Pumping Irony

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

Discovering Gold

By Craig Cox / October 16, 2012

I know my prostate ain’t what it used to be, but I’ve always been leery of PSA tests and any other approach that involves doctors poking around in that part of my body. But I don’t have a cancer diagnosis and I’m not facing the kind of decision millions of men have to face each year (prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of death among American men) when the big “C” word comes out. So I don’t quite know what to think of news released yesterday by University of Missouri scientists about a radical new approach to prostate cancer treatment.

Researchers reported that aggressive prostate cancer tumors were significantly reduced in mice by injecting them with radioactive gold nanoparticles. “These findings have formed a solid foundation, and we hope to translate the utility of this novel nanomedicine therapy to treating human cancer patients,” said Kattesh Katti, a professor of radiology and physics at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

The upside of this treatment approach, according Katti, is that doctors can avoid using massive doses of chemotherapy and radiation to combat aggressive tumors — a technique that often results in serious side effects. The downside, in my humble opinion, is that you’re, well . . . injecting radioactive gold nanoparticles into my body.

Most prostate cancer tumors grow very slowly and you can pretty much just leave them be, which is a comforting thought to this geezer. I’m all for advances in cancer research — so long as I never have to make use of them.

World View Validated

By Craig Cox / October 14, 2012

Isn’t it cool when your world view is validated?

I’m not a guy who’s obsessed with calories and weight loss, but a new study I stumbled upon the other day suggested that you don’t have to spend hours in the gym to burn off a bunch of calories each day. Researchers at Colorado State University found that you can burn as many 200 extra calories a day with as little as 2.5 minutes of intense exercise.

My morning kettlebell and body-weight routine — during which I can work up a pretty good lather — typically lasts around 15 minutes, so I figure I’m doing OK. The key, according to this research, is to push yourself really hard for those few minutes, using a technique known as interval training. The way it works in a normal setting is to get onto a stationary bike and pedal like mad for 30 seconds, take it easy for a minute or two, and then repeat a few times.

I’ve done this on the bikes at the gym, and I can testify that it pretty much kills you, but at home on a weekday morning before breakfast, I don’t have a stationary bike. So my approach is to crank through my routine — pushups and kettlebell moves — without taking any breaks between exercises. It can be brutal, but brutal is OK — even if you’re not counting calories.

Pedal to the Mettle

By Craig Cox / October 11, 2012

Thursday is yoga day (when I can get away from work) and every other Thursday (more or less) means a trip to the acupuncturist for needles and a nap, and today I hit the duplecta and made it to both Zen-inducing experiences in one afternoon.

People talk about “hot” yoga or vinyasa “flow” and such, but Jinjer Stanton’s class at Nokomis Yoga is more like “geezer flow,” which is just how I and My Lovely Wife (who never misses a session) and the other two or three regulars prefer it. It’s an hour and a half of ungainly poses, charitable teaching, and a fair amount of comical banter that nonetheless leaves me feeling better than when I arrived.

I hadn’t been back to class since we arrived home from London a couple of weeks ago, so I was happy to see that attendance hadn’t improved to the point that any young faces were occupying mats on the studio floor. In fact, it was just three of us and Jinjer, who was her old self, laughing uncontrollably at the slightest suggestion of humor and leading us gingerly through sun salutations and eagle poses (“Use the wall if you feel the need. . . .”)

Then it was back on my bicycle for a trip three or so miles north to see Dr. Needle, who happily aligns my chi a couple of times a month to keep me vertical and functioning. I had no complaints to report today, which always seems to please her. (I suppose she figures something must be working.) But she sticks a few needles in strategic places nonetheless and I lie back in the barcalounger for a little snooze. Forty-five minutes later, she returns, extracts her needles and I depart feeling rested and, I suppose, realigned in some way. (I’ll never understand acupuncture, but I figure it can’t do me any harm, right?)

Then it’s back on the bike for a leisurely ride along the greenway to West River Parkway and home. When I’m able to make it to both of these sessions, like I did today, I accumulate about 10 miles of pedaling — in mostly a leisurely fashion. And that amounts to a pretty great day.

An Apple a Day . . .

By Craig Cox / October 10, 2012

There are plenty of good reasons for maintaining good dental hygiene, but here’s a new one: A new study from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden suggests that the ability to chew can help aging folks like me avoid or delay dementia.

The study surveyed 557 people aged 77 or older and found that those who had difficulty chewing apples and other crisp foods had a “significantly” higher risk of developing cognitive dysfunctions. That’s because ineffective chewing reduces blood flow to the brain.

This, of course, is cheery news to this geezer, since I happily consume an apple pretty much every day. It keeps the doctor away, don’t you know.

A Lesson in Feldenkrais — and Marriage

By Craig Cox / October 9, 2012

A very wise man once told me that the key to a happy marriage was surprisingly simple: Agree with your wife. So when My Lovely Wife a couple of weeks ago asked me if I wanted to join her for a Sunday afternoon Feldenkrais lesson, I happily agreed. And when last Saturday she reminded me that the class ran from noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, I nodded calmly and went back to reading the paper. It only occurred to me later that Sunday’s noon-to-3 slot is typically reserved for lounging comfortably in front of the TV with a beer, watching our local football club do battle.

No big deal, really. I’ve missed plenty of televised sporting events in recent years due to various social obligations and, in fact, I’ve generally found that the time spent off the couch is quite a bit more enjoyable than time spent on it. And I’m not just saying this because I was resigned to my fate. Really.

Anyway, Sunday arrived and I’m looking at the sports section and notice that the game isn’t on until 3, which has the effect of suddenly making a Feldenkrais lesson sound a lot more interesting than it did before. Not that I wasn’t interested before, mind you, but we’re talking degrees of interest, if you know what I mean.

“What do people wear to a Feldenkrais lesson,” I asked.

“Something comfortable,” MLW suggested.

At that moment, I was wearing a pair of wrinkled jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, which is just about the most comfortable attire I can imagine, so I went with it. There’s a pair of sweatpants in my dresser that I wear to yoga, but I figured we might just be sitting in a chair for three hours listening to Feldenkrais stuff, and it would look pretty silly for a guy my age to be dressed for yoga in that case, right? I couldn’t get a fashion signal from MLW, because she’s always dressed as if she could wander into a yoga class and be perfectly comfortable.

We drove over to the St. Paul Jewish Community Center and wound our way through its warren-like halls until we located the proper studio, which just happened to be adjacent to a sparkling basketball court. I think I have mentioned that I’m subject to a minor hoops addiction when I step on a basketball court. It causes me to relive delusions of grandeur, and I get a little anxious unless I have a basketball in my hands. This cannot be controlled by any pharmaceutical that I’m familiar with. Still, I followed MLW into the studio, where of course everyone was in some version of yoga gear, including our instructor, a lanky thirtysomething named Nick Strauss-Klein.

Nick has been working with MLW on her cranky right knee for a couple of years now, so he comes highly recommended. And he quickly set us all at ease, including the one guy who wasn’t wearing yoga clothes. Feldenkrais, he explained, is all about awareness through movement, and we spent the next three hours exploring how our bodies move and how that movement affects how we feel. Nick proved to be an articulate and patient teacher, and I have to say that there were points during the class when my body was telling me stuff it hadn’t divulged before.

And even better, during the couple of breaks between lessons, I managed to locate a basketball and shoot some hoops. Plus, I got home in plenty of time to catch the game, while MLW went off for a bicycle ride. Just another day of marital bliss.

Strong Medicine for the Aging Muscle

By Craig Cox / September 30, 2012

I’ve been preaching for a few years now that the best way to avoid decrepitude in your twilight years is to begin a regular strength training regimen by the time you hit middle age. That might mean cranking out a few pushups and planks every morning before breakfast or swinging a kettlebell around three or four times a week while you’re watching the evening news or actually making the gym a regular destination and hoisting some serious iron. The important thing is to make your aging muscles plead for mercy a few times a week.

It’s way more valuable than steady-state cardio. In fact, an intense weight-lifting session will hike your heart rate into the stratosphere and throw your metabolism into overdrive. It can even help you lose weight! And if you make it a regular habit, you may find when you reach retirement age that you’ve retained a surprising level of agility, endurance, and power. Maybe enough to keep you living independently long after friends and colleagues are confined to walkers and wheel chairs.

And your muscles will love it, even when they’re pleading for mercy.

When you tax your muscles beyond their normal capacity, you cause microscopic tears in the tissue that cause the muscles, once they’ve recovered, to enlarge — and gradually increase their capacity. This process, called hypertrophy, is facilitated by “satellite” stem cells in your muscle fibers that spring into action whenever you’ve pushed them beyond their normal limits.

Here’s the rub: The older you get, the less active these satellite cells become. That’s why, according to new research from Massachusetts General Hospital and King’s College London, your muscles tend to turn to mush once you start cashing those Social Security checks. “Just as it is important for athletes to build recovery time into their training schedules, stem cells also needs time to recuperate, but we found the aged stem cells recuperate less often,” Andrew Brack, PhD, the lead author of the study, explained in a statement released by the hospital.

The primary culprit in this drama is a developmental protein called fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2), which tends to become more prevalent in aging muscles and causes a gradual decline in satellite cells. So Brack and his colleagues are predictably looking for substances they can pump into your body to block that annoying FGF2, so geezers like me can stay strong with no more effort than it takes to drive to the local pharmacy.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m going to keep punishing my muscles the way they were meant to be punished. Innumerable studies have suggested that strength training, even when begun at an advanced age, can have a dramatic effect on your quality of life. I figure I’ve got a pretty good head start, so why show those muscles any mercy now?

Preparing for Re-Entry

By Craig Cox / September 24, 2012

LONDON — We’ll be heading home tomorrow and I have to admit that I’m looking forward to resuming my former workout regimen. I’ve been walking and cycling plenty since we arrived, but I haven’t yet broken a sweat. I fear my muscles have begun to atrophy and my endorphins are stuck in neutral.

The trick, of course, is ramping it all back up without doing damage to my workout-deprived body. Most trainers will tell you that taking it easy for a week or so is not going to lead to major problems when you dive back in, and at my age I’m pretty accustomed to recovery days, but I’d like to avoid a too-painful re-entry process.

This is a pretty common issue among fitness buffs and, typically we’re advised to get back into the swing of things with low-to-moderate intensity whole-body workouts rather than focusing on particular muscle groups. That way we won’t be taxing specific muscles too much. (Canadian trainer Terry Adams offers a pretty interesting re-entry workout here that I doubt I’ll do, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.) I’m definitely going to do my best to get to yoga on Thursday; stretching is a great way to reintroduce your body to exercise after it’s been on a no-intensity workout vacation.

First, however, I’m planning to schlep a bunch of luggage out the door onto some trains and through a few airports tomorrow. That ought to get the old endorphins flowing.

Vacation Enervation

By Craig Cox / September 16, 2012

Now, where did I put that heart-rate monitor?

LONDON — There’s a certain brutality involved in international travel that demands a fair amount of physical endurance. Sitting upright for about nine hours in a seat on an airliner, for instance, calls on some basic lower back and core strength, not to mention an ability to ignore the fact that you’re sitting upright for about nine hours in a seat on an airliner. This is the price one pays for the opportunity to expand one’s cultural horizons, and having paid that price yesterday, My Lovely Wife and I now find ourselves happily ensconced in a quirky flat on Swinton Street in the British capital for the next 10 days.

Much has been written about maintaining your exercise regimen while traveling (Here’s a recent piece from EL you can read if you’ve already lost interest in my vacation), but in my own experience I’ve found such aspirations to be mostly illusory. A kitchen chair, for instance, is a poor substitute for a kettlebell in most cases, and the way I look at things a vacation is designed to force you out of your routine, not keep you in it.

Still, I’ve found that there are some fitness opportunities available here in London. Just yesterday, for instance, I walked/ran a mile or so following MLW to the People’s Supermarket, a ragtag food co-op a bit south of here on a street called Lamb’s Conduit (the London street grid is like a really good British mystery). She was riding a bicycle and I was on foot, because she got the last bike from the Barklay’s Cycle rental station down the street from our flat. We went off in search of another rental station, but got lost amid the Byzantine streets, and I wound up simply hoofing it all the way to the co-op (which, of course, had a cycle hire station around the corner). And that was fine: MLW enjoyed a nice bike ride and I got in a little exercise.

This morning, we both hiked about a mile to the Islington Farmers’ Market to pick up some food, and we managed to score a couple of bikes from the station there to pedal home. But that was the extent of our bicycling fortunes for the day. Later that afternoon, we set out for Bloomsbury, a couple of miles to the south and west, and discovered all the bikes gone from every rental station we passed. Thus, we were forced to wander aimlessly on foot from pub to bookstore to pub. I don’t know how many miles we wound up trekking, but it was more than enough for MLW’s bum right knee, which protested all the way back to the flat.

Now, that didn’t amount to a lot of cardio, but it did illustrate part of the problem with exercising too diligently while on vacation. At home, it’s easy to allow your body to heal from an overly ambitious workout (believe me, I know about this). You’ve got your workout routine and you’ve got your recovery routine. On the road, however, you’re out of your comfort zone (literally). You can’t go for a leisurely bike ride when your knee is aching or lean on your yoga teacher for some specific recovery poses. You’re on your own out here; your options are limited.

That doesn’t mean I can’t get up tomorrow morning and crank out 100 pushups before breakfast or grab a kitchen chair in each hand and do 50 Bulgarian split squats. It just means I probably won’t. I’m on vacation. OK?

Relax, It’s Only Cancer

By Craig Cox / September 9, 2012

At my age, it’s tempting to consider your mortality at every turn. You take fewer chances — physically at least — and pay extra attention to the signals your body is sending you. Some mornings that means I need to leave the kettlebell over there in the corner of the room and just sit still and breathe. Other days, an extra hour of sleep is just the thing. You get to know your limitations.

But for too many guys my age — and younger — it means that you need to be on high alert for any indication of cancer, and leap to action at the least sign of distress. It’s understandable, I suppose; cancer is a scary concept. I think I’ve mentioned how my oldest brother, now 68, has undergone multiple biopsies for prostate cancer, despite the fact that several recent studies argue that such screenings are unreliable and that the treatment options can result in serious side effects.

I don’t subscribe to that approach, so I was happy to learn about a new study from the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, that reported the efficacy of a “watchful waiting” strategy for prostate cancer patients. As Tara Parker-Pope reported in the New York Times, about 10 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are now choosing to wait and see how things go rather than proceed with treatment that more often than not will leave them impotent and incontinent or both. That approach, researchers found, did not statistical alter one’s risk of death from the illness. Indeed, the study showed that about 7 percent of those diagnosed with the disease died during the study period, but there was no measurable difference in mortality between those who chose aggressive treatment and those who ignored the disease altogether.

“Men have a strong belief that if they are diagnosed with cancer, they will die from the cancer if it’s left untreated, and they believe that treatment will cure them,” lead researcher Dr. Timoth y J. Wilt told the Times. “This study adds to growing evidence that observation can be a wise and preferred treatment option for the vast majority of men. It allows them to live a similar length of life and avoid death from prostate cancer and avoid the harms of treatment.”

About a quarter-million men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, and about half of them will unquestioningly follow their doctor’s orders to have their prostate removed and undergo radiation treatment. This new study, I hope, will give them the ammunition they need to resist such aggressive — and ineffective — remedies.

They didn’t need to convince me. As you may know, I’ve always been leery of interventionist medicine. It’s just nice to know that maybe I’m out ahead of the trend when it comes to steering clear of doctors. Just like us geezers, they have their limitations.

The Elixer of Youth

By Craig Cox / September 3, 2012

For several years now, scientists have been extolling the anti-aging virtues of resveratrol, an antioxidant found in the skin of grapes. It’s been shown in various studies to reduce inflammation and cholesterol, thus lowering a geezer’s risk of heart disease and cancer. I like to celebrate these studies with a glass of wine — my preferred resveratrol delivery system.

This research has played a major role in creating the notion that red wine is good for you. It wasn’t until recently that scientists began to note that you’d have to drink a whole lot of wine every day in order to deliver enough resveratrol into your system to notice any anti-aging effects.

But that doesn’t stop resveratrol boosters from continuing to churn out new research to solidify the healthy reputation of this “miracle molecule.” Just last month, a team of researchers from Duquesne University presented a paper at the 244^th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society suggesting that resveratrol could help older folks improve their mobility and prevent falls.

“Our study suggests that a natural compound like resveratrol, which can be obtained either through dietary supplementation or diet itself, could actually decrease some of the motor deficiencies that are seen in our aging population,” lead researcher Jane E. Cavanaugh, PhD, said in a statement. “And that would, therefore, increase an aging person’s quality of life and decrease their risk of hospitalization due to slips and falls.”

The research team fed old and young laboratory mice a diet containing resveratrol and observed the older mice gradually improve their balance and mobility until, after just four weeks, they were as adept as the younger mice. Apparently, resveratrol helped the older mice fight off the effects of free radicals in brain cells and vastly improve their motor function.

Of course, that assumes you’re not delivering that resveratrol via a bottle of Pinot Noir. Cavanaugh estimated that a person would have to drink about 700 4-ounce glasses of wine each day to absorb enough resveratrol to see any improvement in balance and agility. It’s an intriguing concept, but probably not one you’d want to test at your local wine bar.

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Pumping Irony

Discovering Gold

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World View Validated

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Pedal to the Mettle

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An Apple a Day . . .

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A Lesson in Feldenkrais — and Marriage

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Strong Medicine for the Aging Muscle

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Preparing for Re-Entry

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Vacation Enervation

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Relax, It’s Only Cancer

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The Elixer of Youth

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