Over Thanksgiving dinner, my father revealed that he intended to live to at least 100 or until the money ran out, whichever came first. Young Doo Kwon turned 80 this year and my mother, Kyungha Park Kwon, is running just four years behind him. I mean that quite literally.
Long after they had finished raising their three children, they started exercising together. This was in the period following the fitness revolution of the 1970s that produced the running and aerobics phenomenon. It is those people who are now pushing into their 70s, 80s, and 90s, and my parents are practically a case study.
They are two of the most diligent exercise fiends I know (there is also one Bill Brossman). They take full advantage of my father’s retiree benefits at Honeywell to use its prodigious fitness center daily, and the only thing that keeps them from their appointed rounds is inclement weather.
Separately, they have won many awards in their individual age groups and I have many Honeywell-themed gifts –– vests, sweatshirts, water bottles and the like –– to prove it. They thrive on the competition.
Sometime in the 1990s (when I was 30-something and they were 60-something) I traveled with my parents to Japan for my brother’s wedding. We took a side trip to Fuji San, known to us as Mount Fuji, and hiked the trails up to its snowcapped peaks.
While they marched ahead of me, left right left right, in sync and relentless in pace, much like the Energizer Bunny on TV, I was mortified to find myself huffing and puffing behind them, struggling to keep up.
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon never did find the Fountain of Youth in Florida, but there have been many studies recently that suggest that most of us can find that fountain in the form of exercise, which produces all sorts of good chemicals that can hold back the aging process.
Case in point is 91-year-old Olga Kotelko, a Canadian of Ukrainian descent, featured in a fascinating article by Bruce Grierson in this week’s New York Times Magazine. According to the article, Kotelko “is considered one of the world’s greatest athletes, holding 23 world records, 17 in her age category, 90 to 95.”
Come on, you may be thinking. Exactly how many elite athletes could possibly exist in that category to begin with? But her achievements are truly remarkable, objectively speaking. People aged 85 and older represent the fastest growing segment of the population right now, and for scientists carving out new territory in studying this group’s physiology, Kotelko represents the motherlode of scientific data.
Just as my parents fit nicely into this demographic profile, so do I fit all too well in another one, which comes with a set of alarm bells. I am one of the 57 million people in the United States who is pre-diabetic; 23.6 million children and adults –– 7.8% of the population –– actually have diabetes. If current trends continue, the Centers for Disease Control projects that by 2050, one in three adults in this country could have diabetes.
Whether or not you get diabetes depends to a degree on predestination. For all his exercise, my dad was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes two years ago at the age of 78. He keeps his sugars under control with medication.
My mother’s sister and brother also have adult onset diabetes so for me, getting snagged pretty much seems like a fate I cannot avoid. I also had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with Will, and at the time the doctor warned me that I would I have a lifetime battle ahead of me, as women with gestational diabetes have a 40 percent chance of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life.
Given all these negative factors at play, I’ve pretty much adopted a grasshopper in spring attitude, fiddling away as if without a care in the world, though I know I would be the most horrible patient possible.
While I would not think of lying and cheating anywhere else in life, I confess that I did do exactly that when I experienced my brush with diabetes. Because I could not stomach the thought of doing the simple finger prick test to monitor my blood sugars, I would make up numbers that seemed to be within the right range and report them. Immature and irresponsible, right? I am admitting this here and now so that others may see this and NOT do what I did. Believe me, you are only hurting yourself.
“We start losing wind in our 40s and muscle tone in our 50s,” says Grierson. Ironically, my best chances of warding off diabetes are to follow the example set by my parents and husband and exercise regularly. Studies show that exercise, combined with diet, can prevent or at least delay the onset of diabetes.
Then there’s the effect of training which helps maintain muscle strength and endurance. Resistance exercise especially helps rejuvenate the mighty mitochondria in our cells and that can roll back muscle age by some 15 to 20 years. Keep diabetes at bay AND feel like a 30-year-old again? Those are two very powerful incentives to start hitting the gym (or at least go out for a vigorous walk with the dogs!) especially now that turkey day is behind us and the holidays, with all their tempting delights, are looming just ahead!
For more information about diabetes visit www.cdc.gov/diabetes or the National Diabetes Education Program at www.yourdiabetesinfo.org.
