HEALTHY AT 100 (31 page)

I don’t think it’s terribly important what form your engagement with life takes, but I do think it matters that you keep finding ways to share your wisdom and to experience your courage, to live with vigor, zest, and zeal, whatever your age. For then I believe you will continue to find, in every season of your life, sources of hope and reasons for thanksgiving.

E
ven taking one step is significant. Each step you take makes it easier to take the next. And even small changes in your lifestyle habits continued over the course of months, years, and decades can make a profound difference.

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• Play in the snow. Run in the rain. Dance in the moonlight. Walk barefoot in the grass. Learn to skate, or take up ballroom dancing or tennis. Try physical activities that you’ve always wanted to do but never have done.
  

• Make an exercise date with a friend. Go jogging or hiking, or work out at the gym together.
  

• Instead of taking a pill for stress, take a hike in the mountains. Or do yoga. Or ride a bicycle outdoors, or a stationary bike indoors near an open window.
  

• If possible, jog or hike on trails rather than pavement. To enhance sleep, exercise regularly, in bright outdoor light if possible. Experiment with exercising at different times of the day in order to find what works best for you. Try to get at least thirty minutes a day of moderate exercise. For optimal results, exercise for an hour or longer each day.
  

• Create an exercise program that you enjoy and that fits well into your life. Regardless of the weather, your mood, job pressures, or
  anything else, get some exercise every day. Set attainable goals, follow through, and enjoy the results. Keep a food, mood, and exercise diary. Work up a sweat at least once a day.
  

• When you exercise regularly, give thanks for the increasing energy, confidence, and well-being you experience.
  

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• Ask yourself what makes you come alive, what you love to do. Find ways to express your passion in the way you live your life.
  

• Draw a picture, or make a collage of photos cut from magazines, that represents how you experience your body, including all the stresses, pains, and wounds. Then draw a picture or make a collage that represents how you would like to experience your body. Make it totally glorious. Then draw a picture or make a collage that represents you taking the steps that lead from the first to the second. Put the three in a place where you will see them daily, perhaps on a bedroom or bathroom wall, where they will remind you of your intention and provide support for your journey to joy and fulfillment.
  

• Hold a picture in your mind of your body as healthy and whole. Write a contract with your body in which you list the specific steps you will take to improve your health. Decide how much time you want to spend directly nurturing your body through exercise. Bear in mind that the time you spend will make a world of difference in every aspect of your life. Know that it is your birthright to feel exuberantly and totally alive.
  

• To get in deeper touch with your body, explore some of the body-centered therapies, such as Rolfing, Hellerwork, Aston-Patterning, Alexander, Feldenkrais, Trager, Hakomi, the Rosen Method, Dreambodywork, Pilates, T’ai Chi, yoga, and others.
  

• Never walk away from looking at yourself in the mirror until you feel truly appreciative of your beauty. Stay there for as long as it takes. The point is not to admire some perfect curve or external image, but to appreciate yourself just the way you are.
  

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• Spend time with the young. Read to children, cuddle with them, play with them. Be nourished by their wonder.
  

• Spend time with the old. Befriend and learn from elders. Invite older persons to tell you stories from their lives. Find older mentors who will lead you toward wisdom.
  

• Speak with your family or friends about the people and events that have given you a sense of the meaning and significance in your life.
  

• Invite a friend to gaze at the stars with you. Or watch a sunset, or a sunrise.
  

• Invite friends and loved ones to join you in celebrating your major life milestones. Share stories from your journey.
  

• Celebrate your birthday every year by doing something you’ve never done before.
  

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• Give time or money (or both) to a cause you believe in. Support organizations and people working for a better world. Stand for the highest possibilities of humanity.
  

• Once in a while, go on a media fast. For a period of time, unplug the TV, turn off the radio, don’t read the newspaper or magazines, and turn off your computer.
  

• Listen less to the voices of the media and more to the still, small voice deep within your own heart.
  

• In a world beset by violence, remember the importance of your peace. In a land plagued by hurry, take time to savor each moment. In a culture becoming ever more dehumanized, let people know you love them.
  

The heart that loves is always young.

—Greek proverb

T
here is an aspect of our lives that healthy traditional cultures have always understood to be of paramount importance to human happiness, well-being, and longevity: Nothing is more important, they believe, than the quality of their human relationships. As individuals and as communities they are sustained through all kinds of hardships by the boundless commitment they have to support one another, and their complete readiness to provide mutual aid at any time.

If you happen to leave your wallet on the sidewalk in Okinawa, you can fully expect to come back the next day and find it still there. If it’s gone, it’s probably only because some anonymous stranger who picked it up will soon return it to you, completely intact.

Similarly, in Abkhasia, people are valued over anything else. Wealth is counted not by the amount of money a person has, but by the number and quality of relationships he or she maintains. In Abkhasia, people are not said to be successful as a result of having a large bank account, much land, or many possessions. Instead, people are considered successful if they have a large and vibrant network of
loyal and devoted people in their home, extended family, and community.

In Vilcabamba and Hunza, too, the sense of connectedness people have with one another and the way they relate to each other are held to be of primary significance. Generosity and sharing are the highest values. Nothing is more important than how people treat each other. After the American doctor Y. F. Schnellow returned from Hunza, he reflected on the remarkable health he had witnessed:

One of the most noteworthy aspects of my experience in Hunza was the palpable sense of love and connection I felt among the people. They looked after each other, they rejoiced together, there was an atmosphere of friendliness everywhere. I could not help but think that it is this great affection and reciprocity they have for one another that underlies and makes possible their unparalleled health.
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Thirty years ago, anyone who said there were profound medical consequences to human relationships would have had their sanity questioned by modern science. And anyone blaming loneliness for physical illness would have been laughed at. But in the last few decades there has been an explosion of scientific understanding about the deep connections between interpersonal relationships and health.

As you may know, there is in Western medicine a great deal of concern about risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and obesity—and deservedly so, for they are very often linked to serious disease. But an ever-increasing body of medical research is coming to the surprising conclusion that the quality of your relationships with other people is every bit as important to your health as these indicators—if not more so. Chronic loneliness now ranks as one of the most lethal risk factors determining who will die prematurely in modern industrialized nations.

Though the science has been accumulating for the last thirty years, many physicians have been slow to accept the idea that something as intangible as interpersonal relationships could have so much
medical significance. They tend to view love as a frill or a luxury, as something that distracts from a rational approach to patient care. Western medicine still often trains physicians and other health professionals to keep emotionally distant from their patients. It’s a great loss that even if health professionals are deeply caring people, they receive little approval for their kindness, their gentleness, and their empathy. Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., describes how this affected her:

The second day of my internship in pediatrics I went with my senior resident to tell some young parents that the automobile accident from which they had escaped without a scratch had killed their only child. Very new to this doctor thing, when they cried, I had cried with them. After it was over, the senior resident took me aside and told me that I had behaved very unprofessionally. “These people were counting on our strength,” he said. I had let them down. I took his criticism very much to heart. By the time I myself was senior resident, I hadn’t cried in years.

During that year, a two-year-old baby, left unattended for only a moment, drowned in a bathtub. We fought to bring him back but after an hour we had to concede defeat. Taking the intern with me, I went to tell these parents that we had not been able to save their child. Overwhelmed, they began to sob. After a time, the father looked at me standing there, strong and silent in my white coat, the shaken intern by my side. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll get a hold of myself in a minute.” I remember this man, his face wet with a father’s tears, and I think of his apology with shame. Convinced by then that my grief was a useless, self-indulgent waste of time, I had made myself into the sort of person to whom one could apologize for being in pain.
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It is a sad statement about modern medicine that so many physicians consider it to be their professional obligation to remain emotionally distant from their patients, when in fact the healing power of love and relationships has been documented in an ever-increasing number
of well-designed scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. In his 1998 book,
Love and Survival
, Dean Ornish, M.D., describes reviewing the scientific literature and being amazed by what a powerful difference love and relationships make on the incidence of disease and premature death from virtually all causes. “I am not aware of any other factor,” Ornish concluded “—not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery—that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes.”
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Dr. Ornish is not the only esteemed medical icon to be convinced of the healing power of our relationships with one another. In May 1989, a Stanford Medical School professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, David Spiegel, M.D., told the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association of an unexpected finding.
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He and his colleagues had been studying eighty-six women with metastatic breast cancer. The women had been randomly placed into two groups. Both groups received the same medical treatment, but one group also attended weekly support group meetings. To the amazement of the researchers, the ten-year study found that the women who participated in the support group had twice the survival time of the women in the control group. They lived an average of 37 months after entering the program, compared to an average of 19 months for the other women.
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“I must say I was quite stunned,” said Spiegel. He told the
Los Angeles Times
that he “undertook the study expecting to refute the often overstated notions about the power of mind over disease,” which he said he had found “clinically as well as theoretically irritating.”
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His intention was to disprove the idea that psychosocial interventions could have medical value for women with breast cancer, partly because he was tired of being confused with Dr. Bernie Siegel, who had written several bestsellers affirming that patients’ attitude and degree of social support could play a dramatic role in their medical outcomes.

The women in the support group not only lived twice as long, they also experienced fewer mood swings and less pain and fear than their counterparts. These gains came from meeting for an hour and a
half a week, during which the women were encouraged to express whatever they were feeling, including (though not limited to) their fears, anger, anxiety, and depression.