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Nov. 1, 2013
So many changes as we age
The Midlife Affair focused on health-related issues for the 40+.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Preteens aren’t the only ones who wonder what’s happening to their body. Adults entering into middle age also start to notice changes, and wonder what’s happening, whether every spot might be skin cancer, every headache a brain tumor, every forgotten task a sign of dementia. As a step towards educating those of us in our 40s, 50s and 60s about what’s a normal part of aging, and what’s worth a doctor’s appointment, community member Lana Marks Pulver organized the Midlife Affair.
“My motivation was that lately I have found a lot of my contemporaries discussing many various issues revolving around getting older,” explained Pulver about what inspired her to create the event. “Many have lots of questions, and aren’t sure where to get them answered, or are just too busy to seek out their answers. So, I thought it would be a great idea to provide a forum for those questions to be answered all in one night, in one room.”
Attended by approximately 450 people on Oct. 24 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, the Midlife Affair featured several exhibitors, including but not limited to those with products or treatments to help with aging and hormone imbalance, slimming and hair re-growth, joint pain, cancer prevention, and organizing aging parents, as well as medical specialists in diagnostics. Fellow community member Dr. Art Hister, medical analyst for Global TV and author of The Midlife Man and Dr. Art Hister’s Guide to a Longer and Healthier Life, hosted the evening. Registered nurse Maureen McGrath, producer and host of CKNW Sunday Night Sex Show, spoke on the topic Sex in Middle Age and Beyond, and Dr. Lauren Donaldson Bramley from Project Skin MD, who specializes in preventive health, spoke on Anti-Aging Medicine, how it can make people feel and look better. The evening’s keynote presenters were Dr. John J. Whyte, chief medical expert for the Discovery Channel, highlighting sections of his book Is This Normal? The Essential Guide to Middle Age and Beyond, and cardiologist Dr. William Davis, founder of the Track Your Plaque program (trackyourplaque.com), on aspects of his book Wheat Belly and how a wheat-heavy diet can negatively affect our health.
“Over 80 percent of the people I meet today are pre-diabetic or diabetic,” writes Davis on wheatbellyblog.com. “In an effort to reduce blood sugar, I asked patients to remove all wheat products from their diet based on the simple fact that, with few exceptions, foods made of wheat flour raise blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods. Yes, that’s true for even whole grains. More than table sugar, more than a Snickers bar. Organic, multigrain, sprouted – it makes no difference.
“People returned several months later and did indeed show lower blood sugar, often sufficient for pre-diabetics to be non pre-diabetics,” he continues. “But it was the other results they described that took me by surprise: weight loss of 25 to 30 lbs over several months, marked improvement or total relief from arthritis, improvement in asthma sufficient to chuck two or three inhalers, complete relief from acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, disappearance of leg swelling and numbness. Most reported increased mental clarity, deeper sleep, and more stable moods and emotions. I witnessed even more incredible experiences, like the 26-year-old man incapacitated by full-body joint pains who started to jog again, pain-free. And the 38-year-old schoolteacher who, just weeks before her surgeon-scheduled colon removal and ileostomy bag, experienced cure – cure – from ulcerative colitis and intestinal hemorrhage – and stopped all medications. That’s when I knew that I had to broadcast this message. Wheat Belly was the result.”
In his presentation at the Midlife Affair, Whyte, who also has written AARP New American Diet: Lose Weight, Live Longer, took the audience from head to toe, quickly outlining what they could expect as they age, what they can do to counter some of the effects of aging, and for what they should see a doctor. He discussed hair loss (in men and women), how the skin changes, body shape, vision, hearing, digestion and sleep, and offered eight tips for longevity.
Most of the changes we see as we age occur over a period of time, said Whyte, and he urged listeners to make a doctor’s appointment for pretty much any change that occurs suddenly, from hair to vision to hearing loss. But loss itself is normal, he said. Not only must we accept that, but we also must do more as we age than we did when we were younger to stay healthy.
With regards to body shape, for example, Whyte explained that our metabolism decreases about one percent per year after the age of 25. “If you did everything exactly the same in terms of physical activity and exercise when you’re 50 as you did when you were 20, you still would gain weight,” he said. “And the reason why you’re going to gain weight is because it’s a matter of calories in versus calories out, so our metabolism is decreasing, that’s fewer calories out, everything else being equal.... But, if you think about it, in our 20s and our 30s, 30 percent of our body is muscle, 20 percent is fat. By the time we’re 40, it’s exactly the reverse, 20 percent is muscle and 30 percent is fat. So, I joke, our bodies conspire against us as we get older, with the amount of body fat increasing, our lean body mass decreas[ing].” But we can do something about it, he said, notably, by being more active and eating healthier.
One thing, he said, that he wished more people knew in their 20s and 30s is that “bones have maximum mass between ages 25-35, then they shrink in size and density. That’s exactly the time that we need to be doing resistance training, lifting weights ... and that’s the time in our lives when we become more busy with our jobs and our families, and that sets us up, especially for women, to be predisposed to fractures as we get older.”
Whyte also explained why we lose height as we age. Starting at age 40, we can lose up to a half an inch each decade, even more after age 60, because “the disks in our spine ... contain water and we lose water content over the years.”
He noted that losing the ability to read small print, or presbyopia, is a normal part of aging, as is the loss of peripheral vision and the appearance of floaters (gel-like vitreous) in our eyes. He talked about cataracts (which cloud vision) and glaucoma (which often doesn’t show symptoms, like tunnel vision and halos, until it’s too late for treatment), and the fact that macular degeneration (one symptom of which is that writing appears wavy) is the leading cause of blindness in Americans over the age of 65. He recommended annual vision checks and specific tests for cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration.
With respect to hearing loss, Whyte explained that it shouldn’t start happening until after age 60, that it is usually worse for men, and that the culprit is generally noise or genetics. The good news, he noted, is that most hearing loss can be restored nowadays – and it should be (with hearing aids or cochlear implants, for example) because those who live with diminished hearing have been shown to become more socially isolated and this isolation leads to increased cognitive decline.
Among the many other topics Whyte covered was memory loss, how we will need more time as we get older to get things done and we’ll have more difficulty multitasking. “Believe it or not,” he said, “our brains shrink about 20 percent per decade, starting at age 25, but the great news is we have millions of neurons and our brains really do have this amazing ability to adapt. But something to keep in mind is that, in general, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia do not occur before age 60, it just doesn’t. So, if you’re in your 40s ... if you forget where your keys are, you don’t have Alzheimer’s. I’m not concerned if you’ve forgotten where you’ve parked your car in the convention centre parking. I am concerned if you don’t know, looking at your keys, what they’re used for.”
Whyte listed some tips to help people remember: write things down, establish routines, make associations and connections, and stay active, physically and mentally (for example, learn a new language, join a reading group, dance – “there’s data that actually shows that people that dance maintain more cognitive function than those that don’t, it requires a lot of skills,” he noted).
Ending on a positive note, Whyte gave his advice for living a longer, healthier life: get a good night’s sleep, be active/walk, have a purpose in life (“there’s data that shows that those people that want to be alive, stay alive longer”), stay positive (“those people that have a more positive outlook on life live longer”), drink coffee (“People that drink two to three cups of coffee a day live longer than those that don’t and actually have a decreased incidence of dementia. We’re not exactly sure why that is. We think it’s because there are a lot of antioxidants in there.” – Whyte added that he was referring to regular brewed coffee, not lattés, cappuccinos, frappuccinos or other such specialty drinks), stay connected in the old-school, face-to-face way (not social networking over the Internet), get screened and eat healthily.
Pulver told the Independent that she’s evaluating whether she will do this type of event again, with other speakers, perhaps in a different format. “I think there is still a lot to cover on aging, anti-aging and midlife change,” she said.
“I’m happy to take people’s suggestions and ideas on things they’d like to learn more about or specific speakers they’d like to hear, on the subject of aging, anti-aging and midlife change,” she added. Pulver’s e-mail is [email protected].
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