UpBeat Living: Loving Form

by Kebba Buckley, M. S., O.M.

On my birthday, each year, I always think about what I’ve accomplished and how !

I’ve grown during the previous year. I also think about what I would like to achieve during the upcoming personal year, and what areas of my life I would like to enrich. Sometimes, on a birthday easily divisible by large numbers, I think of the proportion of my life that I have lived. For example, when I turned 25, I thought about quarter centuries. I thought, well, if I have three quarter centuries of active life, then I’ve now completed one, and I’m entering the most active one I’ll have. I was determined to make the most of it. And I have. I have made these rich years. I finished another degree, built a career, built a company, wrote a book, wrote many columns, became an ordained minister, learned to garden, danced a lot, found many fine friendships, started enjoying life a lot, and learned to write legibly—sometimes.

Now I’m forty-something. Suddenly, and waay ahead of schedule, I started thinking about turning fifty—wow! Okay, my twenties were marred by horrible, crippling arthritis. My thirties blew by (hey, I was very busy), and suddenly I’m forty-something. That’s a lot of years! What did I do with all of them? More important to your life, what have you done with your many years? That’s the review process, the looking back and evaluating.

What about what’s coming up? First of all, how long do you plan to live? My mother’s parents and their siblings were born in the 1890’s, and they lived into their nineties, without today’s medical methods. My mother was born in the 1920’s, and she thinks she, too, will live into her nineties. My guess is that’s 15 years too short. I keep telling her she will outlive us all, and she ought to plan financially for a lifetime to 105 or 110. She laughs. Don’t laugh! An FM friend, Elna Tymes, studies longevity. She assures me Mom should live to 110, with her genetics and cardiokinetic classes at the hospital, her gardening, her supplements, and her clean diet. Elna also says I should plan to be 130 before leaving my mortal coil! Wow! Doesn’t that put a new twist on financial planning? But that’s a column for someone else to write.

So I want my form, my physical body, to carry me along in the best possible energy for another half a lifetime. Here’s the core issue for me: if I have used this body about half as long as I need to (or four-tenths, according to Elna), am I treating it well enough? Or do my strategies need a tune-up? Don’t we want to be as comfortable as we can be, in any years, let alone in the second half of life? Bette Davis said, “Growing old is not for sissies!” I’m sure she was referring to the discomforts of the aging form.

In a medical class, I was taught that people can develop their athletic prowess further until the age of 32, and then we begin simply functioning less optimally. We peak at about 32. I was also shown curves of the amount of cells we have in our bodies at different ages. By 80, we have, no joke, 20% of the cells we had as kids. So if you notice skin looks thinner with aging, you’re right. It isn’t only the bones that are losing cells, taking us into osteoporosis. We have fewer cells because cells lose their ability to replicate themselves, as the “tail” of the DNA falls off, detaching the replication information. Cancer cells are immortal because their DNA “tails” never fall off.

Now consider the fact that the body has only what we put in our mouths to make new cells with. What do we put in our mouths? Grilled chicken Caesar salad? Water with lemon? Fresh fruit salad? Or are you living on fried chicken, pizza and diet Pepsi? Hands up, everyone who eats frozen dinners with unpronounceable ingredients, drinks a diet soda, then tops it off with fatty desserts! So how many of your cells are made of sugars, ranch dressing, gravies, fryer fat (from fried foods), artificial sweeteners, and alcoholic drinks? Just kidding; a lot of that material never gets beyond your gall bladder, which is accumulating stones, or your kidneys, which are becoming too fibrous to filter body wastes... Are you grossed out yet?

Obviously, you can surf the Web and calculate your own longevity. Possibly, in the interest of your waistline, your clothing budget, and your Attractiveness Quotient (AQ), you’ve been eating light and exercising. Many of you are drinking lots of filtered water. However, if you haven’t really thought about preserving your form for comfort in your very future years, here are several key suggestions:

Estimate how long you may live, and write down how you expect to feel, plus how you would like to feel at different ages. Imagine the best possibilities.
Check in with your doctor and get an overall physical. It may be time for you to cut back on sugar or salt, ramp up calcium or iron, or pull down your blood pressure. Ask your doctor how often, considering your age, you should have physicals, bone density scans, liver factor screenings, and other tests.
In concert with your doctor’s observations, adjust your diet and beverages as will best serve your individual body.
Adjust your exercise, routine or not, to fit with your capabilities and goals. Stretch exercise, such as yoga, has given many people surprising results. Walking, however slowly, generates bone strength.
If stress is reducing your physical comfort, see a counselor or stress therapist. You can learn to relax better, to handle things differently, or even to meditate. Energy therapies optimize the body’s capabilities and comfort level, and make us feel younger in all ways.
Start saying nice things to your form. First, stop telling it how ugly or klutzy it is. Then, start affirming your perfect health and thanking your body for all the work it does in carrying you and your thoughts around. Think about anything positive you like about your body and its functions, and thank your body out loud for these things. Tell the body you love it. Try posting an affirmation on your bathroom mirror, such as: “I feel great all the time! I support my body and my body supports me!”

Love your form, and you will enjoy the next chapters of your life even more.

Kebba Buckley, M.S., O.M., is a stress-management coach, counselor, and therapist. For over 20 years, she has been helping people seeking pain relief, joy and healing, through seminars and individual sessions. You may write her at KebbaBuckley@aol.com.