Hi, "Lemonhead",
I take a bunch of supplements. My not-very-well-informed notion is that at 84¾, I may need supplementation more than most. I don't generally take vitamins, and I try to eat as healthy a diet as I can. Whether or not I need supplements is a question I don't know how to answer.
My only aches and pains are a little tenderness in my hands and wrists, and what was probably an injury to the cervical socket in my neck. I'm not ordinarily aware of it, but it 's more noticeable lately because I've begun arm and shoulder exercises. Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I were swimming a mile a day, but I quit swimming because this cervical joint began to hurt. I had it checked out in 1990. I was told that quite a bit of damage showed up on the x-ray, but I didn't pursue the matter. (I'm not sure there would have been anything anyone could have done about it in 1990 other than prescribe exercises and NSAIDs. Maybe stem cells will come to the rescue one of these years.) But generally, it's nothing more than a nuisance.
I'm puzzled over my lack of osteoarthritis. My predecessors were plagued with it by the time they had reached my age. If we could figure it out, we could all get rich (:-))
I really need to get some guidance from one of the personal trainers at the Wellness Center. I haven't taken the time to explore that yet, but it would probably be a good idea now that I've spent a couple of months working out at a fitness center.
With regard to history, I've exercised throughout all my adult years, but it was a matter of superstition. I was aware of no evidence that it affected my overall health or all-cause mortality risk until the last few years. Back in the 1960's and 1970's, I jogged a couple of miles a day, and I climbed the mountain behind our house. In 1985, I developed a fallen arch in my left foot, and I had to quit running. My wife had started swimming at the Natatorium, so I switched to swimming. After my neck began bothering me in May, 1989, I started climbing up and down Suicide Hill three times in a row. By that time, I had arch supports that allowed me to walk OK. (My left arch gradually completely healed itself, or at least, somehow adapted to its condition.) Then ten years ago, I resumed running again.
After we were married in 1956, my first wife got us on what was then considered a good diet. Then in 1979, within a period of two months, five men in my lab at work, and five men who lived on our street had heart attacks, bypass operations, or angina. I hied myself over to our medical library and spent the summer of 1979 copying articles from the Journal of Clinical Nutrition. There I learned that cardiovascular disease is largely a lifestyle disease. There were third-world cultures in which it was virtually unknown. At that point, I got religion about nutrition.
Some of the articles in the JCN dealt with the Inuit, and with the oily fish they ate. I began eating mackerel or salmon twice a week. Another line of investigation pointed toward soluble fiber as something that would lower cholesterol and would protect against coronary artery disease. I began eating oat bran, Apple pectin seemed to be beneficial. Trace amounts of chromium picolinate seemed to help smooth out blood sugar spikes. And above all, low saturated fat was "in". Nathan Pritikin had gotten modest reversals of coronary arterial plaques with diets that contained no more than 10% fat. I started drinking skim milk, carrying bowls of vegetables to eat at lunch, and avoiding red meat. I lost a lot of weight, getting back to what I weighed when my wife and were married.
I had no heart disease in my family on either side, other than strokes in our nineties, but that didn't mean that it would necessarily work out that way for me.
By the end of the summer of 1979, I was sufficiently mollified by my transformed lifestyle that I quit worrying about cardiovascular disease, and focused on other matters... until two years later, when my wife presented with the invasive ductal adenocarcinoma of the left breast that would kill her in 1992, a little over ten years after she was first diagnosed and treated. Then it was back to the Medical Library, this time ransacking journals for information about cancer.
Normally, I fast for about 16 hours from suppertime to breakfast, postponing breakfast until after I've run. Then I eat a palmful of walnuts with, maybe, 6 or 8 almonds, and 12-15 pistachios along with a cup of low-sodium V8 juice. I've just begun adding some blueberries, some cranberries, and half an apple to my mixed nuts. Next, I prepare a cup of white tea with 1/2 teaspoon matcha green tea and a heaping teaspoonful of "raw" (really, minimally processed, Navitas) cocoa, sweetened with Stevia and flavored with lemon juice. I'm now adding a dash of beta-alanine (for carnosine) and half a pycnogenol capsule to each cup. After that, comes whatever is on the menu for the day... maybe, a few ounces of wild Alaska salmon with a teaspoon of carbon-60 in olive oil. I try to get in as much spinach and broccoli as I can. Another cup of white tea, etc., is part of my "required eating" for the day. I also try to get some legumes each day.
By the time I've eaten all this, there isn't much room for anything else.
For what it's worth, I've had aches and pains that have come, lasted for a few years, and then left. One example is the problem with my left arch. Another is a problem with the big toes on both feet. I attributed the ridges that developed at the tops of the metatarsal joints to the tight, wingtip shoes that I wore to work. Evidently, my joints have somehow remodeled to eliminate the problem. I hope this happens with you. I know it's worrisome to see things deteriorating with age and time. I hope things subside for you, too.
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