Aging Gracefully
Are we better? Stronger? Faster?
Our body parts seem to be wearing out more quickly than TV sitcom actors from the 1970s. But we look better at 50 than they did.
If you are Gen-X or older, you remember the Bionic Woman and the Six-Million-Dollar Man TV series. Whether you watched one, both, or neither, you got the gist. They received body part replacements - an arm, an eye, an eardrum, and a few legs, if I remember correctly, paid for by the government, no less. (I’ll do the math: adjusted for inflation, six million would be about 45 million today.)
The Bionic Woman television series was based on the book Cyborg, by Martin Caidin. It ran for two years (1976 - 78) and was a spinoff of the Six-Million-Dollar Man, which ran from 1973 - 78 and was also based on the book Cyborg.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.
Those fictitious TV government scientists did not spend as much money on Jaime Sommers. When Steve Austin asked how much they were spending on the Bionic Woman, Oscar Goldman said:
Less money. Her parts are smaller.
I did a shallow dive into why so many more people are getting hip, knee, and shoulder replacements today compared to just 20 years ago, and the answers given are a combination of the facts that we are 1) living longer, 2) have a much less tolerant mindset for pain and immobility in our later years, and 3) the replacement parts that are inserted into our bodies have longer lives as well.
Better plastics make implants last longer.
It seems that we have the technology. But unless it’s genetic like rheumatoid arthritis, for example, why are we arriving at a place called debilitating joint pain to begin with?
The fictitious characters Jaime Sommers and Steve Austin were injured by hurling through space via a skydiving mishap and a NASA test-flight crash. According to a study by the Physical Activity Council, more than half of Generation X (1965 - 1980) and a third of the Baby Boomers (1946 - 1964) regularly and primarily participate in fitness sports and outdoor sports activities. If injured, statistics show that they are often not willing to give the activity up, not willing to modify it, or willing to change it to something else. You could then surmise that a runner is not going to start walking, and a golfer is not going to switch to miniature golf. Following rest, surgical replacement, or an adjunct therapy, many return to their sport feeling like they have superpowers. The majority of emergency room pickleball injuries belong to the 50+ category.
If this demographic isn’t willing to give up those activities or limit them after injury or surgery or both, they are setting themselves up for potentially permanent damage and further pain. Some people don’t know when to quit, modify, or change it up not because they don’t “know better,” but because their egos will absolutely not stand for it. This situation also negatively affects the people who love them and live with them. I think they should all go and live with each other on the sandbar that we call Florida.
Some surgeons recommend a more conservative and alternative approach to surgery for pain management like weight loss, over the counter medication, electrical muscle stimulation, steroid or biologic injections, as well as physical therapy.
I am not questioning the athletes competing on the sports field, the professional dancers, the gymnasts, or the marathon runners. They know the risks they are taking and anticipate the wear and tear that their bodies will inevitably go through. I am talking about the everyday Janes and Joes - the rest of us who have to deal with our egos when it comes to the juicy combination of gravity, aging, and ambulation day in and day out while going to the grocery store, walking the dog, or getting up to go to the kitchen.
My Auntie Helen lives on a mountain in Washington state with her husband Bill and will turn 90 in September. They tried assisted living last year - for exactly one week. They then promptly went back to their home on the mountain. When I asked her what happened, she said, “They (the assisted living facility) said they provided entertainment. They did not.” Helen and Bill have gone dancing together in their town on the mountain every week for over 20 years. She will undoubtably live to be 100. (So will you, dad. Keep walking).
Didn’t we used to work the land? Before someone thought to put wheels on the bottom of luggage, weren’t we hauling, heaving, and pushing suitcases through airports? Exercise used to be built into our lives. Now we have to go to the gym, pound water, OD on vitamin D, count our steps and grams of protein. Our predecessors may not have lived as long as we do now, but I’ll bet they slept and ate better.
There is a 54-year-old handsome and fit guy I follow on YouTube who is genuinely startled by the actors of the 1970s looking much, much older than they actually were. For example, the actor who played Mr. Roper on the sitcom Three’s Company - Norman Fell - was 53 when that series premiered in 1977. He rattles off the ages of other actors who, compared to men of the same age today, looked old. Ed Asner who played Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was 40 when that sitcom premiered. Forty. Red Fox was 49 when Sanford & Son premiered. Carol O’Connor from All in the Family was in his early 40s. Maybe the culture of smoking a pack (or two) of cigarettes a day, downing two cocktails before dinner, no sunscreen, and four hours of secondhand smoke on a road trip with the car windows rolled up wasn’t a good idea back then.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Blessings & Love,
