Pre-Publication Endosrsements for "Longevity Decoded - The 7 Keys to Healthy Aging"

Longevity Decoded has been out since late Spring; here are the pre-publication endorsements that can be found on the back cover and on first inside pages.

Dr. Schimpff explores the exciting topic of healthy aging.   He combines the science of aging with evidence to suggest how each of us influences our personal journey in life.  We make choices everyday which impact our health.  This book will help you understand how those daily choices will influence your life not only today but as you get older.  Begin today to plan for tomorrow.   

James (Jim) M. Anders, Jr., CPA, MBA, CGMA, President and Chairman of the Board, National Senior Campuses, Inc., Administrator and Chief Operating Officer, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Inc.

A highly enjoyable and uplifting read written by a physician with uncommon intellect and wisdom.  Certainly, we can all benefit from following Dr. Schimpff's prescription for a healthier and more meaningful life.

R. Alan Butler, Chief Executive Office, Erickson Living

Brilliant work by Dr. Stephen Schimpff yet again!  Dr. Schimpff has done a systematic analysis of aging and longevity.   His uncanny ability to use data and science together makes his suggestions compelling and convincing, while being insightful.  Despite being a complete and thorough account for advanced readers, his book is simple enough to understand for a beginner. If there is only ONE book you want to read on this subject, it should be this…

Hiren Doshi, CEO, Paragon Private Health, Co-founder and President, OmniActive Health Technologies

The old adage goes “the only sure things are taxes and aging.”  Not so fast!  Reading Stephen Schimpff’s fascinating new book did not help me pay my taxes, and despite his sage advice, my birthday still came and went.  But the concepts he describes (in a meaningful and fun way) made me recognize that the age I feel is truly in my hands! -- 

Stephen K. Klasko, M.D., M.B.A., President and CEO, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health

We are witnessing the marketization of a backward behemoth – the U.S. Healthcare industry.  Consumers will become a force in a new health economy that will demand clarity, transparency, choice and value.  Seniors, already a major social and cultural force in our country, expect more from our healthcare system, and how we transform health for seniors will be central to how we develop the broader roadmap of market reform that is required to improve the health status of all Americans.  A big driver is the creation of incentives for healthcare consumers to engage in their healthiness.  Aging is not trivial, and it’s not a spectator sport, despite what the American medical complex has led us to believe.  Dr. Schimpff describes not only what we should expect as we age, but what is expected, and how our taking a more activist role in managing our health is a critical part of a maturing market. 

Don McDaniel, CEO, Canton & Company, Baltimore, Maryland 

With remarkable ease and with clarity of message, Dr. Schimpff demystifies the aging process and our current understanding. Most importantly he provides a simple, successful path to realizing your personal goals of health and well-being. As he remarks, You can do it.

Matt Narrett, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Erickson Living

As my age cohort heads toward Medicare, like a veritable tsunami of aging boomers, this text ought to be our navigational guide in the storm.  We will want yoga on the lawn, rather than a wheelchair in the garden, we will crave gourmet organic meals, not a nursing home tray!! Dr Schimpff will help us to achieve these dreams with his folksy and reassuring style. This book only confirms for me that the best is yet to come!

David B. Nash MD, MBA. Founding Dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health

  
In this easy to understand, yet frank and direct treatise intended for both patients and physicians, Dr. Stephen Schimpff successfully demystifies human longevity and its relationship to genetics and related environmental factors. He shows how the new primary care paradigm, variously known as direct primary care or concierge care or retainer-based care, allows for close relationships to form between physicians and their patients, which in turn facilitates the creation of customized and personalized health and wellness solutions to extend patient longevity. The ‘keys’ to a long healthy life revealed by Dr. Schimpff make it a must read for people young and old.
Guru Ramanathan Ph.D., Chief Innovation Officer, GNC

As the world's older population continues to expand at an unprecedented rate, Dr. Schimpff gives readers simple steps that can lay the crucial groundwork for our future health. He provides an optimistic approach to the inevitability of aging and a refreshing perspective that our 'golden years' can also be our 'golden age,' based on his first-hand experience as a healthcare practitioner.

E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine

We are living longer, but not necessarily better. Societal anti-aging biases are deeply held, reinforcing negative stereotypes about a time in life that should be defined by respect and opportunity. Longevity Decoded challenges this stereotype, offering an alternative perspective to aging that is not only positive but empowering. It is sorely needed in a society that is rapidly aging. 

Katie Smith Sloan, President and CEO, LeadingAge

Life Expectancy Has Lengthened But Not Equitably

For most of recorded human history, lifespans did not change. Then it doubled in about 100 years.

 At the time of Lincoln the average life span was 38 years; today it is about 78-80 years. But whenever it ends it is like a waterfall. Most people begin to die near to the expected point; the drop off in percentage still living declines precipitously. Fortunately, the waterfall has been pushed downstream by years and decades but eventually the time arrives.  

 

Like a slow moving river, we go through life in our 20s, 40s and even 60s with little concern or thought about death. Then almost suddenly we realize it is fast approaching. Can we as individuals push our personal waterfall further downstream? The answer is yes but to do so effectively requires starting back when we were not really thinking about it – as young adults or even better as children. 

Why have life spans increased? Many would credit better medical care and certainly that has had a significant role, especially for the individual person. But most of the effect comes from public health: decreased maternal mortality at childbirth, reduced infant mortality, reduced childhood infection mortality due to vaccines, and greatly reduced deaths due to infections such as typhoid fever and tuberculosis as a result of safe water and sewers along with pasteurization of milk. More people have better nutrition and better housing. As to medical care, antibiotics are the prime example of an improvement that had a major impact on early mortality as has care of those with trauma. In other words, deaths that used to occur in infants, children and young adults are largely curtailed today with most deaths now occurring in just the older age groups and usually due to chronic illnesses – illnesses that for a large measure are related to a lifetime of adverse lifestyles.

Longevity varies by location. Baltimore, Maryland is a good example. For a person born in 2011, it is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that the average life span will be about 72 years. But the variability based on location within Baltimore of that birth is striking. A person, likely white, born in an affluent neighborhood will live on average to 83 years. A child, likely black, born in a socially economically distressed area will die on average by age 63. Longevity varies by sex, race, location and many other factors but in the end it is only partly due to genetics, somewhat due to environment and very much due to how we treat our bodies over time. Of course, a person in a poor neighborhood has less access to good food, finds it unsafe to let the kids out to play, is chronically stressed just dealing with the bare necessities of life and is barraged with advertisements for tobacco and alcohol while drug dealers abound on the corners and violent trauma is commonplace. So it is not necessarily chosen behaviors but a lifestyle of necessity that determines variations in longevity.

Some Thoughts on Aging – Denial versus Acceptance versus Rejoicing

Those of you who have read some of my past articles are aware that I wrote mostly about various aspects of primary care and our dysfunctional healthcare delivery system overall. A few years ago I wrote a post for KevinMD on moving to a retirement community. Since then I became interested in the actual process of aging and did some further posts for KevinMD. Why do we age? Why do our various organs lose function over time when does it start and how fast does it occur? Can we do anything about it; can we slow it down? Why do complex chronic illnesses become more prevalent with aging? Can we prevent those? What research is ongoing? And from there - would a pill delay aging? What are the efforts to actually reverse aging, a search for the Fountain of Youth? After a few years of research came “Longevity Decoded – The 7 Keys To Healthy Aging” which was published in April, 2018 and is available on Amazon. This article and those to follow are based on this journey of exploration.           Your comments will be most welcome.

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We are all aging every day but mostly we ignore it, do not recognize it or deny it. Then all of a sudden we look in the mirror and realize that older age has found us. Even then each person deals with aging differently. 

There is a parody by an unknown author of Dr Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat” which takes a negative perspective on aging. Perhaps “The Cat in the Hat” says much of what many people feel and think.

But there are other perspectives, many much more positive.

After I told a friend about the concept of what I was writing, he sent me the following: “About 25 years ago I received a video about the Adirondack Park. When the park was established - in the late 1800's I believe - the New York state government drew a blue line around the immense region. Individuals living inside the park were allowed to stay, and pass their land onto heirs, but they could not sell their property to others. Over the succeeding generations the land not passed on to heirs became owned by the state. The video was about a gentleman in his 60's who was one of the last of his generation and focused on preserving what had been the Adirondack way of life - realizing it was about to fade into history. In the video as he talked he slowly unfolded a 6' wooden ruler. He went on to indicate that the 72 inches represented the average lifespan in years for many folks. He then indicated his age on the ruler and made the point that while he hoped to live beyond the end of the ruler he realized his time was short and he had limited time to accomplish his goals.

“My dad had recently passed away - at the age of 72 - and in his tools I found a folding ruler. After seeing the video I picked up the ruler and unfolding it became aware I was beyond the half way point. Over the years I have often opened and looked at the ruler. I recall at 50 feeling that time was speeding up. For some reason now that I'm in my 60's the passage of time bothers me less - but I am aware of the limited amount left. I am also focusing more on what happens when, hopefully, I go beyond the end of the ruler.

“It seemed to me your audience may benefit from an increased awareness of time and what they can do to productively live their lives now with that goal of having an enjoyable existence in the future.”

Good advice. Here are some other bits of personal philosophy about aging and its impact on us as individuals.

Ian Brown in his book The Experiment rebels at aging through his diary that he starts at age sixty. As recounted by Gerard Helferich in a Wall Street Journal book review, “His journal is largely a protest against decline. His hearing is fading, along with his memory. His knees ache. His arches have fallen. His face sags, and a patch of hair over his forehead resembles ‘a random stand of corn that somehow got planted away from the main field.’ He has rosacea, age spots and a hemorrhoid. Though he and his friends still hike and ski, it’s a case of ‘ever-older men doing daring things, to prove we’re still daring, and therefore not older.’ Mostly Ian Brown regrets not taking more risks… he is afraid that he hasn’t lived up to his promise… A friend reminds him that we spend the first half of our lives wishing we looked like someone else and the second half wishing we looked like our former selves.”

Willard Spiegelman, on the other hand, in his early 70’s when he wrote Senior Moments may be, says  Helferich, “closer to the end than Mr. Brown, [but] he doesn’t betray dread or regret but a gentle, teasing acceptance. ‘We come into the world alone, with a cry…we exit alone, to confront the final eternal silence. The fun, all the pleasure and adventure, lies in between.’ [The two books] striking dissimilarities—in content and form but especially in attitude and voice—derive from the authors’ varying views on life more than from their relative ages or their divergent attitudes about the end of life. Whether we are 60 or 70, or 80 or 90, how fiercely we rage against the coming of that good night depends above all on how we have embraced the sum of our days.”

“The Cat in the Hat” has a clearly negative perspective on advanced years and certainly not all would agree. My friend with the 72-inch ruler is rather philosophical while recognizing that time is indeed moving on.  Brown wants to deny and so does “daring” adventures while Spiegelman is more accepting of what lies ahead. 

The perspective of an older person is related mostly to how he or she perceives life and how he or she has lived their earlier years. It is with that background of life and living that we come to terms – or not - with growing older.

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