And actually, for an eighty year old man you could hardly say that, medically, he was ill or ‘diseased’ in any way, at least via most medical parameters usually used nowadays: blood pressure, blood chemistries, x-rays, whatever.
However, as you might have guessed, I have learned to look beyond the currently used medical parameters normally used to reflect the status of one’s health. And for good reason. I noticed that despite his normal blood pressure and pulse rate, as judged by the speed of his gait, fact is, as I gradually increased his rate to just two miles per hour, the nature of his gait seemed somewhat strained, not to mention the suggestion of a touch of labored breathing.
---Now, one might say that for an eighty year old man this type of bodily reaction might be expected. Perhaps. But after years of experience in doing this, there was just something about the nature of the way he walked that I didn’t like. So I checked his pulse again.Now, any medical doctor would say the rate was normal and within what would be expected for a two miles per hour gait (although most medical doctors, fact is, don’t work with people this way, ‘hands on’ so to speak in a gym, as I have come to do...and so most of them probably wouldn’t know whether the pulse rate was normal or not for that particular gait).
Actually, most medical doctors would probably not work ‘hand-on’ directly with a patient the way I’m talking about, and all they might do when it comes to the need to exercise is say, “I think you need to exercise,”...and that’s about it. That’s just about all they would do or say (even though exercise and lifestyle factors and that sort of thing is often directly related and even causative of the very disease processes they might be treating! Or perhaps they’ll go over some details with their patient as to how often and how long their patient should walk or whatever. But to actually work with them, ‘hands-on’? Listen, when is the last time your medical doctor worked with you in a gym? It’s done perhaps, sometimes, but it that circumstance would be quite rare. And when it is done, as in a hospital setting or otherwise, it’s often left up to a physical therapist. But the physical therapist, unfortunately, hardly has the knowledge of a medical doctor (just as the usual office based medical doctor hardly has the experience of a physical therapist).
So, it would seem obvious then that all of these fields, all of the lifestyle related medical fields, from fitness training, to nutrition, to psychology, and so on...long ago they should all have been brought together along with ‘medicine.’ The medical field, so as to probably be able to care for the patient.
It’s no wonder when I checked the elderly man’s pulse, the fact is, even though via currently known medical parameters his pulse appeared fine, like I said, with the added experience as of a lifestyle related medical doctor...I just didn’t like something about the nature of the way his pulse felt. You know, when you've been working ‘hands-on’ for so many years this way with people, as a medical doctor in a gym doing things doctors usually are not known to do--but should have been doing long ago--you begin to see things, and pick things up, and discover things that few people know about, and that actually few professionals even throughout the world know about, let alone would ever even dream existed...a sort of 'sixth sense' you might say, a ‘future’ knowledge capable of saving millions of lives, but which is just now, currently, in the present, being introduced and presented...apparently, by me.
---So, as I felt his radial pulse tapping against my finger, I utilized the new knowledge I’ve come to learn and discover and know over the years, and which in this instance enabled me to detect, via feeling his pulse, things about the nature of his exercising, and about any strains or untoward stresses which his exercising might have been having upon his body...things which otherwise I could never have known about. Yes, I have learned to recognize signs and even symptoms, as in this particular instance, and as in other instances, which heretofore have not yet been written down in books, nor come to be known by the medical profession, let alone by fitness or other professionals. Look...even Far Eastern Medicine has learned to differentiate 32 different radial pulses, and which know-how is not normally part of Western medicine. So for me to have discovered even yet different relationships than all of these in Western and Eastern medicine...well, it’s really not so far-fetched as it might at first seem, especially when you consider the necessity to combine numerous lifestyle related factors together with medicine in order to make these discoveries (which in turn would necessitate a medical doctor/certified personal fitness instructor combination, just for starters).
At any rate, the nature of the elderly gent’s pulse prompted me to tell him, “Sir...I think you’d better stop now...and sit down.”
---“Why?” he answered. “I feel fine.”
---“Please sir...just listen to what I say. I want to check something out.”
---...Actually, I knew that if he had continued walking for another minute or two, his cardiovascular system would have become significantly compromised to such a degree that he’d soon begin to feel dizzy, another sign often indicative of a decrease in the perfusion of blood to his brain, which is often caused in turn by a drop in blood pressure.
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You see, a fitness training person or physical therapist (both of whom are not used to working with people in the way and to the extent I am able do so by virtue of my underlying medical knowledge)...they would usually only first recognize that something was wrong when the patient would first begin to complain of, for example, dizziness. Why even when taking a medical exercise stress test to check for one’s underlying cardiovascular status (as to health or 'disease'), as in a hospital setting for example, it’s often routine to stop the test ‘for safety’s sake’ when the patient would first complain of some untoward symptom, such as pain or dizziness, or when some other medical sign or symptom would show up, such as in the nature of a rapid pulse rate or drop in blood pressure, or whatever.
---But to me...reaching that point can actually turn out to be a point of no return, quite literally, for it can lead to a significantly dangerous arrythmia of the heart (among other harmful effects often unrecognized by the non-medical person) and in turn effects like this could theoretically even lead to complete cardiovascular collapse, and death. For you see, the fact is, depending upon the underlying nature of the individual’s physiological status of his or her body, a sudden drop in blood pressure can have all sorts of deleterious effects. Once the blood pressure drops, even though this circumstance is often easily reversed by having the patient stop walking and lie down with his or her legs elevated (so that gravity helps to bring blood back to the heart, with the effect to offset the drop in blood pressure), every once in a while this doesn’t work.
- Yet, it’s routine for the fitness person or physical therapist in the midst of exercising a client or patient (or even for a cardiologist doing a stress test) to allow the individual to continue exercising until a sign such as dizziness occurs!
---...You see, even though the sign of dizziness hardly ever leads to cardiovascular collapse and/or death, even one time out of thousands is unacceptable, especially when the mere nature of the pulse can often (not always of course) forewarn as to the onset of dizziness ('before' it occurs) with its potential for vascular collapse.
---I’ve learned to call or refer to these kinds of occurrences as “a weakened cardiovascular status.” It’s a term (or sign) I use to refer, actually, to a combination of factors such as:
...a subtle change in the nature of the pulse (as mentioned above and the nature of which is often beyond what the medical community currently reports in medical texts and otherwise)
...as well as a certain look or overall appearance of the person which I have come to recognize over the years,
...or a particular bodily sign a patient might emanate while they might be walking or jogging on a treadmill, or even while lifting a weight doing strength training, or other exercise or motions.
---To me, again depending upon the underlying 'strain resistant status' of a given person’s body, the cardiovascular system might (or might not) be overly strained, sometimes (although rarely) to the point of no return. And this is regardless of any negative medical history a person might haven given regarding disease or otherwise! Actually, I’ve found that this 'strain resistant status' of a given person’s body relates largely to the way a person lives (or has been living), to his or her lifestyle...and to the way a person thinks: their underlying emotional state, the nature of the exercise they might or might not be regularly engaged in, and/or the nature of their food intake (the latter of which, believe it or not, relates not just to the food they have taken into their bodies within the previous few hours, but also to food they might have ingested anytime during the previous few days!)
---If the individual’s cardiovascular status is in this ‘weakened state’ (again, a state I have come to recognize, and which is little known, if at all, in medicine today)...and I’m not talking here of any currently known medical condition such as heart failure or otherwise, well then, the fact is, in such instances, even ‘harmless’ exercise might result in severely compromising effects upon the body. If anything, this ‘weakened bodily status’ might reflect a lack of previous multilevel conditioning of the body, which unfortunately, is common to most all people nowadays, especially as they become older. I say “as they become older” not so much because they ‘are’ older, but because older people have gone for that many more years longer without the requisite multilevel conditioning needed to offset this ‘weakened bodily and cardiovascular status’ I’m talking about (again, a state currently not yet known about nor written about in books).
---I’ve simply recognized the occurrence of this 'weaked status' of the body from my having worked with so many people and for so long over the years as both a medical doctor, surgeon, and certified personal fitness trainer well versed in conventional and alternative forms of nutrition and exercise, and in the mind/body connection and one’s psychological state.
- In other words, putting all these fields together in practice, not just theorizing about it all, has given me an insight heretofore otherwise unknown to man, and which significantly relates to why we appear so much older than we should for any given age. [Again, I refer you here to the many long-lived populations of the world who look, appear, and who are physiologically much younger than we are in our current modern day societies for any given age...and all this, ironically, in the face of our modern scientific and medical technology.]
---That this should be the case...that this knowledge and ‘know-how’ should have been missed till now, is an inexcusable shame...and we are paying for it big-time with our health, or more properly put, with our lack of it (of our health) and with our more markedly advanced deterioration with age!
---You see, the way it was with this gent (at the time I was working with him)...I couldn’t at the time tell him why I really wanted him to sit down. Actually, I had him lie down with his legs up on the foot rest of one of those rowing machines you often see in gyms habitated by the more elderly people. Had I told him what was really on my mind, that I was somewhat concerned for his well being (even though he didn’t realize anything could potentially go wrong), his emotional reaction to it all might have made his reaction that much worse.
---Like I said, the way it was after a minute or so of his having lied down he said, “Hey, ya know doc...I feel a little dizzy...and I have this slight heaviness in my chest."
---Another minute or so and his symptoms all went away. What was really interesting in all this, all the while he was having his symptoms his pulse and blood pressure were within normal limits. No decrease in blood pressure nor elevation of pulse rate as is often seen with a drop in blood pressure. Yet, I had felt this change in the nature of his pulse (which I've come to recognize, as I noted above). Had I not had him lie down when I told him to do so...well then, his blood pressure might then have dropped to recognizable parameters and with more severe effects other than a mild and fleeting sensation of dizziness.
---Needless to say, when the nature of his pulse ‘normalized’ (according to my own new found parameters)...that’s when he’d begun to feel perfectly fine. “Hey...doc...I feel fine. Let me get back on the treadmill again.”
---Fact is, like I said, he had a 'normal’ medical history, a 'normal' just about 'everything'...and even a normal stress test. But I still didn’t let him go back on the treadmill. Instead, we had a long discussion, and I advised him to go back to see his cardiologist. The way it turned out, after having had more advanced tests than a stress test, he was eventually diagnosed as having 'significant blockages' of his coronary arteries, a condition which I'd lay odds is occurring significantly throughout large masses of people throughout the world, and not just in people in their thirties and forties nowadays...but even in their twenties! And the 'kicker' of it all: these 'symptom free' young people have no idea that anything untoward is going on within their bodies...and which underlying changes are eventually gonna ‘get’ them (and many times, unfortunately, when it might be too late)...unless certain changes are made in their lifestyles (and which lifestyle changes I'll be getting to discussing in time).
---In Summary, there are a number of things this little Scenario demonstrates:
---...The more obvious, that 'exercise stress tests' can be normal in the face of serious underlying cardiovascular disease.
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--...And the much, much less obvious, that a lifestyle related lack of multilevel conditioning perpetuated over a period of years can result in many of the signs and symptoms of that which we otherwise call 'disease'...and 'aging' (heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, deteriorated joints and musculoskeletal system, demineralized bones and bone fractures, even autoimmune diseases and cancer...and the list goes on and on, even to those signs and symptoms we normally refer to as “signs and symptoms of aging”: ruddy and vascularized complexion of the face, inelasticity of the skin, decreased functional ability of the lungs, ‘weakened’ cardiovascular and bodily status with concomitant decreased ability to move and walk and to balance, enlargement of the features of and falling down and wrinkling of the face, under eye puffiness, skeletal and postural deformities or irregularities of the musculoskeletal system and the skeletal frame, decreased height...and so on.
---As I said, I could go on and on naming an untold number of the signs and symptoms of 'aging,' at least of the first thirty or forty years of what we currently refer to as 'aging,' and interpret as 'the look of old age'...but much of which is not 'aging' per say, so much as it actually is in large part an “overall, multilevel and multisystem deterioration of the body secondary to a prolonged lack of multilevel conditioning and improper lifestyles. alien to the underlying nature of our genetic heritage going back to the time of Ancient Man”!
---Although again I must categorize my above conclusions as personal theoretical observations, you’ll find they’ll one day turn out to be ‘no brainers’ heretfore not recognized by modern society and modern medicine, and secondary to our having not yet interrelated 'medicine' with so many other fields I speak about on this web site (from nutrition, fitness, anthropology, sociology, human behavior, and even to theoretical physics, and so on), and the necessity of which fields would be a ‘must’ in order to have been able to make the discoveries I have made, and to have come to the realizations I have come to.
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Lifestyle Disease Scenarios Introduction
Scenario One / Scenario Three
