What’s the opportunity here?

Of course you have been doing that. But if you don’t have the skills, knowledge and tools to do that, you go round in circles. Things get better and then they get worse, and before long you are back where you started. That’s what we need to stop.

Lots of small daily decisions.

If we don’t quite have a plan, each day has too many loose ends, too many opportunities to undermine what you should be doing. What we need to do is identify the big rocks in your day, and establish routines, habits, an action plan so the at least 80% of the time that’s what you do, and for large parts of the day all those loose ends are tidied away.

How well are you Ageing?

It’s said that only 12% of American adults are metabolically healthy. It’s also true in New Zealand and Australia and across the world that modern people are less fit and ageing quicker that previous generations. As an individual you can’t change the population trend, but you do have control over where you are placed among others in your community. This is a graph showing the fitness of people at age 70. Take charge, move your own fitness status to the right.

The Dunedin Study looked at the biological age of almost 1000 people who were aged 38, Already the signs were clear that they were aging quicker than they would like. There is a lesson here for us all.

Dr George Vaillant at age 40, in the Grant Study, was interviewing men who had mostly had very successful lives but were then aged 55. He made the same mistake we all make; we can’t imagine ourselves as old people. More-over we deny and avoid even thinking about it. I’ve loaned the book “Triumphs of Experience” to several people in their 60’s and they return it mostly unread. “I can’t go there; I don’t want to.” George Vaillant at 40, assumed that at 55, the men he was interviewing were at the peak of their professional and personal lives. 30 Years later when he wrote “Triumphs of Experience,” he’s now in his 70’s and the men are in their 90’s. To a large extent they are still being successful. Vaillant and his 264 men have much to teach us.

Dr Peter Attia, on the other hand is now in his mid 50’s. He’s been a very successful physician, an athlete, and a family man. He’s been advising elite athletes and an exclusive cliental for more than 20 years. He is particularly interested in strength as a measure of your health, and as good guide he believes to how long you can expect to live. His general message is go to the gym and lift something heavy. He believes that even if you train, your strength will decline and in your final decade you can expect a health setback of two, and your strength, your health reserve, controls your ability to recover from that.

There are two pages on this site about this topic. In the past I’ve found that it’s very difficult to get people to even look at the population data for people older than themselves, and to think about what that says about one’s final years. Not wanting to know is common. George Vaillant with the Grant Study is a psychiatrist and he made some interesting observations about aging 30 years ago, that others are today confirming. Don’t be frightened of ageing, your best years may yet be ahead of you. That’s the story of the book “Triumphs of Experience” that George Vaillant wrote.

There are many people today who are seriously studying ageing. The science is improving. One of the serious problems is that George Vaillant was several years younger than his subjects, and he thought they were “over the hill at 55” when in fact the best part of their lives was ahead. Dr Peter Attia, has a lot to say about physical fitness and ageing. He is also much younger than the people he is talking about. What he says may be nonsense, or maybe not. His advice is to become strong and to work hard to maintain your strength all of your life.

We all like to be part of the crowd, one of the team to be successful, but not to stand too tall. But regarding your future health being like everyone else is to become unhealthy before 70 years and to die at least ten years too soon. If we are “average” in fitness we need to make an effort to change that, and to move at least into the above average group. Understand that having Normal Health isn’t to be healthy. Remember the 1st, 2nd and 3rd quartiles of 70-year-olds are closely gathered, most of us are not fit.

At a population level, Normal Health isn’t healthy. For yourself, you may have a choice about that.

Get your diet right. Put time into exercise. Sleep well. Join social groups. Find a “task” a work to do that you love. It’s all doable, but easier with a little bit of help.

By all means feel free to wander about the Main Open Future Health website. It has several parts: It begins here, and it has options for desktop, tablet and phone devices.

There is an introductory front end of about 15 URL’s that are a general introduction to the health I’ve been learning about over 10 years.

Behind that there is a website with about 300 URL’s. It has four main parts, plus a blog.

The main parts are:

The Lecture, over 8 years old, it takes about two hours. But it’s in eight parts and over a week it’s doable.

There’s a workshop; I’m not sure if anybody uses it, there’s a Nutrition Science Section, and a Section about Banting.

For People interested in Health System Bias, the TRIAL of Prof. Timoth Noakes might interest you.

There are two blogs: an old one with over 50 entries. It remains because there is useful stuff there. And a new one built on WordPress.

There is also a very long list of notable health experts I’ve discovered over the years, (At the moment a bit dated. 1 November, 2024) It’s a good place to explore and by the end of January 2025 it should have more recent material added.