60Itis is about change that is happening to you now, may and will happen to you in your future. I am defining change as a deviation from your past or current medical condition that has risen to a level of awareness or detectability. Some of the changes that will happen to you are a continuation of things that have been going on in your life or body for some time but until now were dormant or had not reached the point of becoming an issue. They may be as simple as the first time you had an elevated marker in a blood test, the first time that you were awakened to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the first time you had a lower back or shoulder pain, the first time you forgot a historical date or someone’s name, etc. Many of these changes are initially dismissed only to rear themselves a short time later with increasing frequency or fervor to become an issue for you.
As my wife and I began to take notice of these changes in our lives and family and friends began to mention those occurring in their lives, I coined the term “60-Itis” to refer to a wide range of conditions that begin to occur as early as your mid-40’s and accelerate as you grow older. They may be genetic, accidental and/or lifestyle dependent. The good news based on my experience is that many are livable – meaning that you can continue to do what you did before with minor alterations in behavior, diet, life style or by taking a prescriptive medicine or a combination.
I am not a doctor and I will not be giving out any medical device. I am more of an observer, cataloguer and communicator to assist you in understanding what may happen to you as you move forward in life.
To a degree all the changes that will be discussed in this blog have a statistical bent. Statisticians provide information on how many out of a given size population will experience a certain condition. So even if we know 1 out of 1,000,000 will be affected, we are surprised when we are the 1 and ask why me? What I can tell you that in order to arrive at the statistic 1 in a million, at least one will have to experience the condition. Sometimes that is random 1 but in many cases there is a predisposition in your genes that makes you a higher probability of being that 1 but you don’t know it yet. Secondly, as you get older, the statistics take on increasingly relative importance. For example, the number of people in 500 random individuals taking prescriptive medicines increases as the population ages until it approximates close to the entire population. So while you may not be taking any medicines at age 45, as you get closer to 60, the probability that you will have to take one increases significantly. We are victims of the numbers. While you may have avoided being a 1 in X to this point in your life, statistically speaking the more that you have avoided, the probability increases that you will become a 1 in X in the near future as our body ages and begins to breakdown. No one is immune. So crap will happen to you whether you want it or not.
The reality is for you to recognize the changes occurring in your life, learn how to address them and decide how to proceed down the lengthy road that may be left in your life. I hope in this blog to raise your awareness of what is happening in your life so that you can realize that you are not alone, should seek assistance as appropriate and for most situations will realize life can go on far into the future before requiring some type of drastic action such as surgery.
The major motivation for this blog is that I run in to people each day who:
- Have little knowledge about the changes that can affect them
- Don’t know what they can do to prevent some changes from occurring to them
- Only follow one path of action when faced with a change when there are several alternatives available
- Were not aware of the process of how to detect changes that are occurring within them
- Don’t know how to take responsibility for their own lives as they believe that changes are inevitable and nothing can be done to prevent them
So hopefully over the next few years, we can through this discussion collectively take more control over our lives and, perhaps, more importantly improve or maintain the quality of our lives.
Your comments and input are important because reactions and treatments can vary dramatically between person-to-person and I cannot experience them all personally (thank God) but collectively we may create a total picture.
Discussions in the next few weeks will focus on how to delay or avoid major knee surgery; the importance of understanding your medical tests, blood work and the family tree; what you should know if you elect to have major knee surgery; how diet and exercise can control or minimize certain conditions; important factors in choosing a primary physician; and making good decisions regarding your health.
