, which are remarkable.

Tells me he's been eating a lot of beef, chicken, fish, and green vegetables, because nothing you can do by way of exercise will give you abs like that without eating healthy.

And here you go with the video, and don't try this at home, kids, unless you really know what you're doing! I sure want you to exercise, and I sure don't want you to do too much, too soon (and always check with your doctor, of course, before you exercise):

There Are Many Health, Longevity and Alternative Medicine Magazines. Then there is "Glutes".

So I get done with my workout last night, and I head to the drug store because I'm out of chewing gum. And one of my next health blogposts will be about the other rocks in your head, your teeth.

But I walked past the magazine rack, and there was a cover that caught my eye.

Both of them, actually.

Now, in my youth, nice girls did not let photographers zero in on the place where they sat down. In fact, they would normally have avoided such a thing with serious intent, unless they were far over the legal limit.

But the nice girl-next-door on the cover of this magazine looked extremely healthy. And fit. And she had the muscles and body-fat percentage that come only from working out a lot and eating few carbs.

But she was mostly showing off her backside to the camera, and grinning about it.

And, to be fair, she did have a world-class backside.

Am I going somewhere with this?

Maybe.

Oh, yeah. I am.

Vanity is a sin; but it can be a useful sin, because it helps combat sloth.

And I recall that the Hawaiian Vacation Photos were what it took to make me dump fifty pounds of fat, thereby preserving my knees and my back and my heart.

So if the prospect of being on the cover of a magazine named "Glutes" that focused in on her backside made that nice girl do healthy things like diet and exercise, more power to her!

And here's a video featuring the nice young lady on the cover of Glutes Magazine:

The Most Interesting Man in the World Does Talk About Aging and Death

The beer commercials featuring "The Most Interesting Man in the World" are among the funniest things I've ever watched.

Donno why. Maybe it's because I'm the most boring human on the planet. But I laugh at those beer commercials until I'm nearly unconscious.

And the Most Interesting Man in the World does have something to say on the subjects of aging and death, even if its only indirectly; here is a compilation, and eventually you'll hear him talk about The Obituary.

Your Perfect Body Weight for Longevity and Reducing Morbidity and Mortality

This is not a complicated question, although it can seem complicated if you consider reading everything you find when you Google a search like: "optimum bmi or body weight for longevity and reductions in mortality morbidity and study".

Now, the reason I know it seems complicated is that I did that search, and a lot more like it. Confused the heck out of me for a long time, especially because you'll see a lot of articles out there, and even studies, that suggest that being fat is healthier than being skinny, which is simply dumb.

That's because those who appear to be rebels, scientific or otherwise, get ink. Electronic or otherwise.

Also note: there are a lot of articles suggesting that there is no perfect body weight or bmi or waist to hip ratio, and that it's mean to suggest that some things are better than other things.

Horse-hocky, he said politely. There are answers out there. Sometimes it takes a little digging to find 'em, but they're there.

One of the cool things I found was an ideal body weight calculator conjoined with a body mass index calculator that I liked because they both made sense to me.

I also found a study concerning the perfect weight for guys, and I liked that study because of the methodology, and the lack of "spin" in the results.

The optimum body weight study just followed a lotta guys, having obtained their body weights and heights so they could calculate their body mass indexes, and then saw how frequently they became diabetic, had heart attacks and strokes, and died. Just so you know, death appears to be a "combined end point".

There is, along with that study, a nifty graph that shows the range that appears to be the healthiest in terms of, you know, that death thing; according to the graph, if I read it correctly, a body mass index of anywhere from 20 to 26 looks pretty darn good in terms of avoiding the Grim Reaper.

In order to avoid misquoting or misinterpreting the study, I'm going to show you the BMJ article in full below. There is a link to the article above, as well.

If you think I want you to read a BMJ article in full, you'd be right.

Or you can just internalize the conclusion: a bmi of about 22 appears to be close to ideal for men who would like to stay on this side of the grass.

Note also: it's fine by me if you want to dig your grave with your teeth. There is no legal or moral imperative that says you must want what I want (to die at 120 of absolutely nothing whatsoever) or that you are not permitted to live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse.

That is entirely up to you.

The article itself:

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BMJ 1997;314:1311 (3 May)
Papers
Body weight: implications for the prevention of coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus in a cohort study of middle aged men
A Gerald Shaper, emeritus professor of clinical epidemiology,a S Goya Wannamethee, British Heart Foundation research fellow,a Mary Walker, research administrator a

a Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London NW3 2PF

Correspondence to: Professor Shaper



Objective:To determine the body mass index associated with the lowest morbidity and mortality.
Design:Prospective study of a male cohort.
Setting:One general practice in each of 24 British towns.
Subjects:7735 men aged 40-59 years at screening.
Main outcome measures:All cause death rate, heart attacks, and stroke (fatal and non-fatal) and development of diabetes, or any of these outcomes (combined end point) over an average follow up of 14.8 years.
Results:There were 1271 deaths from all causes, 974 heart attacks, 290 strokes, and 245 new cases of diabetes mellitus. All cause mortality was increased only in men with a body mass index (kg/m2) <20 and in men with an index >=30. However, risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, and diabetes increased progressively from an index of <20 even after age, smoking, social class, alcohol consumption, and physical activity were adjusted for. For the combined end point the lowest risks were seen for an index of 20.0-23.9. In never smokers and former smokers, deaths from any cause rose progressively from an index of 20.0-21.9 and for the combined end point, from 20.0-23.9. Age adjusted levels of a wide range of cardiovascular risk factors rose or fell progressively from an index <20.
Conclusion:A healthy body mass index in these middle aged British men seems to be about 22.

Key messages

* The body mass index associated with the lowest mortality and the lowest incidence of coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus is not known

* In this study of middle aged men the risk of cardiovascular mortality, heart attack, and diabetes increased progressively from a body mass index <20

* For a combined end point (heart attack, stroke, diabetes, or death from any cause) the lowest risk was in the range 20-24

* Levels of a wide range of cardiovascular risk factors increased progressively from an index of <20

* A healthy body mass index in middle aged men seems to be around 22



The ideal, desirable, or healthy body weight is usually defined as that associated with the lowest mortality.1 For adults a body mass index (kg/m2) of 20-27 is widely recommended as the standard weight range within which there is little benefit from further leanness in relation to all cause mortality.2 3 However, criteria based on risk factors and morbidity may be more appropriate in determining healthy body weights.4 5 Data from the British Regional Heart Study has shown the effect of smoking on the U shaped relation between body mass index and all cause mortality commonly found in epidemiological studies.6 Among men who had never smoked the lowest mortality was observed in those with a body mass index of 20.0-21.9. Other reports from this study have been concerned with the independent relation between body mass index and the development of coronary heart disease and non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus.7 8 This paper aims to determine healthy body weight based on mortality, morbidity, and cardiovascular risk factors in middle aged men drawn from general practice registers in 24 British towns and followed up for some 15 years. It examines the prospective relation between initial body mass index and subsequent risk of death from all causes and the incidence of heart attack, stroke, and diabetes as well as the relations between body mass index and cardiovascular risk factors in these men.




The British Regional Heart Study is a large prospective study of cardiovascular disease comprising 7735 men aged 40-59 selected from the age-sex registers of one group general practice in each of 24 towns in England, Wales, and Scotland. The criteria for selecting the town, the general practice, and the subjects as well as the methods of data collection have been reported.9 Men with pre-existing cardiovascular disease or taking regular medication were included in the study. Research nurses administered to each man a standard questionnaire that included questions on smoking habits, alcohol intake, physical activity, and medical history. Several physical measurements were made, and non-fasting blood samples were taken for measuring biochemical and haematological variables including serum lipids and packed cell volume.9 10 Triglyceride and insulin measurements were available for men in 18 towns (7th-24th; n=5675 and n=5661 respectively). We adjusted for the marked diurnal variation in both parameters.11 Details of blood pressure and heart rate and classification methods for smoking status, alcohol consumption, occupation (social class), physical activity, and body mass index have been reported.12 13 14 Body mass index (calculated as weight/height2) was used as an index of relative weight.

Follow up
All men were followed up for death from any cause, cardiovascular morbidity, and development of non-insulin dependent diabetes from the initial screening in January 1978 to July 1980 up to December 1993, a mean period of 14.8 years (range 13.5-16 years),15 and follow up has been achieved for 99% of the cohort. Information on death was collected through the established "tagging" procedures provided by the NHS registers in Southport (England and Wales) and Edinburgh (Scotland). Criteria for accepting a diagnosis of non-fatal myocardial infarction and deaths from ischaemic heart disease have been reported7 as has the method for ascertaining new cases of non-insulin dependent diabetes.8



Fig 1 Age adjusted mortality/1000 person years for deaths from any cause, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other non-cardiovascular non-cancer causes

Statistical methods
We used Cox's proportional hazards model to obtain the relative risks for the seven body mass index groups adjusted for age, smoking, physical activity, social class, and alcohol intake.16 Smoking (five levels), physical activity (six levels), alcohol intake (five levels), and social class (seven levels) were fitted as categorical variables. Body mass index was fitted as six dummy variables for the seven groups. Tests for trend were carried out fitting body mass index in its original continuous form. Indirect standardisation was used to obtain age adjusted rates/1000 person years with the study population as the standard. The analysis of covariance was used to obtain age adjusted mean levels of the cardiovascular risk factors for the seven body mass index groups.

To assess the U shaped relation between body mass index and total mortality we entered body mass index both as a linear and quadratic term in its original continuous form in the model; the analysis indicates a U shaped relation if the quadratic term is significant.




The mean (SD) body mass index was 25.48 (3.22). The men were divided into seven body mass index groups: <20 (n=268), 20.0-21.9 (n=703), 22.0-23.9 (n=1549), 24.0-25.9 (n=2080), 26.0-27.9 (n=1638), 28.0-29.9 (n=858), >=30 (n=636). Data were not available for three men.

Mortality from any cause
During the mean follow up period of 14.8 years there were 1271 deaths from all causes. These comprised 643 deaths from cardiovascular causes and 628 from non-cardiovascular causes, of which 432 were due to cancer. Figure 1) shows the age adjusted mortality for all causes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other non-cardiovascular non-cancer causes. A U shaped relation was seen with all cause mortality with the lowest total mortality in the body mass index groups 22.0-27.9. Mortality was significantly increased in men with an index <20 or >=30. A test for the U shaped curve fitting a linear and quadratic effect of body mass index showed a significant indication of a U shaped relation (quadratic term; P<0.0001). A positive association was seen between body mass index and cardiovascular mortality (test for trend, P<0.0001). For cancer, mortality was significantly increased in men with a body mass index <20 but thereafter there was no trend. For deaths from non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes there was a significant inverse trend (P<0.0001). The excess deaths in the leaner men (<22) were largely due to respiratory causes.

Adjustment for lifestyle factors
Body mass index was strongly and inversely associated with cigarette smoking and physical activity and positively associated with social class and alcohol intake.17 The relation between body mass index and mortality was examined with adjustment for age and then in addition for these factors (table 1). Men with a body mass index of 20.0-21.9 were used as the reference group as this group lies at the lower end of the weight range usually regarded as acceptable.3 There was little difference in the age adjusted risk of death from all causes in men with an index of 20.0-29.9. The additional adjustment reduced the increased risk for men with an index <20, although it remained significant, and increased the risk seen in all the heavier groups. Mortality increased slightly at an index of 28 and was significantly increased at an index of >30. For cardiovascular mortality there was a progressive increase in relative risk through all groups after full adjustment (test for trend, P<0.0001). For cancer, after full adjustment mortality remained significantly increased only in men in the <20 group. For other non-cardiovascular deaths, full adjustment had little effect on the age adjusted relative risks (test for trend, P<0.001). Exclusion of deaths which occurred within the first five years of follow up did not greatly affect the patterns of risk observed.




Table 1 Body mass index and adjusted relative risk (95% confidence interval) of death from any cause, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other non-cardiovascular causes

Cardiovascular disease and diabetes
We examined the relation between body mass index and subsequent risk of fatal and non-fatal major coronary heart disease (n=974) and stroke (n=290). Table 2) shows the age adjusted rates/1000 person years for these outcomes and the relative risks adjusted for age and then in addition for alcohol intake, physical activity, smoking, and social class. No adjustment was made for blood pressure or blood lipid concentration as these are mechanisms in the pathway linking body weight and cardiovascular disease.




Table 2 Body mass index and age adjusted rate/1000 person years and adjusted relative risk (95% confidence interval) of major coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and the combined end point (death or developing major coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes during follow up)

Coronary heart disease Incidence increased progressively with increasing body mass index. After age and the lifestyle factors were adjusted for, the overall trend in relative risk of coronary heart disease was significant, although the risk increased significantly only at an index of 24.0 and above compared with the baseline group.

Stroke The age adjusted risk was increased but not significantly in lightest (<20) and heaviest men (>=30). This finding was not significant (P=0.06) after adjustment for age and lifestyle factors. The lowest risks were seen in those with an index of 20.0-21.9 and risk tended to increase thereafter.

Diabetes All men with diabetes at screening (n=121) or who were diagnosed in the same calendar year as screening (n=14) or who had blood glucose concentrations >=11.1 mmol/l at screening (n=22) were excluded from the analysis. In the 7575 men with no evidence of diabetes at screening there were 245 cases of non-insulin dependent diabetes during follow up. Risk of diabetes increased progressively with increasing body mass index from <20 (test for trend, P<0.0001) and was significantly raised at an index of 26 and above (table 2).

Combined end point In all, 2033 men either died or developed one of the end points (development of heart attack, stroke, or diabetes during follow up). After the full adjustment, the lowest risks were seen in men with an index of 20.0-23.9. Risk increased slightly at an index of 24 and was significantly increased at an index of 26 and beyond.

Exclusion of men with known coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes
There were 604 men who recalled a doctor diagnosing coronary heart disease (heart attack or angina) or stroke or who had evidence of diabetes at screening (see above). Exclusion of these men made little difference to the relations between body mass index and the specific end points. For the combined end point (n=1717) the relative risks (95% confidence intervals) adjusted for age, smoking, social class, alcohol intake, and physical activity for the seven body mass index groups (lowest to highest) were 1.17 (0.88 to1.55), 1.00, 0.97 (0.79 to 1.19), 1.05 (0.86 to 1.27), 1.26 (1.04 to 1.53), 1.36 (1.10 to 1.69), and 1.99 (1.60 to 2.47).

Smoking
Smoking is an important confounder in the relation between body mass index and mortality.6 We therefore examined the relation between body mass index and mortality from any cause, coronary heart disease, and the combined end point (death, coronary heart disease, stroke, or diabetes) separately by smoking status at screening (never smoked, former smokers, and current smokers) adjusting for age (fig 2). Current smokers showed higher mortality than former and never smokers at all body mass indices, and mortality from any cause was increased in those with an index <20 in all smoking groups. In never and former smokers, mortality increased thereafter (test for trend, P<0.008 and P=0.01 respectively). A shallow U shaped relation was seen in current smokers.




Fig 2 Mortality from any cause, coronary heart disease events (fatal and non-fatal) and a combined end point (all age adjusted rates/1000 person years) according to smoking status

For coronary heart disease events a linear positive association was seen in never smokers and current smokers. In former smokers the lowest rates were seen in the 22.0-23.9 groups. For the combined end point, rates were lowest in the 20.0-23.9 groups in both never and former smokers and increased progressively thereafter (test for trend, P<0.0001). Among smokers the lowest rates were in the 20.0-25.9 groups and increased thereafter. Further adjustment for lifestyle factors made minor differences to the relations within these smoking categories.

Cardiovascular risk factors
We examined the relations between body mass index and cardiovascular risk factors after age was adjusted for (table 3). For most of these factors the levels increased (in the case of high density lipoprotein cholesterol decreased) progressively with increasing body mass index. Mean heart rate was slightly raised in those with a body mass index <20 but lower again in the 20-21.9 group and increased progressively thereafter.




Table 3 Body mass index and age adjusted mean levels of cardiovascular risk factors

Adjustment for biological factors
The positive relation between body mass index and cardiovascular mortality (table 1) and between body mass index and coronary events (table 2) was attenuated after further adjustment for systolic blood pressure and blood cholesterol concentration, although it remained significant (P=0.03 and P=0.002 respectively). Additional adjustment for high density lipoprotein cholesterol abolished the positive trend for both cardiovascular mortality and coronary events (data not shown).




Concepts of desirable or healthy weight have depended heavily on the relation between body mass index and mortality,1 2 although more recently the associations between body weight and cardiovascular risk profile, morbidity, and diabetes mellitus have been emphasised in considering optimal weight.4 5 18 In this study the well established U shaped relation between mortality and body weight was confirmed, with excess deaths in very lean men largely due to cancer and other non-cardiovascular causes and the excess deaths in the heaviest men predominantly due to cardiovascular disease. The relative risk of both heart attack and of diabetes increased progressively from an index <20 and the lowest risk of stroke was seen in those with an index of 20.0-23.9.

With a combined end point (heart attack, stroke, diabetes, or death) the lowest relative risk was in the 20.0-23.9 groups. All the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease rose progressively from an index <20. These findings strongly suggest that the healthy, biologically normal, or optimum body weight in these middle aged men is towards the lower end of the range which is currently regarded as acceptable.

Issues of adjustment
In most studies examining the relation between body weight and outcome in terms of morbidity or mortality, adjustments have been made in multiple regression models for blood pressure and total cholesterol concentration, and occasionally for other biological factors related to body weight and risk of cardiovascular disease. Any relations observed between body weight and the end points have been considerably attenuated after adjustment, often becoming non-significant. This has then been interpreted as meaning that "body weight does not matter" as these other variables have accounted for the relations observed. Our results were also attenuated after we adjusted for blood pressure, cholesterol, and high density lipoprotein cholesterol. In trying to assess the effects of body weight it seems illogical to adjust for those factors which are almost certainly the mechanisms by which increasing body weight brings about vascular damage.

Other studies
Previous prospective studies have generally focused on the U shaped relation between body mass index and all cause mortality or on the relation between body mass index and specific end points—for example, coronary heart disease. Few studies have focused on assessing healthy weight based on risk factors or morbidity, or both. In a cross sectional study of 3582 Japanese men (mean body mass index 23.3) and 983 women (mean 21.8) aged 30-59 years, 10 medical problems (hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, hyperuricaemia, ischaemic heart disease, lung disease, anaemia, upper gastrointestinal disease, liver, and renal disease) were selected to determine morbidity.4 The relation between body mass index and a composite morbidity index formed a J shaped curve with the lowest point at an index of 22.2 in men and 21.8 in women. The authors conclude that an index of about 22 seems to be the ideal. In the Framingham offspring study a similar conclusion was drawn after assessing the relation between the scapular skinfold (as a direct measure of adiposity) and several cardiovascular risk factors in 2447 non-smoking men and women aged 20-59 years. Healthy adiposity corresponded to a mean body mass index of 22.6 for men and 21.2 for women.5 Although not specifically aimed at assessing ideal body weight, a Finnish study of about 16 000 men and women aged 30-59 years showed clearly that the main risk factors increased progressively from an index of 20 upwards and that from a level of 22 an increase in body weight equivalent to 1 body mass index unit was related to a 4-5% increase in coronary heart disease mortality.19 In our study an increase in 1 body mass index unit from 20.0-21.9 onwards was associated with an approximately 10% increase in the rate of coronary events and a 10% increase in the combined end point. In the Nurses health study, in women who had never smoked and who recently had stable weight, the lowest mortality was among the leanest women (body mass index <19.0).20 These women were at least 15% below the United States average weight for middle aged women. All cause mortality did not increase substantially until a body mass index of 27, although trends were apparent for coronary heart disease and cancer among women at average weights and among those who were mildly overweight.

Public health aspects
The British government's Health of the Nation strategy set targets for the reduction in the prevalence of obesity (body mass index >=30) in men and women aged 16-64 years but made no recommendations regarding the distribution of weight in the population and set no standards for healthy body mass indices in the population.21 The recent task forces report suggests targeting adults with a body mass index of 25-30 and expresses "a concern to develop a strategy to prevent the population in general becoming fatter."22 In 1993, the proportion of men and women in England who were obese was 13% and 16% respectively with a mean body mass index of 25.9 for men and 25.7 for women. As an index of 25-30 is generally regarded as overweight,23 half of the adult population of England is overweight or obese.24

By contrast, in the United States, which has a similar epidemic of obesity, the focus of two recent reports has been on healthy weight rather than on obesity itself.18 25 Both reports recommend maintaining a lean body weight throughout adult life and weight reduction in those who are overweight with or without obesity related disorders. The American Institute of Nutrition recommends a single body mass index criterion of 18-25 for both sexes and suggests that "most people will be healthier towards the lower end of the range." They proposed a format indicating gradations of risk—for example, body mass index 18-23=lowest risk, 24-25=mild risk, 26-29=medium risk, and >=30=high risk.25

The American Health Foundation Expert Panel proposes a healthy weight target of a body mass index <25 for adults, representing the upper limit beyond which weight related disease risk becomes a concern and morbidity associated with obesity becomes manifest. In those exceeding the healthy weight target and without a diagnosis of a weight related disease, they propose a healthier weight goal. This represents the amount of weight loss that will reduce disease risk and is roughly two body mass index units (about 6 kg or 1 stone). This modest weight loss is regarded as achievable and maintainable and is more likely to be reached than the healthy weight target.18

Our findings broadly agree with the United States reports, and it is clear that the emphasis must be on maintaining healthy body weight in early adulthood and the prevention of obesity. The British focus on obesity seems to avoid the issue of a healthy weight and to direct attention to the clinical management of obesity.

Clinical aspects
It is well established that at all body mass indices individuals with visceral obesity (excess deep abdominal fat as indicated by waist-hip ratio or waist circumference) are at highest risk of cardiovascular disease.26 Thus estimates of risk based on body mass index or other crude measures alone may not be sufficient for assessment. Clinical decisions on the importance of body mass index in individuals will depend on the distribution of fat and muscular development as well as on the overall profile of risk.

Conclusions
In industrialised societies increasing body weight is closely related to an increasing incidence of non-insulin dependent diabetes and coronary heart disease and to increasing blood pressure, blood lipid, glucose, and insulin concentrations, urate concentration, and packed cell volume—factors all involved intimately in the development of coronary heart disease. There is also considerable evidence of the benefits of weight reduction on risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.18 Although the benefits of weight reduction in overweight people for coronary heart disease are still controversial,27 28 29 the importance of maintaining a healthy weight throughout life as a major primary preventive measure against cardiovascular disease and diabetes seems incontrovertible. Within the "normal" range of body mass index (20-27) it is better to be leaner, and the optimal healthy body mass index for adults is about 22. The implications of this conclusion for public health are considerable, and with the rising tide of obesity in the industrialised world deserve to be treated with some urgency.


Acknowledgements

Funding: The British Regional Heart Study is a British Heart Foundation research group and receives support from the Department of Health and the Stroke Association.

Conflict of interest: None.

References

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(Accepted 11 March 1997)

Bicycling: Beating the Reaper, or Chasing the Reaper?

When I was a kid, I had a bike.

I rode it on the sidewalks, as I was taught to do in the safety classes at Emerson Grade School.

Once I was stopped by a policeman, who explained to me that I was driving in the wrong direction on the sidewalk; the policy had changed, no more facing the traffic, now the rule was with the traffic, on the sidewalk, and walking the bike across the street.

I thanked him and called him sir, because I was raised right, and rode off.

Today I saw somebody I envied, at least briefly.

His hair, under a really cool plastic helmet, was the color that mine used to be; and he had admirable bicep, pec, and thigh development. He was riding a bicycle that didn't appear to have been built on the same planet that built my old grade-school bicycle.

And he wasn't riding on the sidewalk, either.

He was riding in the stream of traffic, or what would have been a stream if drivers weren't swerving wildly in an attempt to avoid turning him into a 180-pound bag of raspberry jam.

See, when I was a kid, if anybody had told the policeman that he had an absolute right to be a responsible member of the stream of traffic, he would have first gotten the 72-hour observation period, and after that he would have lost interest in the bicycle, after the Thorazine kicked in.

So here's the deal; if you believe that a little plastic hat will preserve your life with you collide with a six-thousand pound SUV, that's a religious belief, the same as a belief that Atman is identical to Brahman, and that rebirth in a cycle is and always has been.

And I applaud most religious beliefs; I'm particularly fond of Catholics and Sikhs, and Buddhists, especially Zen Buddhists, have produced some of the most entertaining takes on the plight of existence that I've ever read. And I think Tibetan Buddhism has a pragmatic take on meditation that I find especially comforting, and comfortable.

But some religious beliefs (the Ghost Shirt beliefs, for instance, or the Martial Arts Religions that fueled some folks during the Boxer Rebellions) tend to limit your life expectancy.

So if you believe that you can catch or block or deflect bullets, or you believe that a particular kind of shirt will stop bullets while you fire arrows, or you believe that a plastic hat will stop a 6,000 pound SUV, you probably want to avoid situations which would produce objective proof of your beliefs.

That is, you might want to avoid jumping in front of the targets or bicycling in front of the SUVs in Phoenix when the temperature is 117 degrees (a balmy, breezy summer day in Phoenix).

This is not an order, a command, or a criticism.

There have been many martyrs of the Catholic Church, for instance, and martyrs are important to every Faith.

And if your beliefs in the God of the Plastic Hat causes you to seek martyrdom, you will, not may, find it.

Not at the wheels of my SUV, I pray, but I'm a young geriatric. My cataracts do not impair my vision, so says my eye doc. And I can hear grinding brakes as people try to avoid squashing the hapless bicyclist.

But there are a lot of folks who come to Arizona to retire.

Or for witness protection.

And remember what car Tony Soprano drives.

And if there actually is rationing of medical services in the future, do you think anybody might ever have to wait for cataract surgery?

Let me put it another way.

Here in Phoenix, if the price of gasoline goes to twenty bucks a gallon, I won't be riding a bike.

I'll be walking.

I Figured Out How to Add Videos To My Health and Longevity Blog!

Okay, this business of working with blogs in the computer age is very, very easy for youngsters, because they pick it up through osmosis.

For folks my age, less easy.

But today was a breakthrough!

I've just added a couple of videos to my little health, anti-aging and alternative medicine and healthy aging blog.

One is by Julian Whitaker, a doctor who knows a lot about alternative and complementary medicine. If, God forbid, I ever need high-dose intravenous vitamin c therapy, I would probably go to visit his Health and Wellness Clinic. I'll write more about him presently, because he's a very useful source of valuable information, and I agree with him more than I disagree with him.

I also added a video about the only fasting clinic in the United States that I know about; and since fasting is a useful thing, and best done under medical supervision, and I know somebody who fasted for a month and lived to tell about it, I wanted to give TrueNorth a little exposure.

One of the most impressive uses of fasting is the remarkably predictable reduction in blood pressure to normal, healthy levels. Folks with very, very high blood pressure apparently benefit the most.

I don't know why, and as far as I know, neither does anybody else. But there are some impressive studies on the TrueNorth website that document clearly (to me, anyway) that if you have high blood pressure and need to lower it fast, and you'd rather not have a lot of awful side effects from blood pressure drugs, this might be something you'd want to look into.

But now that I know how to do this, I'll be shopping for the best examples of fast and easy exercise, as well as discussions of health topics that seem useful, and posting those videos here on my health and longevity blog.

Note: I don't particularly go for a vegetarian diet, or vegetarian theories of health, and TrueNorth pushes that approach fairly enthusiastically. I myself figure that if God designed me to need vitamin B-12, and if virtually all the sources of vitamin B-12 are, you know, in meat, the vegetarian lifestyle isn't for me. But for medically supervised fasting, I don't know anyplace with half the experience that TrueNorth has accumulated over the years.

This Is Memorial Day

This is the day we honor our fallen heroes.

And General George S. Patton was a tough, smart guy, who said: It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

When to Go to the Emergency Room? Well, One of These Would Do It!

I recently talked to a good friend who knows a ton about medicine, including complementary and alternative medicine.

He told me that he'd recently had a little scare.

One day he had a little zit at the base of a hair on the inside of his thigh.

He squeezed it, wiped it off, and forgot about it.

The next day, it had turned into a silver-dollar sized red area with a very high temperature, and filled with fluid.

For a day, he took high-dose broad-spectrum antibiotics.

The next day, the spot was bigger, redder, fuller, and hotter.

He zipped over to a local emergency room, and was immediately admitted.

He was pumped full of antibiotics that you can only get intravenously, and which have the effect of cooking a vein per day.

The abscess was drained at the hospital, and a "wick" was placed in the wound so it could drain properly and heal from the inside out, because the alternative would have been bad.

He was diagnosed with a MRSA infection (antibiotic-resistant bug) when they did a culture and sensitivity test; fortunately for him, they'd been able to to kill it off pretty well with the super-duper intravenous antibiotic with all the side-effects.

So take lesson by this, all you folks who have any body hair, or skin, for that matter.

If you see a red-hot silver dollar sized presentation on your skin, move your skinny, fat or intermediate behind over to the emergency room RIGHT NOW, because death is much less fun than life, and septicemia is less fun than sex, even though they both start with the letter "s".

P.S. I love complementary and alternative medicine. Love, love, love. They are wonderful for supportive roles in my health, I think. I get sick much less frequently and have fewer heart attacks and strokes because I take more vitamin c and d than Carter has pills. And every other vitamin, mineral and supplement known to mankind.

But if you have a heart attack, and your heart muscle is dying, or if you have a MRSA infection, get yourself to the emergency room and don't kid around. Our system of medicine in the United States is very, very good at dealing with acute medical emergencies.

Just my opinion, of course. And I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, so you probably ought to get your medical information and advice from a medical doctor or a D.O., you know? Not some bankruptcy lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona.

Will I Live to be 120? Just a Silly Joke, with a little Truth to It.

I received this gag from a buddy who's aged better than just about anybody else I know. If he were asked the questions in the joke below, his answers would have been dramatically different, I think.

Note to my readers: this is just a joke. No need to get out your notepad for health information or healthy aging tips.

And here it is!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will I Live to see 80?

Here's something to think about.

I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age. (I just turned 60.) A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?' He asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer or wine?'
'Oh no,' I replied.. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then he asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?
'I said, 'Not much, my former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
He asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?'
'No,' I said.
He looked at me and said,... 'Then, why do you even give a shit? '

Healthy Aging is NOT All in your Head!

There are some folks out there who like to believe that if you maintain a particular attitude, or a specific mind-set, you'll always be healthy, you'll never be sick, and you'll live forever.

I do not entirely agree with that assessment.

Neither does Banshee.

Banshee is a wire-haired fox terrier with whom I share the house; from her perspective, she shares the house with me. Great little dog, with much more courage than discretion.

When she was a pup, she kept going after my gigantic Southwestern Airedale Terrier, with horrific consequences. But when she got back from the doggie hospital, she went after him again!

And him weighing a hundred pounds and more!

Banshee does not know the meaning of the words "self-doubt", although she does understand a lot of words.

But recently she started limping, and after a very comprehensive, fast and compassionate diagnostic visit (and we could fix all the healthcare issues in the United States by simply letting vets treat humans; they have to be good at diagnosis and they have to have compassion, because their patients bite. And they're not very expensive, because folks won't pay excessive amounts on pet health problems, although there are exceptions),I got the diagnosis.

And the limp was caused by doggie arthritis, with an overlay of what seems to be something like doggie gout.

I consider this comprehensive proof that a perfect attitude does not produce a perfectly healthy body. Banshee has the attitude, and she still has the arthritis and gout.

And now I get to see how well glucosamine and fish oil and tumeric work on dogs.

I'll keep you posted.

And it'll be difficult at first to distinguish between the effects of the fish oil, glucosamine, and tumeric, and the effects of the doggie non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, but I want to keep the use of that to a minimum, because those will eat Banshee's stomach as much as they will a human's stomach.

So for acute phases, it'll be the entire group of goodies, and for chronic administration, as much fish oil and tumeric and glucosamine as I can get the little dog to chow down. Maybe some ginger.

Now, once I met somebody who claimed to be a veterinary acupuncturist; but that's a story for another day.

You Have Rocks in your Head! or When Canaliths Attack!

When I was a kid, the scientific advances associated with political correctness had not yet progressed to their current high level.

So when I said something stupid, my mom would say, quite reasonably, "You have rocks in your head, stupid!"

To which I would reply, "Yes, ma'am!" Because I'm not as dumb as I look.

Turns out that my mother was correct about the rocks, just as she was about the Vitamin C.

There are, in fact, little tiny rocks in your head. They're called canaliths.

The purpose of canaliths is to let you know whether you're upside down, sideways, or backwards.

They do that in a simple way. They roll around and bump into tiny little receptors in your inner ear, and they send signals to your brain, which coordinate the information with information from your eyes, and send back a message to your central processing unit that you are upright.

That feedback loop takes place in your operating system, and you aren't even aware that it's taking place.

Until it breaks.

Then, because you weave like a drunk, and vomit like a drunk, and have headaches like a drunk...is there a theme here? No, actually, but the effects of misplaced canaliths are a little like the effects of a long conversation with your buddy Jim. You know, Jim Beam. Or Jack. Daniels.

The people who name diseases and syndromes must have a sense of humor. That's because they call it "benign paroxysmal positional vertigo".

Take it from me; it's not very benign at all.

Now, fortunately, I haven't had to deal with this issue, yet. Although getting old is not for sissies, and I expect my turn to come.

But I've watched a buddy, who is tough as nails, deal with the issue, and it ain't pretty.

Now, here's the good news. There's a treatment.

Here's the better news: it doesn't involve a chainsaw.

Here's the bad news: it may well make you project your cookies while it fixes the problem.

The treatment for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is a manipulation. That is, your doc gets you in position, and moves your head around like you were one of those kid's toys with a maze, and bbs you needed to get into particular holes by rolling around the bbs inside the plastic dome until they came to rest into the little holes, and you won.

Okay, you're too young to remember those.

But the essence of the procedure is simple: the doc is simply trying to reposition the rocks in your head so they aren't telling your brain that you're upside down and backwards.

And when the doc is successful, after a few visits, the little rocks settle down and you can walk without doing your drunken pirate imitation.

Trauma can induce the dizziness (and the word dizziness doesn't begin to describe the intensity of the sensation), so car accidents and left hooks in martial arts classes can cause the problem.

So can turning over in your own warm little bed.

It all depends on how frisky those little rocks decide they are on any given day.

Now, the Eply maneuver is not so easy to do, nor so easy to teach. But you probably want to ask your doc about it so you know who to call...when canaliths attack!

p.s. I found a website that talks about the maneuver, and shows pictures of a self-administered version of the technique (insert dumb joke here). As always, I advise that you get all of your medical advice and information from a doctor who is authorized to practice in your jurisdiction, and not from an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer!

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, or Jelly Donuts? What Do You Use to Modulate Your Internal State?

Everybody uses something or another.

Some use jelly donuts, and some use fasting.

Which is almost funny, if you think about it.

Some use sex, some use abstinence. Also almost funny.

The interesting part of changing your internal state is that everything you do to accomplish that goal has an effect, which is sometimes a side-effect, and sometimes a planned effect.

Smoking, for instance, has several specific effects on the brain, and internal states, particularly in those addicted to nicotine (which I understand is one of the most addictive substances on the face of the planet, and pretty poisonous at that). The SIDE-effect, however, is developing all those little wrinkles around the mouth, which nobody really wants. Oh, and that thing with Willie. Who will be free less frequently.

Some folks are addicted to exercising, and have feelings of moral superiority in connection with that addiction. And the side-effects of that addiction includes damage from overuse and repetitive use. And a somewhat extended life-span to enjoy the damage to the joints!

Some people use prayer and its close cousin, meditation, either with or without the addition of breathing exercises. The Philokalia discusses those from the perspective of older Christian meditative practices. Tibetan Buddhism has more different kinds of meditation than you can shake a stick at, because there were no internet games in ancient Tibet. And it was hard to play soccer on the sides of those mountains.

A lot of people use food, most often carbohydrates, which will generate a happy, sleepy stupor, and a body weight of four or five hundred pounds.

The use of sex as a modulator of internal mental state is well documented; men, especially, will do anything to modulate, as indicated by the reaction of David when he saw her bathing on the roof.

And, like overeating, sex has side effects; as Pancho Willis has said, "Boyfriends will beat you up. Husbands will kill you." Hence, David's instructions about Uriah; David may have been a little overwrought after he saw her bathing on the roof, but David wasn't going to have a cranky Hittite in the house!

There are a lot of different kinds of exercise that people use to affect their feelings, including Shotokan Karate, dance, Tai Chi and Tai Bo, and lifting weights and lifting glasses.

A lot of people make the decision that alcohol is the best short-term solution for fixing a troublesome internal state; that is, they self-medicate. And as a friend of mine once said, "There is no trouble that alcohol can't make worse."

Others use prescription drugs; the death rate from prescription drugs in the United States suggests that it might be safer to keep five or six guns around and shoot them randomly through the house at random intervals. But perhaps not.

Love is an internal state that almost everybody likes. There are Tibetan and Christian practices designed to help generate and maintain love for all mankind.

My guess is that there are few repetitive stress injuries associated with universal love; if I attain it, I'll let you know.

Hiccups: Threat or Menace?

There's not a lot that's serious written about hiccups.

That's because it's hard to take them seriously.

On the other hand, for somebody with a pretty decent case of hiccups, they're really a pain in the behind.

That's because they can keep you awake, and interfere with talking, which for some people can interfere with their livelihood.

I recently had my first adult bout with a serious case of hiccups, and found them much less than amusing, because I'm smart for a living, and I talk for a living.

No sleep, which is a side-effect of hiccups, interferes with the state of being smart, and hiccups interfere with sounding smart, partly because hiccups are associated with drunks and comedians who are imitating drunks.

There is only one nice thing about my bout with the hiccups; it was self-limiting.

There was another nice thing about my bout with the hiccups; nothing whatsoever.

I did get to read a bundle of websites with interesting hiccups cures.

I had cure-resistant hiccups.

Now it's better; the hiccups have gone away.

Thank God!

And if I'm a very lucky young man, this is the last word I will ever write about stinking, miserable, keep-you-awake-at-night-sleep-on-the-couch hiccups!

What NOT to do When Your Back Goes Out, If You're Me

As I've said before, our bodies would be a lot easier to care for if they came with owner's manuals.

Now, I've read that the two most common reasons for a visit to a doctor's office are colds and back pain.

I was happy to read that they called it back pain, rather than the more common back "discomfort", because it is pain, you see.

What an engineer would call "tolerances" are pretty tight in the back, because there are a lot of components to fit onto the spinal cord, while at the same time supporting it against the pull of gravity.

And when we get a little older, those tolerances are put to the test, because the dimensions of the discs change (they shrink), and the dimensions of the spinal components themselves may change as they sort of, you know, crumble slowly.

That brings us to an event that many of us get to experience: a misalignment of some part of the spine, giving rise to what laymen refer to as "pain" and doctors refer to as "discomfort", unless the doctor is experiencing the pain himself.

I know a really neat way to make my back pain last longer.

Here's how it works: I take to my bed, and lie on top of a heating pad.

I can make the pain continue unabated for about three weeks at a time! That was my record, anyway.

And it made sense to me at the time. Once I had made it into bed, I wasn't moving, so the pain mostly stopped temporarily, unless I did something stupid, like breathing or coughing or hiccuping. And the nice warm hot pad was nice and warm.

The heating pad also increased the tissue swelling, so the pain lasted much, much longer.

Now, to SHORTEN the period of agony, I use a somewhat different protocol.

I take to the floor, not the bed. The floor is mostly flat, and it provides great, if uncomfortable, support for my personal back.

Yeah, I cheat. I actually take to the carpet, which is a little less hard than the floor, but still pretty flat.

And I use ice on the lower two-thirds of my back, more or less continuously, until the inflammation has reduced itself enough that the spinal components go back home, and the pain ceases.

I don't like ice packs (really, gel packs that are cold as ice). It's uncomfortable when I slide 'em under me (make sure there's at least one layer of thin cloth between you and the ice whatever, so you don't burn the skin). But when I use them, the pain goes away faster.

I also fill up my stomach, to reduce the ulcer that will probably form anyway, and take four ibuprofen every four hours, to reduce the inflammation.

And I smear a buncha Aspercreme all over my lower back, to reduce inflammation, as well.

And I found a pretty cool addition to the treatment protocol recently: it's a digestive enzyme made from pineapple stems called bromelain, which is cheap, readily available, and reduces pathological swelling all over the body. At least it does for me.

Once the back is fully supported, so that trauma to the soft tissue stops, and the ice, ibuprofen, Aspercreme and bromelain can work their magic, the hard tissues slip back into the places God intended them to occupy, and the pain vanishes.

But I walk carefully for several days, because, no kidding, I don't like pain as much as you might think.

And I've canceled my annual bungee jumping appointment for tomorrow, as well.

Now, depending on how much I've abused my poor little back, it may go a full year or two between these little parties. But now, at least, I know what should have been on page 37 of my personal owner's manual.

And I can reduce the screaming from three weeks to two days or so. If I'm religious about all the elements of the protocol.

And there's nothing like pain to make me meticulous.

Recall that sciatica is a little different, and I've talked about that in prior posts.

UPDATE: I was a compliant patient of my own, so the back pain resolved itself over the course of about three days. Sure beats the three weeks when I tried the old approach. And I still say that life would be easier if you were issued an owner's manual for your own personal body when you were able to read.

You Didn't Like That New Year's Resolution? I've Got a Million of 'Em!

So what if there were ten magic things that you could do to make yourself live twelve years longer and twelve years better?

Well, we know already that you simply won't do them. Diet and exercise, for instance, take a fair amount of focus and effort.

But what if the magic activities were easy and cheap?

What if they were more fun than hot sex?

Okay, they aren't; I was just checking to see if you were paying attention. Although there is an interesting study out of Wales that suggests that men who make love more frequently live longer, on a dose dependent basis.

I'll come back to that, of course. Often.

But according to the Pareto Principle, or the 80-20 Rule, if there are Ten Top things that'll make you live better and longer, there should be two that kick tail, all by themselves.

As is often the case, there are two cheap, easy, simple things you can do that will make you live at least a decade longer, and much, much better.

And they are also idiot-simple. No great amount of training required (which is good; if you needed to study Tai Chi for twenty years in order to live longer, I'd save my breath. Or lift lots of weights, or stop eating cheesecake altogether. You know?).

Turns out that you are most likely to die of a heart attack or cancer. Don't take my word for it; look at the Center for Disease Control statistics. So maybe you want to find something that'll increase your odds of surviving heart attacks or cancer, right?

Now, there are a lot of studies out there, and many have both method, and statistics, and conclusions skewed, because scientists now live and die on their next research grant. And a scientist who discovers that a best-selling drug is not needed is as popular as a leper at a Handshaking Convention.

But one study is now a part of my personal religion, because it made it under the radar of Big Pharma. I knew it before I read the study (because I'd already read Linus Pauling), but the study confirmed it for me. Just so you know, Linus Pauling says that if you take adequate Vitamin C, you won't get heart attacks. I tend to believe him, because he was much, much smarter in the field of chemistry than, oh, anybody else at all since the beginning of time.

According to the study published in 2001 in The Lancet, a major peer-reviewed medical journal, people who have blood levels of Vitamin C in the highest quartile live, on average, 9 years longer than people in the lowest quartile.

My guess is that the primary reason is that the longer surviving quartile simply had fewer heart attacks than the faster dying quartile.

THINK ABOUT IT FOR, OH, SEVENTEEN SECONDS.

Then look at similar studies showing a benefit of three years for folks who take supplemental Vitamin D.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

Look at the study from the University of Arizona Medical School demonstrating that folks taking 200 micrograms of selenium (a trace element) had HALF the deaths from cancer in the control group.

SO LEMMIE GET THIS STRAIGHT.

Yeah, that's it.

You take a couple of horse pills of Vitamin C with breakfast (not ten, because you'll get a benign case of the trots, caused by a mechanism called osmosis) and a couple of Vitamin D pills.

And here I break with the Pareto Principle. To get the full benefits of the lazy man's life extension program, you'll want to find a multi-vitamin/mineral that'll give you about 200 micrograms of selenium a day.

Then take the three of those right after breakfast, every day of your life.

Now, with NO WILLPOWER to speak of, because you deprive yourself of NOTHING, you just bought yourself an extra twelve years on the right side of the grass.

Gives you a little more time to make memories with those you love, which is a good thing.

Not a bad result for a few pennies a day and no willpower!

And, as always, before you make any changes in your daily life for health, talk about it with your doctor, and see if he or she think that taking a couple of vitamins will hurt you. See which studies he bases it on. And make your own decision.

A New Year's Resolution You'll Actually Keep!

So, how well has that whole "will power" thing worked for you in the past?

My personal experience is that when my will power is faced with the cheesecake, the cheesecake wins.

I suspect that some other people share my peculiar psychological makeup, and that they too can resist anything except temptation; hence, the current epidemic of life-style related illness in the United States (type two diabetes, obesity, smoking-related lung disorders, and the rest of the happy gang).

For those of us for whom temptation is kryptonite (and I love you one and all, because you're just like me), I have a few suggestions.

The first is, QUIT TRYING TO USE WILLPOWER TO CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOR!

One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.

I tried to use willpower forever, and seldom got the results that I desired.

So what to do, if willpower...won't?

Turns out that I'm not the first guy who struggled with the Cheesecake Demons, and lost, again and again.

So there is a massive body (no, I'm not about to make an obesity joke) of information and wisdom out there about how to change your behavior. And most of it doesn't work, because it's a variation of using willpower.

So I suggest a range of other psychological devices, rather than a focus on deprivation and punishment (what some people would call "diet and exercise").

For instance, if you get hungry, do you think it would be easier to convince yourself to eat more, or to eat less?

For me, that's a no-brainer. Eating more is much, much easier for me when I'm very, very hungry (note: getting very, very hungry is probably pretty dumb by itself, but one thing at a time).

So when I saw the Hawaiian Vacation Photos, and stopped screaming, I suddenly realized that it was time for a change.

Note: perfect happiness is the enemy of change. If you feel great all the time, and are happy with the way you look and the way people react when they see you, and you sleep well and are never sick, don't bother reading this. In fact, you write, I'll read, okay?

But if you aren't perfectly happy, here's what you do to eat less: you eat more.

Kind of like steering into the skid when you hit ice on the highway.

But you get to trick yourself, because the muscular part of your brain is dumb as a stump; that's the "lizard" part of your brain. Been around in your little green forefathers for a lotta years. Has a lotta behaviors that work well if you're a lizard and want a lotta baby lizards. Eat a lot; have a lotta sex at every opportunity. Kick any rivals in their long green tails. Dominate, dominate, dominate, NOW!

And if you're currently a lizard, congratulations on your reading skills.

But I assume that you've moved up the food chain, and that your drive to eat has made you consider reading health articles. If so, hold on. I'm getting to the good part.

EAT MORE! I'm mad, you say. Hey, you aren't the first to suggest it.

See, your lizard brain isn't as smart as the human part of your brain; but when the lizard brain and your human brain fight, your lizard brain tends to win. We'll discuss why when I get a round tuit.

So you're going to let the Wookie in your head win! Much easier than fighting. Because if you get hungry and use willpower to deprive yourself of happiness and joy from jumping into the grub, it'll work. A little. Once or twice. And then you'll go to The Cheesecake Factory and ask 'em how quickly they can produce cheesecake in their, you know, factory.

So in a hypothetical perfect world, you are going to eat more, and that will cause you, magically, to lose weight. There's more, of course, but this technique alone will do it if you focus, and you won't be fighting with yourself nearly as much as if you are arm wrestling with yourself over the cheesecake.

So FIRST THING, EAT THE GREEN BEANS! OR THE BROCCOLI! OR THE ASPARAGUS! Or the sawdust. You get the idea. When you hit a restaurant and you're ravenous, all you really need to do to save yourself is simple: tell the waiter that you're dying of hunger, but don't want to eat everything on the menu.

So first you want the biggest plate he can give you of green beans, broccoli, and asparagus. Or your green, low glycemic, zero calorie food of choice.

Now, some folks suggest that even prior to the green sawdust that you eat a giant bowl of clear soup; that's a good idea, if you can pull it off. Note that the soup probably has more salt than the Atlantic Ocean, which is a consideration. But a giant bowl of clear soup along with your green food orgy isn't a bad idea at all if sodium isn't a big consideration, which it is if you have congestive heart failure, for instance.

Still, let's not complicate this. If you eat a bushel basket of green stuff, you'll jam food in your stomach, along with a lot of vitamins, minerals and fiber, and start to take the desperate edge off of your hunger.

Now just order a HUGE mass of protein. Steak, fish, shrimp, or chicken. And eat it.

All. All. All.

Still hungry?

I thought not.

Now you have an opportunity to think straight (which I, personally, don't do very well when I want to digest Cleveland).

You've just had a mass of food, and it's taken your a while to eat it. The green veggies, or salad, or clear soup, or all three, have filled up a lotta space in your stomach. That's job one.

Then the huge mass of protein has nourished you. That's job two.

Then you get to calibrate rather precisely how much fat you want to retain, by deciding whether you want any dessert or none. Or half.

Or two servings of the sugar-free jello.

HERE'S THE FUNNY PART: it's exactly as simple as that.

How do you get yourself to do it? Well, what's it?

First, you need to believe at an intellectual level that it'll work, or you won't make the attempt.

Second, you need to give it a decent trial period, AND MONITOR YOUR RESULTS. I suggest a Tanita scale in your bathroom. They cost a little more than a regular spring scale, but they'll give you a pretty good estimate of your body fat along with your weight, so they're well worth it.

See, if you don't monitor the results that you're getting, you won't keep up any project that requires even a little extra work.

But give it a month.

Will it work?

Well, it'll work a lot better than willpower!

POSTSCRIPT: the more acute among you will recognize that there are popular books which discuss similar techniques. For instance, The Atkins Diet, which is written in inflammatory language, suggests something similar, and so does a book called The Paleolithic Diet, with a good deal less intellectual rigor and courage, because they want to throw carbs in there to avoid being murdered by spagetti fanatics.

Seems that diet theories are now religious dogma. Let me say it a different way. Theories of diet are not being pushed with so much fervor that they take the place of religion for some folks.

And, in my personal experience, the folks who are the most critical of Dr. Atkins and his theories, like those who sneer at Linus Pauling, have simply never read his stuff. They've heard somebody else who talks about what his theories are (but really aren't). When you have a little spare time, actually read Dr. Akins on diet and Linus Pauling on Vitamin C and heart disease. My belief is that you'll live longer.

But here's how to decide which dietary theories cut the mustard for you personally: try the one that makes the most sense to you. MONITOR YOUR RESULTS ON A DAILY BASIS. DAILY. DAILY.

And, yes, I'm a little dogmatic on daily monitoring. See a nifty little movie called "Supersize Me" and you'll understand why; you can mess yourself up in terms of body fat and ten other variables very, very quickly with bad food, if you're a "heavy user".

And give your favorite theory (the cheesecake diet, the rice diet, the spagetti diet, the Atkins Diet, or the Paleolithic Diet) a decent test period.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, IT DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU!!!!!!

REMEMBER THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY!!!!!!!

See, I have a body of beliefs about the sorts of food that make me fat, and the sorts of food that give me ten-per-cent body fat without needing to exercise.

And the reason I don't have a lot of doubt about what works and what doesn't is that I've tried a bundle of different eating approaches and monitored my blood sugar, body fat percentage, body weight, and blood pressure during those different approaches. And I've worked out with very heavy weights over short ranges and no ranges and full ranges of motion, and one set and three sets and five sets. And cardio and Shotokan Karate and Yoga and ballroom dance and Tai Chi.

And monitored the results.

Now, it should be easier, I agree. You should have been provided with an Owner's Manual for Jimmy or Matilda when you were born.

I will discuss this with God when we talk next. Sometimes I run out of suggestions for Him. Not often.

In the absence of an owner's manual, you need to experiment, and create your own.

In fact, just building your own owner's manual is not a bad idea.

See, most people do build such a manual, but it only has one topic: what makes me feel really good right now? And that's because your lizard brain is running the show when you're on autopilot.

Sadly, what makes you feel really good RIGHT NOW probably includes nicotine, alcohol, cheesecake, and ice cream, in gigantic quantities. And burping and farting a lot afterward. Maybe some tooth-picking while you drift into a beautiful diabetic coma.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to feel good. But (this phrase is stolen and modified; thank you, Mr. Robbins) if you want to feel good for a very long time, you probably want to feel good, just a little, right now.

I'll explain soon.

p.s. the intellectual component of changing your own behavior is just plain interesting to me. Some folks work best using one technique, some a different one. But the intellectual component is useful when you have a belief. For instance, "Sewer rat may taste like punkin' pie, but I'll never know, because I'll never eat the filthy thing!" That's from the movie "Pulp Fiction", and I hope I quoted it correctly.

And even if you thought that cyanide tasted better than anything else on this planet, would you really be tempted to drink it?

So if you can figure out which foods make you fat as a pig (for me that's pizza, for instance, and spaghetti, and mashed potatoes, and the rolls at the start of a meal at many restaurants), and you come to believe fully that those foods will make you, you know, die, you may find that it's easier to control your cravings.

It All Depends on your Perspective

You remember the gag about cats and dogs.

The dog notices one day that he's being fed, housed, and cared for in every possible way by a human. He thinks, my human must be...a god!

The cat notices one day that she is being fed, housed, and cared for in every possible way by a human, and the cat thinks, I must be a god!

So it is with cataracts.

Cataracts show up as we get older. The crystalline lens of the eye gets cloudy, sort of like the white water that shows up at the bottom of a waterfall or cataract (get it?), and blindness ensues.

A similar process happens when the white of an egg become opaque when it's cooked.

Either fortunately or unfortunately, if you live long enough, you'll probably get to know about cataracts on an up close and personal basis.

Mine started a decade ago. A tiny ring around the very outside of the eye. Been there for a decade or so. So far, no effect whatsoever on my visual acuity.

When I saw one of the best eye docs in Arizona recently, he told me that there was exactly no way in the world to tell me how quickly the process would progress; maybe another three decades until opacity hit, or maybe next week.

Now, is that good news or is that bad news?

Depends on your perspective.

Turns out that the surgery to replace an opaque lens is quick and effective. A plastic lens of some sort or another gets dropped into the slot out of which the old lens was pulled.

TINY little incision on the eye is used to pop out and pop in the new lens.

Here's where it gets good.

There are all sorts of cool lens replacements now.

Some have zones for long distance viewing, medium range and very close up.

So in effect, as we age, we get to purchase the gift of perfect sight (assuming that you have an otherwise healthy eye, of course).

Note: there are studies that suggest that taking a bunch of vitamins like Vitamin C, a couple of the B Vitamins, and especially Vitamin E may slow the progression of cataracts.

Naturally, I am aware that living in Arizona, with it's INTENSE sunlight, is responsible for my cataract development. And I credit the potful of Vitamin C, the B Vitamins, and especially Vitamin E for the decade of continuing clear sight that I've enjoyed. I also collect sunglasses as a hobby, and the black hole in my house eats sunglasses as a hobby.

I am sort of looking forward to having ultimo-perfecto vision with the implanted lens, but I'll wait.

So When You Work Your Behind Off, Do You Get Younger, Or Does It Just Feel Like It's Taking Forever to Die?

There's an old gag about caloric restriction; it doesn't make you live longer, it just seems like it takes forever to die when you're hungry!

Well, caloric restriction never has to involve hunger, but that's an issue for another day.

Today's topic is working your behind off, and the effects of that work on your...well, behind. Or front. Or top or bottom.

See, there are a lot of celebs and rich folks who do a lot of things because...they can! One is Madonna. One is Lillian Muller. One is my high school buddy who married well and eats PERFECTLY (because custom-designed meals are delivered to her door daily) and works out perfectly (because every other day the Pilates instructor shows up at the mansion for her personal class, and then there's the Yoga Instructor, who show up on days the Pilates Instructor is elsewhere).

And she looks better than she did in high school, and she looked good in high school. No kidding.

Stunning.

But wait! How old is she? I don't know, but I was in her class and I'm sixty.

So she's stunning, and...something or other. And looks thirty, but a really, really GOOD thirty.

But how about folks who are just plain working folks. How do they fare?

Well, depending on this and that, pretty well.

Another buddy of mine, older than me, has been a friend of mine since we were kids. He was a few years older than me, and probably still is. I met him because he was dating my gal pal Darcy, and I only envied him a lot, him being a sophisticated older man and all.

On the other hand, he's worked since then, and not behind a desk. He's a handyman. And busier than he needs to be.

Because during a depression nobody buys a new washer if they can get it fixed. And he can fix it.

He can also fix a broken lock, because he's also a locksmith.

And when he came over today to fix the lock to the patio, I noticed that he is in exactly the same shape he was when he was about forty-two years old. Same stride, same balance, same weight, same muscle tone, same energy.

Now, this is not a guy who takes great care of himself, or a guy who has great genetics. Although I was delighted and surprised to find that he takes several grams of vitamin C per day, which will buy you an extra nine years on the right side of the grass.

But he's done very, very well indeed in the aging sweepstakes, because his functionality appears to be identical to that of a young man, not somebody older than me (by definition, ancient).

So don't feel sorry for that guy you see swinging a pick or wielding a hammer. He may beat you out in the aging sweepstakes, particularly if his job (or her job) involved multiple functions: lifting, walking, twisting (to swing an ax, a hammer, or a lever), prying, squatting, stretching, and so on.

Seems to me as I think about it that a single type of exercise (say, using an ax righthanded, would probably not develop a symmetrical balance, and over time would probably give you repetitive use injuries. Or cut off your foot, depending on your levels of attention).

Now we call it exercise.

Formerly it was called work.

Note: Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates to rehabilitate wounded soldiers after some World War or another. The funky gadgets he developed for exercise weren't the best that could be built. They were just the best he could build with the junk he had to work with! His exercise system was adopted by a bundle of modern dance teachers, which is why Martha Graham modern dance classes bear a remarkable resemblance to Pilates classes without apparatus.

It's a small world, you know?

P.S. I didn't answer my own title question. Apparently, when you're twenty years old from the neck down, you're happier than people who are sixty-five years old from the neck down. You heard it here first. Also note: some people are just born cranky. Getting older just gives 'em more to complain about.

Sleep Well, Live Longer, Live Better!

First, sleep is important to your health. Once again, you heard it here first.

Second, as you age, sleep becomes less automatic, and if you want to continue sleeping well, requires some amount of planning.

This post is absolutely optional. I know that some folks get older, and still sleep like babies. They have my admiration, and my envy, and my permission to ignore this post.

For the rest of us, sleep presents interesting challenges as we age.

Why is sleep important?

Well, duhhhh.

Has anybody EVER had a wonderful day on no sleep?

I'm sure it's happened sometime to somebody, but seldom to me.

Now, science tells us several reasons that sleep is useful and needed, including the fact that most human growth hormone (HGH) is released about two hours after you enter deep sleep, and that short-term memory turns into long-term memory as we sleep.

No deep sleep for two hours at the front end of your sleep cycle, no HGH. No HGH, and you automatically get, in effect, older than your chronological age. And that's because one consequence of getting older is a gradual reduction in the ordinary pulse of HGH that happens when we are young, and we sleep.

Obvious consequences of little HGH are a less good ratio of muscle to fat, and thinning and sagging of the skin; if you look at folks who are older, you'll see both as ordinary consequences of aging.

When researchers pumped a little extra HGH into quite old, frail folks, the old, frail folks immediately gained muscle and their skin thickened. In many ways, the old, frail folks became younger and less frail. From very short term administration of HGH. And while various other researchers want to pooh-pooh those results, my guess is that if drug companies could make a lot of money off of HGH, that would be prescribed every time somebody sixty and over went to the doctor, and the old folks would be far better off.

Because frailty sucks.

But they can't, and it isn't, so you can either find an anti-aging doc who understands that sort of supplementation, and pay the obscenely overpriced dollars for HGH which is pooped out by germs in giant tanks (and would be cheap as poop if it weren't for monopolistic drug cartels, or you can find other ways to release your own HGH.

This post isn't about HGH, but one way to AVOID producing HGH is simply to eat a lot of sugar prior to bedtime; that'll drive up your insulin and blood sugar, which will block release of your HGH for that evening.

If you routinely eat a bowl of ice cream at night, consider whether eating that for breakfast might be better for you.

If you go to be a little hungry, there's a better chance that you'll release HGH.

If you fast for a few days under medical supervision (fast=water and no food. Fast does NOT equal drinking fruit juice, which has sugars, drives up your blood sugar levels, and BLOCKS release of HGH) you will create a situation where your blood sugar is very low, and you'll produce a bunch of HGH.

Which suggests that several thousand years of fasting for medical reasons may not have been as dumb as it sounded. If you don't have penicillin, fasting may be as useful as anything else for a serious condition. And even if you do have penicillin, and you're old without an infection, a course of fasting may be equal to a course of HGH injections, and you MIGHT live longer and better than if you didn't fast.

Regular fasting may also work wonders for autoimmune diseases, and chronic inflammation. Which is why I'll be doing regular water fasts when I hit fifty.

BACK TO SLEEP AS A TOPIC!

Sleep gets harder as you get older for most folks because they have more owwies somewhere on their bodies, and therefore need better and more gentle support for their bodies, which have owwies.

This is not rocket science.

On the other hand, rocket science may have given us one solution to the problems of elder sleep, which is the material used in Tempur Pedic mattresses. I'll link to their websites when I get a Round Tuit, but until then, learn to use Google!

That sort of foam seems more useful to me than the happy hippie waterbed, but either one or both may be useful to older folks who want to sleep in something approaching comfort.

My feeling about Tempur products is that they may be wonderful, but they may also be overpriced. I have heard, but not investigated, that identical sorts of foam may be available on Overstock.com; go check if you like. I don't get a commission.

Something else that may make sleeping more difficult is soggy tissue/goo.

Don't eat when you read my blogs; some physiological processes are sort of, well, gross.

As folks get older, everything seems to get worse. That means snoring, and that includes autoimmune disorders like sinus allergies.

There's a dumb, low-tech device that may or may not help with either or both.

It's a firm foam wedge that takes the place of, or supplements the function of, a pillow.

Here's the deal as it applied to me: with a big ol' firm foam wedge under my back, my allergies and my snoring are lessened. And my tendency to sleep on the dreaded bad right shoulder is lessened, because of the way human bodies (or at least my body) bends.

Another low tech device that may help you sleep is simple; a white noise device of any sort you like. Loud noises can wake you and interrupt your sleep cycles; either earplugs or white noise may be useful to you.

Note: if you live in a neighborhood where there are frequent burglaries, kidnappings or home invasions, you might want to ignore the suggestion about earplugs or white noise. And take my suggestion to move to a safer neighborhood!

And there's one last tool that some people like a lot, myself included.

That's melatonin.

Melatonin is a chemical produced by your own brain (actually, mostly produced by the pineal gland) to make you sleepy; it goes about it's work when darkness falls.

Some older folks, myself included, find that we sleep a lot better if we supplement with melatonin a couple of hours before we hit the rack. Time-release melatonin is even more effective for me.

There is a very interesting book which discusses the most interesting experiment in modern times; that book is called "The Melatonin Miracle". Read it and let me know if you also wonder why that line of research has been ignored.

p.s. Duhhhh again, only this time it's my duhhhh. If you want a wonderful night's sleep, knock off your caffeine intake earlier in the day. Putting it another way, some stuff is so obvious that even I don't think to write about it, and I'm the King of Obvious. But the FIRST thing you get to do if you want to sleep better is to cut off your caffeine intake earlier in the day and self-monitor the effect on your sleep for a week or two.

You may want to cut off caffeine intake at noon, as I do, or earlier or later, depending your brain receptors for caffeine.

So folks hate caffeine and think it's awful, but I know that coffee has health benefits, as does tea, so I simply balance my intakes to get the results I want.

And if you go cold turkey on caffeine of all sorts, you may well experience the world's worst headache for a while. Once again, you heard it here first, from the King of Obvious.

p.p.s. my friends know that I'm an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer, and have been for about thirty years. One of the side-effects of terror about economic issues is the dreaded sleepless night. Have I ever heard that from a client? Well, yeah. Once or twice.

That being the case, every technique for stress-reduction is also a good idea if you think that stress is one of the problems that is keeping you from enjoying a good night's sleep.

Oddly, alcohol is probably not the very best stress-reduction technique for getting a good night's sleep. While if you drink enough you'll become unconscious, that's not exactly the same thing as sleep. And drinking enough to become unconscious is a health risk from the perspective of both long term liver failure, and short-term side effects including very unpleasant and fairly short term death.

If you become drunk enough to knock yourself out, you stand a fairly decent chance of vomiting and inhaling the vomit, a condition known medically as "aspiration", and among non-medical specialists as "Aw, c'mon. Knock it off! Really."

While there are many health benefits claimed for mild drinking, including some statistical correlations with a longer life span than that of non-drinkers, serious drunks die like Mayflies.

So do NOT confuse that gallon jug of Jack Daniel's with the small bottle of time-release melatonin; the results could be bad.

p.p.p.s. Do NOT EVER take ANY pills, liquids, hypnotic techniques, or relaxation exercises, and get really groggy and then hop behind the wheel of a car. That's why God invented cabs!!

Don't Live Next To An Active Vocano, or Play Stickball in the Freeway!

This entry is a slight departure from my usual discussions of Vitamin C and exercise; eventually, I'm going to point out that if you live long enough (and remember, I'm trying to turn you into a longevity hobbyist), you'll see a lot of excitement.

For instance, if you were 120 years old today, and you looked back at your life, you would have lived through epidemics of cholera, polio, influenza, a time when tuberculosis and pneumonia were major causes of death, famines, several wars, depressions, riots involving loss of life, potential invasions by foreign powers (Japan decided not to invade after Pearl Harbor because their high command figured that too many households in the U.S. owned rifles, and invading a country of snipers wasn't appealing), volcanoes, locust infestations, dust bowls, forest fires, earthquakes, fires that destroyed entire cities, and other interesting times.

I've always preferred boring to interesting, by the way.

Different people draw different conclusions from historical data.

Some people believe, for instance, that most bad things haven't happened much in the United States in the last twenty years, so those bad things will never happen anywhere here again.

I look at the last 200 years, and see many interesting times involving earthquakes, famines, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and potential invasions, and reach a somewhat different conclusion.

My conclusion is that if you live long enough, you'll see interesting things that you'd rather not see.

And that the future is going to be somewhat like the past.

So if you plan to live to be 120 years old, you might want to consider whether you really want to live on the side of a volcano, flood plains, or on top of an earthquake-rich fault, or in a place so famous for hurricanes that the drinks there are called by the same name. Also, avoid fist-fights with Chimpanzees.

You'll also want to use your seat belt (ALWAYS!), in the way that the sweet girl working for me twenty years ago did not. I still miss her, and she was a very nice girl, so I expect her folks still miss her, too. Note that statistics seem to say that heavier cars, when in wrecks, provide better protection for their occupants than tiny, wispy cars. You heard it here first, folks!

Also note: while we will see each other again eventually, when our father calls us home at last, it's probably more fun to make memories in this life, for as long as we can.

More on this later, but planning for boredom is something that takes some amount of foresight, I think.

And I like boredom a lot.

Compared to the alternatives.

p.s. as this post develops, I'll tell you to wear your seat belt, to avoid kicking in the doors of biker bars and talking about their mommas, to keep eating your vitamin c, d, and selenium, and to keep a supply of anything you MUST HAVE TO STAY ALIVE, like food, water and metformin and thyroid, just in case anything funky happens to our just-in-time inventory system.

Don't go crazy; but some folks routinely keep a one-year supply of food (I believe that's one of the practices of the LDS Church, for instance), and it sure seems to make sense to me.

Repeat after me: better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

New Technique for Aging Well: Don't Die!

According to the Center for Disease Control, the top ten causes of death in the United States in 2008 were (drum roll, please!):

* Heart disease: 631,636
* Cancer: 559,888
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
* Diabetes: 72,449
* Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
* Septicemia: 34,234

Now, when you look at that list, what you want to do is to take up my current hobby. You want to schedule dying at age 120 of absolutely nothing in particular.

Obviously, dying of nothing in particular at age 120 requires NOT dying of anything specific PRIOR to age 120.

The specific ways you want to avoid are posted above; I'll throw in the numbers for suicide and homicide sometime soon, but avoiding those is something you also want to do.

The easiest one to deal with is not on the list, and it's suicide. Don't ice yourself. If you do, we'll muster you out of the "Live Until 120 And Then Die of Absolutely Nothing in Particular" Special Interest Group on Yahoo. Your estate will be required to return your tie tack or scarf pin.

I'm going to beat this particular post to, well, death. And in subsequent visits, I plan on linking to my other blogposts that discuss ways to avoid dying of heart disease (Linus Pauling says Vitamin C and maybe some lysine do the trick; and indeed, I'm not as dead from a heart attack as my family history would suggest, and I also credit Vitamin C) and cancer (remember when I discussed selenium, and the study from the University of Arizona Medical School suggesting that 200 micrograms of selenium daily cut your chances of dying from cancer in HALF? And turmeric has shown interesting results in some cancer studies, particularly cancer of the colon).

Stroke strikes me as one of those multi-topics. On the one hand, you're going to want really, really sturdy arteries so they don't go "blowie", so Vitamin C comes to mind. And you also want to have normal or lower than normal blood pressure, so cocoa comes to mind, along with all the other goodies that get your blood pressure into normal ranges. And in the past I've also discussed claims that some folks have made for a hand-squeezing device that's supposed to normalize blood pressure, and some other approaches that sounded interesting.

And whatever you do, PAY ATTENTION! Your body often yodels its distress LONG before it finally throws up its metaphorical arms and gives up. So self monitor for all the stuff that you can monitor at home, including blood sugar, body weight and body fat percentage, blood pressure (do NOT die of a condition related to high blood pressure, because you are simply smarter than that!) If you have high blood pressure, FIX IT, and fix it now, even if you have to fast for a month, or use a hand squeezer, or do breathing exercises, or dump fifty pounds of fat, or exercise, OR ALL THE ABOVE AND THEN SOME!!!

The most obvious "PAY ATTENTION AND MONITOR" yourself disease on the list is diabetes. You need to know what your blood sugar is on a regular and frequent basis. Period. The lower the better, as long as you aren't fainting frequently. Because high blood sugar will, among other things, make Willie far less free. Ditto Wilhemina. And diabetes provides a pretty good model of accelerated aging, so don't have it: fix it! Remember the long list of things that may help you cope with increasing insulin resistance as you get older, many of which I have discussed.

Remember, however, that some of you may get better result with your blood sugar with exercise, some with caloric reduction, some by eliminating carbs and sugars from your diet, some by supplementing with cinnamon, or chromium, or taking vinegar before or after meals, or eating bitter melon. You need to test yourself and frequently to see what works best for you; you may decide to do everything, twice! Read everything you can get your hands on, and experiment with yourself to see what works, because it's silly to waste money on bitter melon when your particular body responds best to cinnamon in your coffee and two hours of walking a day.

And remember, doctors get paid to know how to fix things, so read all you can about these topics, and experiment with yourself to see what works well, and talk to your doctor.

Avoiding accidental death is important as well; that's often a car accident, so make sure your car is safe and you wear a seat belt. I've read that the heavier the car, the less likely you are to die in a car accident, so my car weighs six million pounds. That may be a little extreme for you (my gasoline bill is pretty high every month), but maybe not.

I also plan to set out a specific list of "Don't die from These!" for different decades of life, because the causes of death change. Most eighteen year olds who die do not have heart attacks. You'll see that Alzheimer's Disease makes this list, but it won't make the list for twenty-to-thirty year folks. As to Alzheimer's, remember that study I talked about suggesting a reduction of risk that was pretty remarkable for folks who routinely ingest turmeric, a common spice.

But this is the start of the next phase of my health blog. It's not very systematic, but the price is pretty good!

Note that the idea here is to monitor for and prevent the high-ticket causes of death. Unless you have a genetic predisposition, there's not a strong reason to work very, very hard at preventing death from falling pieces of Skylab.

Heck, if you just avoid the obvious, easy to avoid baddies, you should be able to race past me and live to 120 even faster than I do!

Finally, get all of your social interactions out of the way prior to your wake. The turnout at your wake will be very, very small.

Because you'll have outlived everybody you knew. And yeah, that IS a good thing. If you're a part of our Special Interest Group on Yahoo!

On the other hand, it would be just like Eddie to outlive you, just so he could irritate you that much more. So when you're 119 and 11 months and 27 days old, get Eddie drunk, and walk him over to the big "X" you drew on the ground.

You know. The Skylab landing platform.

Make sure he has binoculars.