Pumping Irony

Craig Cox, EL’s managing editor and resident geezer, explores the joys and challenges of aging well.

The Handyman Workout

By Craig Cox / May 19, 2013

I’ve been puttering around the house lately, framing up a sewing room in the basement for My Lovely Wife, cleaning out the gutters, and generally upgrading the old homestead. It’s a rite of spring, I suppose, and a helluva workout — though it never feels like one at the time.

It’s one thing to swing a kettlebell around and crank out some pushups every morning; the body gets used to that activity and seldom rebels. But the movements that go into general handyman labor is a different deal altogether, and I really feel it the next day.

I’m reminded by these subsequent aches and pains how important it is to shake up your routine every so often. Your body gets used to the same-old, same-old. A new routine — even one that’s not intended as a workout — definitely gets its attention. Yesterday, for instance, I pulled my old extension ladder off its brackets in the garage, pirouetted around a stack of drywall and, without any collateral damage, planted it amongst the blossoming tulips in the front yard garden before climbing 15 feet or so to get a good look at my clogged gutter, imagining at ever step what my descendents might say at my funeral. He sure kept his gutters clean.

This involves a certain amount of upper-body strength, some degree of balance and proprioception, as well as enough lower-body agility to ascend to an altitude that threatens your future well-being. Having survived that particular exercise, I descended into the basement and spent the next several hours measuring, sawing (“measure twice, cut once,” my brothers used to says; I measure once, cut once, utter an expletive, measure again, cut again, pray that it fits, and go to the lumber yard for more wood), hammering, and generally exerting my will on a collection of recalcitrant building materials. This involves the sort of movement that I could never choreograph into a bodyweight workout: reaching, crouching, lunging, lifting, swearing, and trying very hard not to leave the scene with something sharp and metallic protruding from one of my appendages.

There are, of course, better (less dangerous) ways to change your workout routine, but sometimes it takes this sort of challenge to remind yourself that you need a little change of place. And if you’re having trouble coming up with a similar challenge, let me know. I could use some help with the drywall.

Everything in Moderation

By Craig Cox / May 12, 2013

I got the results of my annual health check-up recently, and I was pleased to learn that all is well. My blood pressure was down from the year before, my weight was the same as last year and my body mass index was hanging in there around 23 percent. Overall, I scored a 92 on a scale of 100, which ain’t bad in my book.

When I did the follow-up call with my health coach, there wasn’t much to discuss, though I admitted that I’d kind of like to get to the gym once a week and do some heavy lifting. I’m a big fan of weightlifting, and sometimes I think my 15-minute morning bodyweight-and-kettlebell workout is not quite as challenging as it should be.

But now I see that pushing myself beyond my normal regimen might not be all that helpful, at least in terms of lengthening my lifespan (and what’s more important than that, right?). Gretchen Reynolds in the New York Times points out a couple of studies that suggest that the benefits of cranking up the duration of your workouts are only marginal at best.

One 2011 study found that 15 minutes of moderate exercise daily reduced the risk of premature death by about 14 percent; doubling that workout time only increased your longevity by about 4 percent. Another study showed that serious runners “did not live significantly longer, on average, than people who didn’t run at all.”

This is pretty good news to a geezer who almost never runs and is pretty content with his morning workout (not to mention that 1-mile bike ride up the hill to the office every day). I might still try to hit the gym every so often — just for the variety — but it’s nice to know that I don’t really need to.

The Heart of the Matter

By Craig Cox / April 21, 2013

My Lovely Wife and I last week attended our first French 1.5 community education class at a local high school. I think it’s our third attempt to pound a little française into our graying heads. I don’t mind, really, since small doses of public humiliation build character and if I am going to be publicly humiliated I’d rather it come in the form of a language I don’t understand. Besides, everything I’ve read in recent years tells us geezers to keep challenging our brains in order to avoid losing our marbles as we age.

In fact, the big health headline a couple of weeks ago suggested that the cost of caring for those suffering from various forms of dementia has risen to the top of the U.S. healthcare charts, eclipsing even the cost of heart disease and cancer treatment. The report, published in the venerable New England Journal of Medicine, found that the direct costs of treating dementia in the U.S. in 2010 rose to an estimated $109 billion, compared with $102 billion for heart disease and a mere $77 billion for cancer.

What that says to this geezer, who still happens to be in possession of all his meager faculties, is that we’ve got an epidemic on our hands. And it’s partly explained by the fact that folks are living longer and partly by the fact that my Baby Boomer generation is getting to that age when the old gray matter apparently begins to dry up and we start to forget where we put our car keys. Unless we do the Sudoku every day, muddle through the Times crossword on Sunday, and apprenez française or some other vexing way of speaking during the rest of our spare time.

So how do you explain a new study out of Stockholm, Sweden, that shows rates of dementia there actually declining over the past 20 years? It’s not because they speak Swedish.

According to researchers at the Karolinski Institute and Stockholm University, the decline is tied to a general reduction in cardiovascular disease among Swedes since the early ’90s. “We know that cardiovascular disease is an important risk factor for dementia. The suggested decrease in dementia risk coincides with the general reduction in cardiovascular disease over recent decades,” lead researcher Chengxuan Qiu, an associate professor at the Aging Research Center, explained in a statement released by the university. “Health check-ups and cardiovascular disease prevention have improved significantly in Sweden, and we now see results of this improvement reflected in the risk of developing dementia.”

This is welcome news, not because I can ignore my French homework, but because it reinforces my own belief that if you want to retain what little lucidity you have, it won’t hurt to keep lifting weights and cranking up your cardio on a regular basis. And the Swedes don’t mention it, but we should all be including plenty of healthy fats in our diets. Your brain, after all, is mostly fat, even if your body isn’t.

I know what you’re thinking: Man, I’d rather study French than go to the gym! I don’t blame you. Exercise can be daunting. Eating right can seem complicated. But I’m here to tell you that you haven’t really suffered until you’ve tried to conjugate irregular verbs like a Parisian. Mon dieu!

Generation Gap?

By Craig Cox / April 14, 2013

Here’s some good news for aging Baby Boomers: As bad as we may feel about our waistline, our cholesterol count, and our blood pressure, we’re actually healthier, as a group, than the generations chasing us.

That’s the conclusion of a study out of the Netherlands, reported in the current issue of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. Researchers looked at the metabolic health of 6,000 individuals in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s over the course of 35 years and found that each successive generation had a higher prevalence of heart disease risk factors (weight, blood pressure, cholesterol levels) than the previous one. In the first batch of 30-somethings, for example, 40 percent were overweight. The 20-somethings at the time might have felt a big smug about that, but 10 years later, when they hit their 30s, more than half of them (52 percent to be exact) had ballooned into obesity land.

“The prevalence of obesity in our youngest generation of men and women at the mean age of 40 is similar to that of our oldest generation at the mean age of 55,” explained the study’s lead author, Gerben Hulsegge of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. “This means that this younger generation is 15 years ahead of the older generation and will be exposed to their obesity for a longer time.”

Being the competitive sort, I’m inclined to feel pretty good about this until it hits me that it’s a trend that could have serious public health implications. We’re not supposed to be stressing the healthcare system until we hit our 60s, 70s, and 80s. What happens when youngsters in their 40s and 50s start ringing up monstrous bills at hospitals and pharmacies for “old-folks” maladies like hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease? It can’t be good.

The basic culprit in all this, according to Hulsegge, is an epidemic of inactivity among young adults. That’s not too surprising, actually. We all slow down a bit as we age. And I can recall feeling pretty much immortal before I hit my 60s; no need to go out of my way to exercise or eat right, since I would always be a healthy and vigorous young man.

Unfortunately, reality eventually intervenes. And sometimes sooner than you might imagine. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read in recent years about athletic young people who woke up in their 30s to find they’d lost their edge — and put on some serious poundage.

If that’s not enough motivation to get off the couch, try imagining a bunch of smug Boomers comparing notes on their latest triathlon times and lamenting the sorry state of our young people’s health.

I know. Pretty disgusting. See you at the gym.

When I’m 64 . . .

By Craig Cox / April 8, 2013

I spent a vigorous hour on the tennis court yesterday with my old (actually young) nemesis, The Baseline Machine. I won’t bore you with the details except to say that I leapt out to a three-games-to-one lead only to find my game quickly deteriorate as TBM swept the next five games to cap a 6-3 set victory.

Tennis, for those of you unfamiliar with the sport, is all about muscle memory and motor skills. The ball comes your way, you measure the distance between your body and the head of the racquet, place your feet in the proper relationship to where you want to send the ball and give it a whack. When everything aligns, the sound of the racket hitting the ball is as satisfying as almost any sound in sport, as far as I’m concerned. (I’d compare it to the pleasant thwack I hear when I hit a golf ball 250 yards straight down the middle of a lush green fairway, but I can’t recall ever managing to do that.)

I’m nearly a dozen years older than TBM, so I’ve always been able to claim some disadvantage due to my advanced age, but now I see that new research from the University of Texas at Arlington has rendered that excuse moot. The study suggests there is no substantial difference in motor skills between twentysomethings and geezers in their early 60s.

“We have this so-called age decline, everybody knows that. I wanted to see if that was a gradual process,” the study’s co-author, Priscila Caçola, an assistant professor of kinesiology, said in a statement released by UT Arlington. “It’s good news really because I didn’t see differences between the young and middle-aged people.”

Before a person moves, the theory goes, the brain has to make a plan. So Caçola and her colleagues compared the time the study participants (who ranged in age from 18 to 93) needed between imagining the move and actually moving. And they found very little difference in performance between younger and middle-aged participants — at least up to a point. Apparently after you hit 64, all bets are off. (Which reminds me of that old Lennon-McCartney tune.)

“What we found is that there is a significant drop-off after the age of 64,” noted co-author Jerroed Roberson, a senior kinesiology major at UT Arlington. “So, if you see a drop-off in ability before that, then it could be a signal that there might be something wrong with that person and they might need further evaluation.”

The good news is that I don’t think Roberson was referring to my lame backhand or my general inability to keep a cross-court passing shot inbounds yesterday, so I’m going to assume that I can avoid “further evaluation.” The bad news? I’ve got another two-and-a-half years before I can blame my lousy serve on my advanced age.

A Real Stretch

By Craig Cox / April 4, 2013

Normally, there’s not much in the newspaper that makes me happy, but yesterday I discovered a piece in the New York Times that really made my day. The story, by Gretchen Reynolds, described all the reasons why we should not be stretching prior to a workout.

This made me happy because I don’t stretch. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to stretch, but it’s just not something my body wants me to do. I’m not special in this regard; most guys lack flexibility. It probably has something to do with an unwillingness to compromise. Who knows? We tend to be resolute.

The main reason we should avoid stretching, Reynolds explains, is because it loosens us up too much. Makes us “less able to store energy and spring into action.” She compares it to a worn-out elastic waistband. You stretch these things too much and they just won’t snap back into place. It’s really not any more complicated than that.

I should mention that we’re talking here about static stretching — your basic bend-down-and-touch-your-toes kind of stretching. Dynamic stretching is another thing altogether. Think jumping jacks, burpees and other vivid memories from junior high phy-ed classes. These kinds of moves actually prepare your muscles for action rather than loosening them up. (Check out this piece in EL on the whole stretching debate.)

Stretching after a workout is a different story. Even I will admit that a good stretch of the hip flexors after basketball or the quads after a bike ride is really quite sublime. And the stretches that result during my weekly yoga session can be rather eye-opening, as well. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them pleasant, but I’m told they’re good for me.

And I’m OK with that, because punishment via yoga carries a certain exotic allure that static stretching just cannot match. So I’m going to toss that bit of fitness advice into the trashbin of history and stop feeling inferior about not loosening up before my workouts. I may not be flexible, but I am resolute.

Now Hear This!

By Craig Cox / April 1, 2013

If there’s any upside to hearing loss it’s that you’ve always got an excuse to fall back on when you’re not practicing good listening skills. My excuse is called tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. Imagine a high-pitched squeal running in a reliably endless loop in your head (sort of like a John Cage symphony). It doesn’t work on My Lovely Wife, of course, who knows instinctively when I’m not paying attention — which is much of the time. But I can use it on friends and coworkers, to a certain point. People tend to be sympathetic; I’m an old guy.

Most folks tend to think of hearing loss as being an inevitable product of aging. Like anything else, you get old and the ears gradually become more proficient at sprouting hair than at interpreting sounds. But that’s not necessarily the case. As Jane Brody reports in the New York Times, we live in a very noisy world, and we’re not very good at protecting our ears from all that racket.

“Tens of millions of Americans, including 12 percent to 15 percent of school-age children, already have permanent hearing loss caused by the everyday noise that we take for granted as a fact of life,” Brody writes.

And this hearing loss is cumulative, so every time you plug in your ear buds and crank up the volume to listen to your favorite tunes you’re killing off some of the fragile hair cells that stimulate the auditory nerve fibers that allow your brain to interpret sounds. Anything above 85 decibels (about as loud as a hair dryer) is going to do some damage.

I’ve never been an ear-bud kind of guy, but I’ve attended plenty of concerts and sporting events that have left my ears in a state of white-noise-induced shock. Add to that the high-volume urban cacophony of sirens and traffic I encounter every day, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m often asking people to repeat themselves. The bigger surprise, given the number of hearing-impaired Americans out there, is that more people aren’t asking me to repeat myself. Could be they’re just better listeners than I am.

Don’t Worry, Start Moving

By Craig Cox / March 24, 2013

When a guy reaches advanced middle age, I suppose it’s natural to begin worrying about your longer-term health prospects. Little things begin to crop up occasionally that remind you of your mortality.

This is, of course, an excellent time to commit to a regular fitness regimen and take a close look at what you’re eating and all the things in your life that are causing undue stress. (It’s never too late. Really.) Mostly, we ignore this stuff and just do what we’ve always done because, well, it’s hard to change. And most of us just assume that if something serious crops up, we can just go to the doctor and get a prescription for some kind of pill that will make things all right again. Even if there’s nothing really wrong with us.

Here’s a case in point: As most of us know, heart disease is the number-one killer of Americans, and “bad” cholesterol, we’ve been told, is the primary cause of heart disease (though some have argued that cholesterol is getting a bad rap), so Big Pharma has developed a type of drug, called statins, that reduce all that “bad” cholesterol so we don’t have to change our eating habits or starting exercising.

And because everybody’s got to make a living, Big Pharma promotes the use of statins pretty much incessantly in TV commercials. Geezers like myself see these ads and get to wondering whether their old ticker is really as healthy as they think it is. So why not get over to the doctor and get a prescription? It’s a whole lot easier than working up a sweat at the gym or avoiding the drive-thru at McDonald’s.

Doctors are more than happy to oblige folks in these cases. A new study out of Cornell University showed that one in five people exposed to statin ads were likely to be using the drug — even though they were considered to be at a low risk for a heart attack.

I can’t fault the doctors, to be honest. People are paying good money for health insurance, and I suspect they expect to come away from every visit with something more tangible than a suggestion that they start working out and eating more kale. Besides, better safe than sorry, right?

Well, there’s actually a fair amount of debate around the cholesterol question and some real concerns about the side effects of statins. And, rather than worrying about your heart attack risks, I might suggest that you get up off the couch and move around a little. Twenty minutes of moderate exercise every day can make a world of difference, no matter how old you are. It might even help to regulate your appetite and quiet your cravings for fast food.

So stop worrying and start moving. It could prevent a heart attack. Without any drugs.

Very Subtle Medicine

By Craig Cox / March 22, 2013

Every couple of weeks, I travel over to a renovated factory building on the south side of Minneapolis, where I relax in a slightly tattered barcalounger while a nice young woman sticks needles into my limbs. I do this because it’s good for my health. Just don’t ask me to explain how it works.

As is often the case, I arrived at the appointed hour yesterday afternoon with no particular complaint. I settled into the comfy chair and Dr. Needle checked my pulses on both wrists. “Did you do yoga today?” she asked. I nodded. She smiled knowingly, as she walked away to fetch some needles. D.N. can be slightly inscrutable.

This is very subtle medicine, I’ll admit. Most of the time I can’t tell if anything has changed once the session is over. But every so often, the effect is stunning, like the time I arrived with a crash-and-burn headache and D.N. stuck a single needle into the center of my forehead and the pain simply vanished. Immediately. Usually, I just sink back into the chair, trying not to move my needle-laden limbs as I doze off.

I have considered the possibility that I’m wasting my money on this, but then again maybe I’m not. Acupuncture has been practiced in China for millennia, so I figure there must be something to it. And I am at least dimly aware of the fact that some of my former chronic ailments have subsided since I began making regular visits to D.N. Plus, I recently learned of a new study that explains how this whole approach to healing actually works.

A team of researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center found that acupuncture treatment (essentially, a single needle placed in a spot called Zusanli on the leg below the knee) actually lowered stress levels in rats. The treatment apparently blocked the production of NPY, a peptide secreted by the body’s sympathetic nervous system, as well as stress hormones produced by the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis.

“Our growing body of evidence points to acupuncture’s protective affect against the stress response,” said lead researcher Ladan Eshkevari, PhD, an associate professor of nursing at Georgetown.

And I always thought it was that barcalounger.

Geezers and Gaming

By Craig Cox / March 17, 2013

I grew up at a time when the closest thing we had to a video game was adjusting the “vertical hold” on our black-and-white TV. You’d turn on the tube and the picture would come in perfectly clear, except that it would slowly scroll (we didn’t call it that then) upward until someone opened the little door between the on-off knob and the channel-changer and turned the appropriate knob that brought the picture to a halt on the screen.

Much later, I discovered something called Pong — a primitive kind of video tennis game, in which players volleyed a little round ball back and forth on a tabletop screen. I seem to recall achieving a certain level of aptitude with this game, which is not saying much. And that was basically the end of my experience with video games. When my son was old enough to start obsessing over his X-Box or PlayStation, he would occasionally invite me to try my hand at whatever was the hot new game, but I was completely inept. Couldn’t ever remember which of the buttons and toggles did what, and found myself easy prey for whatever it was I was supposed to be fighting.

This, of course, gave my son great joy, but it never really bothered me. I didn’t see how mastering Halo or Call to Duty would make me a better person. But now I see that I was wrong. A new study from North Carolina State University suggests that folks my age who play video games every so often experience “higher levels of emotional well-being” than those who avoid them. And it’s not only that these geezer gamers are happier, but the research also indicates that folks who avoid playing actually have “a tendency toward higher levels of depression.”

You know what’s really depressing? Watching your son casually dismantle the video-game version of your basketball team while you’re frantically trying to learn the difference between “jumping” and “dribbling” on your console. That’s not fun, especially when you know you can still beat him in a round of “HORSE”.

I’m guessing that these happy outcomes have something to do with the process of learning a new skill and, probably more to the point, the joy that comes with friendly competition. Now, depending on your age and your infirmities, I don’t doubt that a rousing game of tennis or golf on your Wii would raise your spirits (once you figured out which buttons to push), but I’d much prefer to challenge myself with the real thing.

So you can have your NBA 2K13. Monday night, I’ll be back out on the basketball court, doing my best to keep up with the acrobatic youngsters and vertically challenged boomers who help to make reality so much more engaging than anything I could experience on a screen.

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Pumping Irony

The Handyman Workout

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Everything in Moderation

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The Heart of the Matter

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Generation Gap?

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When I’m 64 . . .

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A Real Stretch

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Now Hear This!

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Don’t Worry, Start Moving

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Very Subtle Medicine

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Geezers and Gaming

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