Growing Old, Staying Well : Preventive Medicine Is Key to Health, Elderly Are Told
“Age fast, age slow--it’s up to you.”
That’s the message of Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, the man who coined the term “aerobics” with the publication of his 1968 best-seller of the same name.
Cooper, founder and president of the Aerobics Center in Dallas, brought his message to the Crystal Cathedral on Friday, the final day of the three-day “Prime Time: A Possibility Thinkers Conference for Retired Persons (and Those Anticipating Retirement).”
Cooper, a leader in the field of preventive medicine, told of an 86-year-old man who walks five miles in 70 minutes--before going to work. He talked of a 92-year-old man who plays racquetball for an hour every day. And he spoke of a man who began jogging at age 65 and, at 71, jogged from the State of Maine to Washington State, averaging 27 miles a day.
“When I was in medical school I was taught a man past 40 should never jog; he’ll have a heart attack,” said Cooper, 55, himself a jogger for the last 26 years. “I predict a man past 40 will soon hold the world’s record for the marathon.”
His voice rising and lowering dramatically for emphasis, Cooper added: “What is the capacity of a human being? Age fast, age slow, it’s up to you.”
Cooper and his wife, Mildred, with whom he co-authored “Aerobics for Women,” were just two of the speakers at the three-day conference that also featured, among others, former Los Angeles congressman James Roosevelt, Eyewitness News seniors correspondent Doris Winkler, television personality Art Linkletter (master of ceremonies at the conference banquet) and vocalist Norma Zimmer. Participants also heard from Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who was guest speaker at the regularly scheduled Possibility Thinkers luncheon on Friday.
About 65 people turned out for the conference--a decidedly smaller crowd than conference organizers had expected, and which prompted a last-minute 35% reduction in price from $175 to $115 for senior citizens.
The relatively low turnout was attributed largely to the fact that the “Prime Time” conference was held a week before the celebrity-studded--and free--American Assn. of Retired Persons (AARP) biennial convention, which will be held Tuesday through Thursday at the Anaheim Convention Center.
“Piggy-backing” on the AARP convention had been intended as “a plus, but it wasn’t,” acknowledged T. Eugene Coffin, minister with seniors at the Crystal Cathedral.
Coffin said “Prime Time” is the first of what the Crystal Cathedral plans as an annual event and, despite the similarity in theme, there are differences between the two conferences.
“One of our basic bottom lines is to develop the spiritual dimension that is involved in maturity and growing older,” Coffin said in an interview. “That’s the difference between our conference and AARP. We’re dealing with the practical questions as well, but with the added dimension of how does this relate to the inner life development of the persons, along with the physical or outer.”
Inner development included lectures on such topics as “Refreshing Your Spiritual Life,” “Living Enthusiastically,” and “Growing Old and Decrepit Is a Bad Habit.”
On the practical side were lectures on financial planning for retirement years; handling grief and loss; estates, wills and trusts--and James Roosevelt on Social Security and his National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
Roosevelt, 78, a Newport Beach resident, said he started the committee three years ago in response to “threats to the whole (Social Security) system” and to have “constant representation in Washington of those people who depend upon Social Security.
“Every other group has representation . . . except the senior citizen,” he said. “The lobby really is the whole Congress, but unfortunately, because it was not organized, the voice of the people on Social Security was not heard to the extent I felt it should be.”
3.2 Million Members
There are now 3.2 million dues-paying ($10 a year) committee members who receive a quarterly newsletter and legislative alerts on congressional activity on Social Security, he said.
Roosevelt observed that a number of congressmen “have told me privately that their mail has increased four times since our committee has been in touch with the senior citizens. That meant that they had to go out and explain their vote, and they don’t always like to explain their vote from time to time.”
Saying he doesn’t think legislators are going to be influenced by any individual paid lobbyist when it comes to Social Security and Medicare benefits, Roosevelt said, “they’re going to be influenced by the senior citizen.
“Members of Congress are not appointed, they’re elected by the people and I think they do a better job if they hear directly from the people whom they represent in the Congress of the United States,” he said.
Conference participants also heard from M. Neel Buell, executive director of Coastline Community College’s Emeritus Institute, whose topic was “Discover Your Possibilities.”
‘Unlimited Options’
Using himself as a model of the “unlimited options” facing people in their retirement years, Buell suggested that they could win an Olympic gold medal (in the Senior Olympics), become a senator (in the California Senior Legislature) or ride in a hot-air balloon (which he recently did).
At 71, Buell can boast of a having a resting heart rate of 57 beats per minute (the cardiopulmonary equivalent of a man in his mid-30s) and a chest-full of Senior Olympic gold medals in the discus throw and shot put.
Buell illustrates the kind of physically fit and active older American Cooper was talking about in his lecture.
“What we’re finding as we do more research on aging is that a lot of the ‘physiological’ responses to aging that have been documented in the textbooks over the years are really adaptive responses more than physiological responses,” Cooper said in an interview.
“What I mean is that as our bodies grow older they start deteriorating, many times not so much because we’re growing older, but because we’re doing less as we grow older.”
At the Aerobics Center in Dallas, he said: “We’re seeing some outstanding examples of older people who have been able to reactivate their lives--rejuvenate their lives--past 65, 70 years of age. And some of the performances we’re seeing now in older people we wouldn’t have dreamed possible 10 or 15 years ago.”
Slow Down Aging
To slow down the aging process, Cooper said, three things must be eliminated: “No. 1 is cigarette smoking; No. 2 is inactivity, and No. 3 is obesity--because those three things accelerate aging.”
Cooper said there has been “a remarkable increase in longevity in the last 15 years.” A child born in 1970, he said, has a life expectancy of 70 years. Prior to that time, he said, “we could expect no more than a one year increase in longevity each decade.” But a child born last year has a life expectancy of 75 years--an increase of five years in 15 years. And projecting forward, without any further major breakthroughs in medicine, he said, the average life span of a child born in the year 2015 could be 88 years.
“We have to make up our minds, how is that 88 years going to be spent? Are we going to be vivacious, dynamic and enthusiastic at living, or are we going to be only ‘existing?’
“And I’m convinced if they follow the guidelines I give in the area of wellness that they can not only ‘just exist,’ but they can live right up to that final moment. In the words of the cardiologist Paul Dudley White, it is fascinating to know that one can grow healthier as one grows older and not necessarily the reverse.”
Never Too Late to Start
And, Cooper said, it’s never too late to start.
“We see people every day who are in retirement years following bypass surgery, who, in a short period of time, we can get into the best condition they’ve ever been in their lives--literally--by serious and progressive types of exercise and life-style changes, which means everything from weight loss to dietary changes to quitting smoking to exercise.”
His program, he said, is based on the concept of wellness, of which there are at least six components: Proper weight and diet, proper exercise, breaking the cigarette habit, control of alcohol and the elimination of habit-forming drugs, stress management, and a periodic “wellness examination.”
The wellness examination, he said “is very important to people in this age group. And don’t just be satisfied with a cursory geriatric type of examination that most physicians are doing, but ask for an in-depth exam.”
An increase in the number of examinations for cancerous tumors in the colon alone could save up to 27,000 lives a year, he said.
Speed Recovery
And should any type of surgery be required, Cooper indicated, being in shape will speed recovery. He said he recently visited a woman in the hospital who had undergone a four-vessel bypass operation.
“She’s almost 80 and she was recovering beautifully,” he said. “She was in superb condition and exercised regularly, and when she reached that state in life where she needed some major surgery, she breezed right through it. She got out of the hospital in five days.
“So it’s not just the extension of life that we know that you can have, it’s the quality of life that we’re encouraging people to participate in.”
Cooper said the majority of people past the age of 55 or 65 are “really in poor condition” when they come to see him. But, he emphasized, “the point is where there’s life, there’s hope.
“I don’t care what your state is--whether you have emphysema, whether you’ve got diffuse arteriosclerosis, whether you have cerebral changes--in many cases a lot can be done to improve the quality--and I think even now we can safely say--the quantity of their lives.”