Health and Fitness

BEING A MAN OR A WOMAN “of a certain age” as they say in mainstream magazines, doesn’t mean you need to slap on an Estrogen patch or load up on Viagra to have a life. Nor does it mean you should turn into a couch potato of ever-increasing girth while you tune in to TV, tune out on life, and sit there, vegetating, waiting to die. You do have alternatives.

In our grandparents’ day, based on a more agrarian existance, life was difficult, and the infant death rate high. But if you survived the early years, you developed natural immunities, worked hard, ate fairly nutritious food, and stayed active right up to the end. In our parent’s time, the phrase “growing old gracefully” gained a certain popularity. It acknowledged the gradual decline of physical and mental health starting with the birth of the first grandchild and ending at the funeral home. It was a grim, but inevitable process—from rocking chair to wheel chair to hospital bed and finally, the coffin. Of course, there were TV and TV dinners to help ease you through the transition. Perhaps there’s a message there?

Our generation puts a new twist on the aging process. We call it “Age Management.”

What does that mean? Not knowing, you might envision a sort of corporate management structure, perhaps with a CEO, mid-level managers and a string of front line folks all tasked with categorizing people by age and ensuring that they behave accordingly. Well, that’s close, except with an age management program, you determine, direct, and play all the roles (although you will need a “coach” generally in the form of a physician). With this enlightened program, designed for you and by you with the help of your “coach,” you can truly take control of your life, and figure out, health-wise, how to live it to the fullest, right to the very end. You’re still going to die, of course, but you don’t have to go through half your life half dead waiting to do it.