It might be daunting for Seabrookers to face a new millennium. It is the time of year that we make resolutions for a coming year, but what about for a thousand years! With regard to healthy aging in the new millennium I cast around in the ever shrinking cerebral contents of my cranial vault for a simple mnemonic to use facing all these years ahead of us. I came up with LIVE.
Love Love comes first because it is the single most sustaining power we can have in our lives. Countless scientific studies have shown that having strong relationships, best characterized as love, in our lives will prolong them. This is true for people who are battling cancer, have heart conditions or countless other maladies. The love does not have to be shared with a partner of the opposite sex but can and often is with family, friends, pets - especially dogs, God, and even in some instances love of self. Obviously, there are as many different forms of love as there are humans who have this gift. Suffice it to say - those of you have been blessed with and who have worked to maintain that sublime relationship with another that we call love, can look forward to a longer and healthier life. Inquire Inquire is the act of using ones higher faculties to search for answers to questions that one congers up. This is the mental calisthenics that keep our mind active, agile, and fruitful. Without inquiry the mind will suffer from disuse. The old adage: "use it or lose it" applies to our cognition as surely as it does to our muscles. For example, consider the couch potato who has at his (her) side the TV guide and TV remote and the only questions that arise during the majority of the day are what time is it and what channel is my next favorite show on? This unimaginative sole can be contrasted with lets say someone who goes for a walk and during the course of the walk wonders why egrets are so slender and why the snowy egret has yellow feet and the great white egret has black feet. Further upon return from the walk this person tries through all resources available to find the answers to those questions. Or how about the individual who wonders what he can do to help improve the SAT scores of students on Johns Island. The mentally engaged individual can look forward to more days on earth than the one whose mind is for all practical purposes shut down or on auto-pilot.
Vigorous Exercise We have discussed exercise before in this space and there is little to add. Simply stated, do it. There is much scientific, lay and intuitive logic that shows that the individual who regularly engages in regular physical activity, the more vigorous the better, the longer that person will live and the healthier the life will be. This goes for mental health as well as physical health. Exercise has been proven beneficial and prolonging survival in every studied disease as well as life in general. Eat Diet is a key to health and longevity. This, too, we have written about in this space and the principles need only to be repeated. Eat all three meals, eat a balanced diet low in fats, and avoid the many binge diets in attempts to getting the extra weight off. It is important to avoid obesity, but the best way to do that is with low caloric intake and some form of regular exercise. It probably is wise to supplement the balanced diet with a multi-vitamin pill formulated for older adults - of which there are several at all drug stores. Under the heading of eating also comes drinking. Water is essential, especially for us on Seabrook in summer months when we tend to lose so much with perspiration. In addition to the eight or so glasses of water that we should be drinking each day there is the glass of red wine each evening that many studies have shown to be healthful in most people (but not all!).
So as we begin this new millennium the watchword is LIVE. The problem, of course, is that one cannot imagine living for 1000 years, but we can look forward to many more years - that's why we've moved to our lovely island.
