Live Long, Die Short (18 page)

This all leads to a daily lifestyle that includes sleeping, eating,
movement
, and all the other particulars of your life. Movement for at least thirty minutes every day. Movement that you enjoy. Maybe eventually you’ll add things like biking, or swimming, or gardening for that thirty minutes. Maybe you’ll even join a fitness center! Who knows? But it will be out of a joy of movement, not out of guilt or desire to conquer the world, or because you want bragging rights with your friends at the diner downtown. If for some reason you truly cannot walk or work up to being able to walk, then assess what you can do: chair exercises, sitting yoga, or many other creative things that are possible in your home.

If you are to enjoy the platinum plan of movement, you will add flexibility and balance movements, like yoga, or tai chi, or just plain stretching. Or not. You will add strength movements, like hand weights, or bands, or actual strength machines. Or not. Maybe you will or maybe you won’t, but it’s
not a prerequisite to becoming better through movement in your life.
Just move. Don’t put it on your to-do list. Make it the paper, your basic life, that the to-dos are added to. Nonnegotiable. The stuff of your life.

And you will reap the horn of plenty from your new lifestyle: lowered blood pressure and lipids; improved cardiovascular efficiency and lung function; less joint pain; improved balance and resilience; lowered risk for all the major threats to our successful aging experience, including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, dementia, and diabetes; better mood; sharper thinking; better sleep; less body fat; better looks … well, OK, maybe not, but I guarantee you will be told by those around you that you look good. Your body will be just overjoyed with what you are doing and will release brain substances, like dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, all of which will
make you feel on top of the world. No magic, just the entire body-mind-spirit responding to what it needs and craves and finding its true nature in your new lifestyle of movement.

Dorothy was in her seventies and had led a full life. She had retired after working in a medical office for decades, and enjoyed living in her home and adapting to her new life as a retired person. But now, after a decade of retirement, she knew she was in trouble. She had severe knee pain, had gained weight, and now had diabetes. She also knew that she had become more isolated over her decade of retirement. So she dared.

She dared to move from her home of so many years into a retirement community. She did it to become more engaged with other people. She chose one that had Masterpiece Living and that offered her both the opportunity to evaluate her current lifestyle and the support to make the changes she chose to make. When she saw her Lifestyle Inventory feedback report, she was not surprised. She had little social engagement, was stagnant intellectually, and was doing little to nourish her inner self. But she knew immediately what she needed to attend to first.
She had to address her physical self first.

She began modestly with water aerobics at 5:30 a.m. and met some marvelously animated people who were unafraid to put a bathing suit on again. She began walking regularly and soon found others who enjoyed walking and talking. She joined groups with the community and filled her day with social activity and more and more movement. She was much happier—and along the way, during that first year in her new life, some other things happened. She lost seventy pounds and returned to her high school weight. Her doctor told her she no longer had diabetes. And her knee no longer hurt! She was active, engaged, and fulfilled. She felt empowered, with a new lease on life, and she dared more. She dared to take up the flute again after forty years. She dared to start a small musical group that actually played in public! Dorothy dared to move, and it made all the difference.

Masterpiece Living Pearls for Keeping Moving

Get out a small book and pen. Now make sure you have it with you at all times over the next three days. You’re going to keep track of how you
spend your day, with a focus on how much you move, or don’t. Next, get a pedometer. You can get one in Target or Walmart or a sporting-goods store. You’re going to have this with you at all times, hooked on your belt at the hip, because it’s going to tell you how many steps you take in a day or, if you want to know, how far you walk during an average day (multiply the number of steps you take by the length of your step). The directions that come with the pedometer will guide you.
Don’t cheat!
You’re getting a real baseline of your current movement, which will serve as a baseline from which you can grow. It’s crazy to do more than you usually do. You can start that in a few days after you have a realistic assessment of just how much movement is currently in your life.

1. Now, take a look at your notes and number of steps per day. It’s time to set your first goals. After three days of counting steps, figure out your average number of steps per day (take the total for that period and divide by three). Now how much do you want to increase that for the next week?
   That’s too much!
   No matter what you said, I bet it is too much for a first goal. Remember.
   Small increases.
   Add 1 percent (take the total and divide by 100), or 2 percent or 3 percent, to your average for the last three days and shoot for that for each day over the next week. See how that feels. Be proud when you do it. Check your total during the day to see if you need to step it up a bit to meet your goal. Reevaluate your goals each week and raise or lower them based on a realistic evaluation of how it’s working for you.
   
2. At the same time, look at your notes of how you spend your time. How much is spent sitting, riding, or in general not moving? Perhaps an easy beginning is to stand while you’re watching TV or working with the computer, and walk in place. Get some steps on your pedometer. Even if just for a few minutes. No sweat, only movement. Where else in your day might you begin to think of movement as an essential part of your routine: like eating, sleeping, or dressing. What part of your routine can you now rethink in order to ensure that there is nonnegotiable time for purposeful movement? Start with only a few minutes and build on it as it feels right. Shoot to work up to thirty minutes and then see where that leads you. It will be easier than you think. Try walking the dog, or walking while you talk on the phone. Park farther from the store. Take at least one flight of stairs before you use the elevator. Try walking as you attempt to solve a problem.
   
3. If you have significant limitations to your ability to move, do what you can and make a commitment to add to it with small increments. You’ll be surprised what you can do. If at any time you feel unwell or have pain, stop what you’re doing until you feel better. If the feelings return even when you do less, then see your doctor for some guidance. Even those with significant disease can improve their physical self. It just may take longer or involve some accommodations.
   
4. Do those things for a month or two and see what happens. Take note of how much you increase your movement. How much better your mood, joints, and overall quality of life are. Don’t even bother to weigh yourself. Weight might come off or it might not
   but you are getting healthier!
   Remember, this isn’t about numbers or pant size or bragging rights. This is about changing your lifestyle to include more movement that will ensure you will age more successfully. You will stay independent longer. You will enjoy life more.
   
5. As you begin to notice remarkable improvements, pay attention to them and celebrate them. Just regroup if you don’t meet a goal. Decide whether that goal was too ambitious and just reboot, so to speak. Focus on your successes, your improvements. This is the beginning of a magnificent adventure—really—to a life you’ve always wanted and now are beginning to realize you can achieve. All it takes is patience with yourself. Resistance to that voice in your head that says you should be doing more. More will come and you will know when it’s time. More movement. Different types of movement—flexibility, balance, strength. Maybe doing some things you never thought possible … or maybe not. As long as you are moving more, you are growing, becoming healthier, and connecting with your core human needs and what it takes to be authentically healthy. You will also be making a substantial investment in your future, which will pay huge dividends. There’s no going back. This is your new life, and it’s awesome!
   

I have no special talents.
I am only passionately curious.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN

How did the scarecrow know he didn’t have a brain?
—LANCE W. BLEDSOE

I
n the 1967 Mike Nichols film,
The Graduate
, Dustin Hoff man plays Ben Braddock, a recent college graduate, who gets one word of advice from a family friend: “Plastics.”

Why? Because at the time, it was an exploding field with great potential. Over five decades later, if we look for a similar word representing an exploding field with great potential, it’s
neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity
“refers to the lifelong capacity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stimulation of learning and experience.”
¹
Or said another way, “the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.”
²

If you’re not up out of your chair yelling “What!” then read this definition again. “Change and rewire itself … in response to … learning … or
to changes in their environment … compensate for injury … throughout life!” This is heady stuff indeed and from my point of view can make the difference between a life of worry that I’m going to end up with everyone around me rolling their eyes because I’ve “lost it” and one where I can mix it up intellectually with the best of them even when I’m in my tenth decade of life. This is big.

And so is the whole field of brain health. The field of brain fitness is exploding, much like my own brain as I try to distill the critical components of what this all means. Basically, the idea that the adult brain is a relatively stagnant and fragile organ is no longer accepted. The brain changes throughout life, and we are, in fact, the architects. And so, once again, we have a lot to do with not only how our body ages but also how our brain ages.

Think of the brain as a collection of millions of miles of roads. In fact, that’s what the brain is: roughly 100,000 miles of neural pathways. And every time we wish to move, learn something new, recall a fact, recognize someone, or do any of the magnificent things our brain is capable of, messages travel along these pathways at hyper-speeds of up to nearly three hundred miles per hour and enable us to do the task we wish.

OK. Say you learn something new. Whatever, the list of presidents, or how to play “Mr. Tambourine Man” on the guitar. Now think of that list or skill as a destination—say, Boston—where you want to go. Once you’ve learned it, you have built a neural pathway to Boston. Keep doing it and you build a neural freeway to Boston so you can get there faster (do it better). Stop doing it and the road you built gets smaller, and eventually some bridges will wash out, or it gets potholes and you can’t get there as fast, or at all (can’t do it as well, or at all). Say you want to learn something new. You want to go to New York instead. Again, you’ll build a path, then a freeway, and as long as you
use it
—you guessed it—
you won’t lose it
. Don’t use the road and you will lose it.

What happens if something wipes out the road you built, say a head injury or a stroke? You will not be able to travel that road and do what you did before, whether it’s speaking, or walking, or remembering your first dog’s name. But what if you want to do those things? What if you
work at it? You got it. In many cases, somehow the brain will find a route around the damaged area to your destination. That’s neuroplasticity, the brain rewiring in response to the environment and a behavior.