A little less talk, a lot more training...

I'll begin this post with an anecdote:

My aunt, God bless her, has never been particularly active, not that I can recall, anyway. She was never an athlete, never one for risk-taking, either. Nevertheless, in her fifties she began to experience shoulder pain, which lead to surgery and even more crippling shoulder pain. A woman who never stressed or strained her body too much, except maybe to clean house here and there, my aunt enjoys even less mobility and function than before.

How is all that possible? Friends, I'm going to share something with you that might come as a shock: our bodies are meant to MOVE and to undergo the stresses and strains of a routine workload, because these are the conditions under which our bodies have evolved, the one's that ensure that they will continue to function well even into our twilight years. They've gotten pretty damn good at it, by the way.

Now, let's consider the case of my great-uncle, by contrast. He's in his eighties now and still remains vital and active. All of his life, he has routinely engaged in mentally and physically demanding work, which has ranged from maintaining a small farm to trapping furs in the wooded areas that surround his house. Recently, he survived a stroke with only some short term memory loss, having regained all motor function in the time since hospitalization. He's strong because his lifestyle demands it.

What I hope you gain from all of this is that, contrary to the hype, stress is good for you. What we have is a culture of pain avoidance made worse by the fact that, for most of us, working entails little to no physical labor. And while my great-uncle now suffers from many aches and pains due to his work, that work has made his late-life independence possible. As I see it, the choice to remain active is a simple one: either we grow old and suffer, never having exercised regularly, or grow old, experience pain, but enjoy more mobility and exhibit a higher late-life work capacity, the fruits of active living.