Being Prepared: Your Health and Fitness
by Dr. Kevin Purcell
I took the picture above during a 110 mile bike ride through the Native east county Anzo Borrego desert of San Diego.
I am about half way through the ride and turned right from S2 onto route 78 back over the mountains to the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, CA.
You don’t go out into 100+ degree deserts on a bike for seven hours without being prepared.
I am a lucky man. I love my work. Men and women, ages twenty-something to sixty-something and older, hire me to assist them with that level of preparedness.
I haven’t always been that healthy.
At age forty-three my internist informed me that I would likely have a massive heart attack within five to six years.
I had high blood pressure, bad cholesterol numbers and was overweight.
So I decided to make continual behavioral changes to extend expected life span.
I made an all-out effort to outlive my dad, who had died suddenly of heart attack at forty nine. At that time, I set my sight on a handful of decades beyond that.
Through four years of university education in the medical sciences, another four years of postgraduate study and thirty years of career experience, I have come to understand the diverse aspects of longevity.
I understand how much most of us can influence life span. Folks who say different are released of responsibility and in turn avoid difficult choices.
It’s true that some people have superior longevity genes; but we can close the gap by doing simple things others won’t do. Time may, or may not (!), support my current view; however, I am hoping it takes another forty years to prove my case!
In addition to added concern for my health, I started viewing risk differently. The healthier I became, the happier I found myself and the more value I placed on my life.
Ultimately, I began looking for ways to lower risk separate from health.
Back to health: At age fifty, I went through a series of tests to establish my physiological age. I knew what my chronological age was; what I wanted to know was “how things were working.” I did blood work, cardiac function test, lung capacity testing, complete physical examination, a sigmoidoscopy, and a 64-Slice CT angiography of my heart and was pleased to find out that my internist placed my physiological age at a level that made me smile (thirty something).
My message is that my story can be your story with proper focus. It does not take one hundred mile bike rides.
I am now fifty-seven years old, and over the years I have talked quite a bit with colleagues about quality of life and, by extension, death.
As information began surfacing suggesting I might be around for a while, I thought that I may want to shift focus from ‘not dying,’ to ‘preparing to live longer than I had planned’.
I am reminded by father’s early death that we cannot prepare on our deathbed. No one knows that day or hour. We are mortal, and life is a game of cards being dealt to us, and we are required to play.
Although we can’t control the dealing, we can control how we play the cards we have received.
We can play close to the chest with no risk whatsoever, hoping to avoid loss at all costs, satisfying ourselves as mere observers and missing out on the fun of the game.
Or we can be loose and daring, with all cares tossed to the winds, in which case we are at risk of losing our ante in a hurry.
Or we can play the game intelligently, betting when appropriate and holding when appropriate,
with a reasonable degree of caution spiced with some fancy footwork here and there–
leaving the greatest amount of free room for maneuvering when the risk is acceptable and perhaps even downright enjoyable.
Keep on Truckin’ …