“Most of what we call aging is decay, and decay is
optional; it’s under our control.” ~Henry S. Lodge, MD, co-author, Younger
Next Year
“Regular strength training for life sounds stupid, nasty
and scary. And we wouldn’t even mention it if it were not one of the best
pieces of advice in the whole damn book.”
~Chris Crowley, co-author, Younger
Next Year
Grow or Decay, Your Choice
Younger Next Year: A Guide to living like 50 Until
You’re 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD (Random
House, 2004) may be the best book I’ve read on aging well; it’s the most
complete, and certainly the most engaging and fun. The foundation of the book is
seven rules, called “Harry’s Rules.” Chief among them: “Exercise
six days a week for the rest of your life [4 aerobics, 2 strength],” and
“Quit eating crap.”
Harry is Dr. Lodge (Henry S.), a 46-year-old
board-certified internist who heads a 23-doctor practice in Manhattan. This
would lead one to believe that Harry developed the rules and recruited co-author
Chris Crowley as an enthusiastic patient, but that’s not the way it happened.
“I had been talking about lifestyle issues with my patients and exploring the
science for a long time,” Lodge reveals in the Appendix, “but Chris had been
working on these ideas for a number of years before we met; he actually talked
about doing the book together that very first day in the office.”
The book was Chris’ idea and Harry was the eager
doctor. They alternate chapters and it really works: Harry provides the
science and Chris tells about applying it in an earthy, witty and often
self-deprecating way, making some pretty heavy stuff come to life.
Chris Crowley is a 70-year-old retired New York lawyer, a
high-powered “former litigator.” You can tell he was good in the courtroom;
his gift of gab comes through loud and clear in his writing. He’s been
around the block a few times. The father of three children, he retired young, at
55, to write, ski, sail, windsurf, cook and spend time with his third wife. Good
as that may sound, he found himself 40 pounds overweight and walking the streets of
New York City feeling unproductive and unhappy. He missed the challenge and
connections of practicing law; being out of the loop messed up his morale. He
didn’t really come out of it until, approaching 70, he began thinking about
doing the book with Harry.
Younger Next Year covers everything from
erectile dysfunction to caring and commitment to spending in retirement. Did I
say it’s complete? Well, it is. I’m going to limit my coverage,
however, to the three main recommendations: the two rules given above,
plus strength training. I’m particularly interested in the new science on
growth or decay Harry has pulled together from many sources. He vouches for its
essential accuracy, but warns that it is “drastically condensed and
simplified, with all the inevitable compromises that entails.”
It’s a Choice
Conventional wisdom that we begin a long slide into old age
and death at about 50 is wrong. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can get
off the slippery slope by following Harry’s Rules. How you age is mostly up to
you. You can choose to live like fifty until your eighty and beyond.
(Following the rules becomes more important the older you get.) What’s more,
if you’re overweight and out of shape, you can become younger for a number of
years and then level off. That’s the premise of the book.
For starters, here are some numbers to chew on. Harry says
changing your lifestyle can eliminate over 50 percent of all illness and
injuries in the last third of your life. Furthermore, he says 70 percent of
premature death is lifestyle-related. “Even more important,” Chris writes in
the opening chapter, “is Harry’s statement that some 70 percent of the normal
decay associated with aging—the weakness, the sore joints, the lousy balance,
the feeling crappy—70 percent of that horror can be forestalled almost until
the end.”
Swim Against the Tide
The key to aging
well lies in our ancient past. We have inherited a wonderful body and an amazing
brain. But there’s a “catch,” says Harry. They were not designed for
modern times. “They were designed for life in nature, where only the fittest
survived.” That not new, but Harry adds an intriguing new twist.
“Nature balances growth with decay by setting your body
up with an innate tendency toward decay.” The signal is weak at first and
grows a little stronger each year. Chris calls it the “relentless tide.”
Between 45 and 55 our bodies switch into a “default to decay” mode. “The
free ride of youth is over.” Nature’s rationale is simple, and brutal: to
make room at the trough for the next generation. Food was in short supply and
needed for the childrearing and productive members of the group.
“In the absence of signals to grow, your body and brain
decay, and you age.”
What can we do? “It starts with exercise,” says Harry.
“Exercise—the physical work of hunting and foraging—has always been the
single most powerful signal we can send that life is good; that it’s spring
and time to grow.”
“Biologically, there is no such thing as retirement, or
even aging,” Harry writes. “There is only growth or decay.” And sedentary
living, so common in modern times, is “the most important signal for decay.”
Fortunately, we can swim against the tide for a very long
time--if we chose to do so.
Exercise Signals Growth
Harry takes the reader inside the body for a look at how
exercise affects the process of growth or decay. You’ll have to read the book
for the finer points; I can only whet your appetite with the big picture. He
says much of this is “new biology that has forever changed our thinking about
aging.”
I’ve heard that the body is constantly renewing itself,
but I didn’t appreciate the scale of the process. Every muscle cell in the
body is replaced about every four months. “Your blood cells are replaced every
three months, your platelets every ten days, your bones every couple of
years.” That’s just scraping the surface, but you get the idea.
It’s an active process. Your body doesn’t wait for
something to go wrong; it destroys and replaces the old parts on a natural
schedule. Think of it as preemptive maintenance. “Biologists now believe that
most cells in your body are designed to fall apart after relatively short life
spans, partly to let you adapt to new circumstances and partly because older
cells tend to get cancer.”
Exercise, and each renewal is likely to be an improvement;
if you don’t, you may throw out more than you replace. Your muscles control
growth or decay in the body. “The nerve impulse to contract a muscle also
sends a tiny signal to build it up, creating a moment-to-moment chemical balance
between growth and decay,” not only in the muscle but throughout the body.
“If enough of the growth signals are sent at once, they overwhelm the signals
to atrophy, and your body turns on the machinery to build up the muscles, heart,
capillaries, tendons, bones, joints, coordination, and so on.”
“But let your muscles sit idle and decay takes over
again.”
Biology of Exercise
Your body was designed at a time when hunting and gathering
was the way of life; it doesn’t know any other way. Fortunately, it can’t
distinguish between walking in the neighborhood and foraging, or jogging and
hunting. The key is to understand that foraging and hunting have distinct
metabolisms. Likewise, sprinting and capturing wild prey have a similar and
distinct metabolism.
Light aerobic exercise (up to about 65% of maximum heart
rate), walking and foraging, burns mostly fat. It’s “a wonderful pace,”
says Harry. “This is the metabolic zone where your body and brain heal and
grow.” Harder exercise builds more fitness, “but you gain more endurance and
general healthiness with prolonged light exercise.”
Harder exercise (65% to 85% of max HR) is like shifting
into second gear; you need more power than you can get from fat alone, so your
muscles start to burn glucose (and fat). This shift is also “the signal that
you’ve started to hunt.”
Your ancient genes look on glucose as “powerful but
expensive fuel,” never to be wasted on foraging. “If you’re burning
glucose, you must be hunting, which triggers a major metabolic shift that
affects your muscles, brain, gut, immune system, kidneys, liver, heart and
lungs.”
Over 85% heart rate is anaerobic exercise; it’s like
going into high gear. You’ve exceeded your ability to deliver blood and oxygen
to the muscles. This degree of effort can only be sustained for a short time,
before lactic acid build-up shuts you down. It’s reserved for “escape or
capture” moments. “It saved your ancestor’s lives, or let them end someone
else’s, countless times over the past few billion years.” The modern
equivalent would be the 200m dash, or Lance Armstrong sprinting for the
finish line. It’s interval training or the Tabata protocol (see article 10).
“It’s great for vim, vigor and pure fitness, [but] don’t bother with it
until you get into pretty good basic shape.”
As mentioned earlier, Chris and Harry recommend that four
days a week be devoted to aerobic exercise. That might be two days of light
aerobics and two of hard aerobics, with interval training thrown in once a week.
“Once you pass the age of fifty, exercise is no longer
optional. You have to exercise or get old.” Do something six days a week,
which brings us to strength training.
Strength Training
Frankly, I didn’t expect to learn anything new and
exciting about the benefits of strength training from a pencil-necked Manhattan
doctor and a 70-year-old lifting newbie—but I did. Did you know that the
greatest benefits from strength training come in sports like figure skating and
skiing? Listen to Harry. (I’m liking him more and more.)
“The greatest advances have come not in the strength
sports, like the shot put and weight lifting, but in the coordination
sports—the ones that require grace, skill and coordination, like figure
skating and skiing. Those improvements are due largely to increased coordination
and muscular integration, as well as the increased muscle power available for
jumping and landing, developed through strength training.”
What we tend to overlook is the marvelous network of nerves
that link our brain and body. To make the point, Harry uses the example of a
single step. “Each step, each coordinated movement, involves thousands of
nerve fibers.” Climbing stairs or running requires more nerve and muscle
coordination, of course. And hitting a tennis ball requires “a massive
harmony” of brain and body: “hundreds of thousands of nerve cells,
controlling hundreds of millions of muscle cells.” And that’s only for the
split second it takes to hit a tennis ball across a net.
Harry says the body grows and the brain learns from each
movement; strength training develops the connection between the two. It builds
power and neural coordination. “The neural impulses to create coordination and
power blaze a trail through your neural circuits. Each time you use them, you
strengthen the balance, power and muscular coordination centers of the physical
brain. And the trail gets broader, smoother and faster.”
Lifting weights until you can’t do another rep forces
your brain to activate the maximum number of strength units, nerve and muscle.
It also damages the units, which is good, because it forces the body to rebuild
them stronger and better than before. It forges new pathways.
That’s why two days a week is enough (three days max) for
strength training. “Unlike endurance units, which recover from aerobic
exercise overnight, your strength units need to enter a forty-eight-hour repair
cycle.”
The “coordinated strength” that makes you a better
skier will also “let you live well at any age.” It wakes up your
nerve/muscle connections, makes you more mobile and less injury prone, and might
even cure your arthritis. “Most arthritis patients report about a 50 percent
reduction in pain and limitation with several months of strength training; minor
arthritis usually disappears entirely.” It strengthens and tightens the
muscles around the joints, making them function more smoothly, with less wear
and tear and pain.
By the way, free weights are better, if you can handle
them. In his usual reserved and understated way, Chris explains why:
“They involve balancing and subtle corrections from side to side, all of which
use and strengthen a whole bunch of other muscles and, more important, zillions
of neuroconnections, which are at the heart of your ability to function in the
real world.”
Chris and Harry say everyone, especially those over 50,
should be doing strength training. “Aerobic exercise saves your life; strength
training makes it worth living.”
Diet
I don’t have much to say about the “Quit eating crap”
rule, except that it’s right on the money. It’s not a diet, but a nutrition
philosophy geared to our Darwinian past. It’s basically the diet I have
followed--and enjoyed--for many years. You’ll definitely want to read Chris’
chapter “Don’t You Lose a Goddamn Pound!” and Harry’s “The Biology of
Nutrition: Thinner Next Year.” You’ll learn a thing or two. I did.
As you no doubt guessed by now, I recommend Younger
Next Year. You’ll find it at your local bookstore or on Amazon.com.
While you’re at it, check out the authors’ website: www.youngernextyear.com.
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