Retiring Right: A Dotor's Guide to Healthy Residence Living

Speaker 1: Greetings everyone. This is the Sound Health Radio Show where we talk about the crossroads of the environment, our health and longevity with Richard TalkToMeGuy and Sherry Edwards working on the Sound Health Portal. I would suggest going to the SoundHealthPortal.com, scrolling down just a bit and clicking on the Watch How button. You'll see a short video explaining how to record and submit your first recording. Then go back to SoundHealthPortal.com, scroll down to current active campaigns such as cellular inflammation, bio diet, neuroplasticity, or memory, and choose one that is of interest for you. Click on that campaign and click Free Voice Analysis and the system will walk you through submitting your recording.

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If you'd like to leave me a voice message with a question for a guest or a guest idea for a show, you can do that directly from the site and I will be notified. With that, Dr. Ken Walker, better known to millions of readers as Dr. W. Gifford Jones, a graduate of both the University of Toronto and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Wager brings over four decades of medical expertise to our conversation. After beginning his diverse career as a general practitioner, ship surgeon and hotel doctor, he specialized in gynecology for more than 40 years, focusing on women's health issues. Many of you likely recognize his name from his widely read syndicated weekly column, Common Sense Health, which reaches over 7 million readers across Canada and the United States.

Dr. Walker is here today to discuss his 10th book, Healthy Retirement Residence Living, What Does the Doctor Say? Also joining us is Diana McKay, who collaborates with her father under the pen name Diana Gifford Jones. With extensive global health policy experience, Diana has served as a special advisor with the Aga Khan University and spent 10 years in human development at the World Bank, focusing on health policy, economics and policy health.

At the Conference Board of Canada, she managed key health networks, including the roundtable on socioeconomic determinants of health and the Center for Chronic Disease Prevention. Diana is also the author of No Nonsense Health Naturally. Welcome, Doc Giff and Diana.

Speaker 2: And very, very pleased to be with you again, Richard. My pleasure. And hello.

Speaker 1: Hi there. I was surprised it had been as long as it has. I don't know how long it's been. I have no sense of time other than a 60-minute hour. However, it's been a few years and I was surprised. You've been busy, of course.

My opening question, or actually this isn't a question, this is really more of a statement. Doc, I heard the Orthomolecular Medicine interview with Dr. Levy and Dr. Cheng celebrating your 101st birthday as well as your legacy as a tireless advocate for medical freedom, high-dose vitamin C, and longevity, continuing to inspire generations and physicians, health-conscious individuals worldwide.

Speaker 2: Congratulations. Thank you very much. And I'm totally believe, Richard, that without vitamin C, high-dose vitamin C, I more likely would be up on another planet now. I've been taking 10,000 milligrams of C a day after having a heart attack when I was 74. And that 10,000 milligrams of C, night after night, day after day, I'm sure, along with maybe a little of the Irish luck, too, has kept me alive.

Speaker 1: And vital. You're not just alive. You're vital. You're writing books. You're creating formulations. You're walking up and downstairs. You're not just alive. I've been in a medical healthcare center for a year. I had about 30 hours of surgeries, 13 years, 14 years ago. And I was in a recovery home for about a year because of the kinds of surgeries and what was going on. And I, too, I actually got into fight with the facility that I was in because they didn't want me having people bring me in vitamin C. And I could use a bunch of bad words. And my, I had a friend who was my patient advocate, and she would come in with a box of vitamin C with me for every couple of weeks.

And I would get into a fight with my doctor about it, because we weren't had some thing about it. And finally, we had a big blow up. And she said, Oh, I get it. I get it.

You know what you're talking about. I quoted you. I quoted a bunch of other material about vitamin C, Linus Pauling, all the research. And eventually it was like, okay, okay, you can have your vitamin C. But it was like, I was in a, in Northern California, in Marin County, I was in the largest facility in Marin County, 250 beds. And there was a fight for me to be able to get vitamin C. That blows my mind. And especially knowing your, now knowing your work, and how, as you say, you might be in a different time zone if you hadn't been taking 10 grams of vitamin C forever.

Speaker 2: And you know, and you know, Richard, I graduated from the Harvard Medical School. And no one, none of their esteemed professors ever told me that animals make vitamin C, and humans lost that ability eons and eons ago. And if I hadn't ran into Linus Pauling, I still would be as domicilist, yeah.

Speaker 1: It's an amazing thing. I just, I familiar with, I was familiar before we met with Pauling's work, because I was also a fan of orthomolecular medicine. I had followed Richard Kunen, MD for years, who was the founder of the San Francisco branch of the Orthomolecular medicine. And I would see him at health, health fairs, like new living exposures, those kinds of health events. And anytime I got to see him speak, I'd go see him speak. And he was brilliant. He invented a great product line, not as a, not as assertive as yours, in terms of vitamin C, but he was always vitamin C, minerals, all of the orthomolecular approach. But he designed a packet that you could dissolve in water, which was sugar-free. And it still exists today. And it was all based on orthomolecular medicine. So I'm a huge fan.

Speaker 2: And Lysine always added that it's, you've got to take high doses. It's not, you know, 100 milligrams. You've got to take thousands of doses to really have a major effect on cardiovascular disease.

Speaker 1: I was going to say this for later, but I have to ask, what is the function of the lysine in the formula? I think of lysine as a great antiviral. You're taking benefits of other functions of it. What are the functions of lysine?

Speaker 2: Lysine makes the arterial walls stronger. It's like you have a, you know, you're building a skyscraper and you need steel to keep it, keep it erect. And you need a lysine to keep the arterial walls from, from breaking and producing either a stroke or a heart attack. It's as simple as that. And most people have no idea what lysine does, does for you.

Speaker 1: And do you, do you agree that it's also a good antiviral?

Speaker 2: The vitamin C.

Speaker 1: No, the, no, the lysine. No, I know vitamin C is, but I mean in terms of lysine. I know it is having a reputation for that as well. Yes, that is true. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Now, before we get into that whole world, I want to talk to you about this great book about retirement residents living. What, what prompted you to write a book about the health aspects of retirement residents living after your, you know, many, many decades of medical experience?

Speaker 2: Well, the one thing that really goes into this home was my wife was cooking an evening meal and took it out of a hot oven and, and dropped our evening meal. And she says, you know, I'm getting a little old for this. And I agreed with her. And here we are in the, in the retirement home, which, which is, which is all right.

But I, you know, I'd rather be back in my old home. Yeah. That was really the basic reason. And then she got a little bit tired of doing other things in the home. And that wouldn't be nice to be rid of all that other, other, other detail. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Take some of the responsibility and relax.

Speaker 2: And she's been my wife for 69 years. Wow. She's won one hell of a lot of things for me. Yeah. This is my good wife, my good friend, good companion. And if I could make her life a little bit happier and healthier, I would, I wouldn't want to go with it.

Speaker 1: She gets the gold medal for that. And there's a, there's a funny chapter about where's the bar. Yeah. And, and besides where's the bar, you really talk about the importance. And we were talking a little bit about backstage of my experience in a healthcare facility for a year, recovering from surgeries about the social environment. There wasn't really any socialization in my facility. I got up and walked every day post surgeries. And what is the importance of having socialization?

Speaker 2: You know, tremendously important if you, if you're looking at or, or bare walls, day after day in a hospital and you're there for chronic illness, it's awfully nice to have a bar to go down to. You don't have to have an alcoholic drink.

Many of the people that go to these bars say, I want a Coca-Cola. And I just, I just want the, the advantage of talking to someone else who's a human being. And that goes back to the point where I went to the Veterans Hospital in Toronto and there was a box of Marley, Burmese there. And when Charlie would come into the room, one of the patients who was regular, she'd go and put her, put her arms around Charlie and say, Charlie, what are you, what's your usual tonight? You know, that, that, that, that association with her did a hell of a lot more good than maybe the medication she was, he was taking in the hospital. So seeing another patient and I, I should have, Charlie had both legs amputated from a war, war injury. So it was a great time for him.

Speaker 1: It's really, I think that's what I observed in, in my own, just in my year when I was going out and walking around, there were patients that had been there, gone away and come back in the time that I was there. And when they came back, they were just happy to see somebody who would say hello, you know, and talk to them, take five minutes while I was out walking, just stand around and talk to them and maybe, you know, touch them on the shoulder or, you know, just help them with a walker or take them outside or anything. Just any kind of socialization, I think is really important, not only to keep the cognitive functions happening, but also to just have connection. I think it's, I think it's a vital part of wellness.

Speaker 2: I've written in my column Richard that, that I think every hospital should have a pub in and it doesn't have a lot more good than the, some of the medicines they're taking. So that is, it shocks some people to hear me say, you know, if I get a pub in a hospital, but you know, of all of the retirement homes we visited, we didn't really find one good pub. There was a little area where they could go and sit, but there was not one English pub that had the coziness and and the, getting together that English pubs have.

And it's a shame that they take volunteers to get things like this going and then unless you have people who are dedicated to, to that line of thinking, we'll only have a few pubs here and there.

Speaker 1: I grew up in a classic 50s home where there were always cocktails in the evening. And my parents liked to go out a couple of nights a week and I would go out with them occasionally because I was, by then I was already working a bit. And they would always go to some place, which was what would be called a pub. It was a place where, yes, there was drinking and there was talking and in those days, cigarette smoking, which is why I didn't go.

Speaker 2: I hated cigarette smoking. No, sir. So, we're at the name now of the doctor, but the doctor said alcohol is for the elderly, what milk is for the young. I think it's not a, not a bad idea. I always have a drink before dinner at night and with my wife and when you think of the awful things that are going on in the world today, the mess that's been created by one guy, it's a shame that our countries are not fighting one another, but we Canadians hate to see our country being said by this individual that he wants to have a country as the next state. So, on it goes. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, a shot of something. I'm a tequila person myself. So, not always, but frequently have a shot of tequila before a meal or with my meal, just because it's warming, it's soothing and it tastes good. Does that?

Speaker 2: Oh, and for me, a Diet Coke with rum is always good too.

Speaker 1: Nice. And I'm going to jump here slightly. One of the things that you talk about in retirement residence is a lot of seniors worry about cognitive decline. What are some of the key things that they can get from the chapter on I am getting? Am I getting Alzheimer's disease that might surprise our audience?

Speaker 2: Well, I think the one thing they're getting is vitamin C. And we know that if you take vitamin C, you are having good arterial arteries that sending oxygenated blood along with vitamin C to the entire body. And Linus Pauling was a great believer in vitamin C, as you know. And he, along with others such as Sydney Bush in England, and I was reading in the rather obscure journal one that night. And I noticed that Sydney Bush in England, who was a eye doctor, had given high doses of vitamin C to patients who was treating for contact lens.

And he should be given the Nobel Prize for this discovery. He gave 6,000 milligrams of vitamin C, along with 5,000 milligrams of lysine. But before he did that, he took a picture of the back part of the eye, the retina, is the only area of the eye that you see of arteries and veins. And after a year, he took another photo of the retina. And his whole thesis was by giving vitamin C and lysine, they wouldn't be getting eye infections with their contact lens. But lo and behold, when he took the picture a year later, he found his surprise that the arteries were losing some of their atherosclerosis, namely hardening of the arteries. Hardening of the arteries is what we eventually die of, from heart attacks, from kidney disease, etc. And he unfortunately came up against the establishment.

And of course, if you are a surgeon doing cataract surgeries and other operative things on the eye, you don't want to see your entire career wiped out. So he was not given a bunch of roses for this finding. And it really never really got off the ground. And I've said repeatedly in my column that Sidney Bush really should be received in no well prize in medicine. It was just a remarkable finding.

As a matter of fact, I was so enthusiastic about it that I went with one of my sons, flew over to England, and stayed with him for three days, looking at slide after slide after slide. And one could see that the atherosclerosis, not quickly going away because atherosclerosis is not like a drain all that, clean out the sink very quickly. But after six months on that, the routine of disappearing. So you have to be very, very patient and also have to have an eye doctor who can find the atherosclerosis gradually fading away. That's amazing.

Speaker 1: That's amazing. That's the first time I've heard of that kind of documentation of the idea, the brilliance of photographing the back of the eye to look at the arterial structure and then monitoring that, actually monitoring it. Wow, that's great.

Speaker 2: He unfortunately died about five years ago and I lost a great friend because after spending those days with him in England, we corresponded often. And it was just a shame that no one has taken up this great finding. And I'm about to try and get someone to do that at the University of Ohio or at Toronto because it's something that should be continued. And you wouldn't really need more than 100 patients because you would be able to tell after six months whether which was right or wrong. And certainly from my experience, I could see it and I'm sure future researchers could see it too.

Speaker 1: I'll give you a dollar to support that. That's all I've got. But I think that's a wonderful idea because on the scale of things, six months is not really very long.

Speaker 2: It really isn't. And you know what the point is, Richard, it's not something that would pass things fortune. Just fight them to see and lie seen. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1: That is great. I will be emailing you about that backstage. I'd like to know more about that. I think that's a great idea. I don't know who to tell, but there's somebody I must know to tell besides Dr. Levy who already knows probably. But yeah, that is actually exciting because the tricky part, as you say, is the system that makes all the money off of all those procedures, the doctors that make a lot. And I'm not saying doctors are bad. I don't mean that. I just mean the system is set up that the doctor is going to be like, no, don't do that because if you do that, I won't be able to do this. But how about we work on something else, find something else to do with your time that helps benefit people and make people healthier because if it's going to affect your eyes, it's going to affect your whole body. What's the bad thing about that?

Speaker 2: I can't think of one single thing that's wrong.

Speaker 1: Exactly. That may be the problem. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't know. That's just the current thought of the day.

Speaker 2: Diana sitting in front of me is really beside me. I don't know the damn talking. You know, I'm a little biased about this, but she is a smart lady. Yes.

Speaker 1: No, actually, that is perfect timing because I have a question for Diana, in the Orthomolecular interview with Dr. Levy and Dr. Cheng, I heard you talk about Doc's active mind. Would you please talk about that? And I think it's related to vitality.

Speaker 3: That's my conjecture. My body and soul, I've had all of that. This guy beside me here, my father, has always been active. And we used to tease him years ago that his toes would constantly be tapping, but it was basically an indication of his way of being. He's an active guy.

He's always been an active guy. And to this day, if I offer to help him with one thing or another, he's insistent that no, he's going to do it himself and he does. And I think that's an element of his sort of decision about how he wants to lead his life, that he's been important in him reaching 101 years of age. He's determined to be well all the time.

Speaker 1: And part of his vitality is that he's driven in the best of ways. Yeah. I just, in the conversations, the few conversations I've had with him and the materials that I've read, I read the columns pretty regularly, mostly on the website just because it's easier. But he's an active thinker.

Speaker 3: Doesn't stop. I get emails from him day in and day out with the next idea. Can you go a little faster, please?

Speaker 1: What's taking you so long? All that traveling, that's what's doing it. Yeah. You're slowing it down. Yeah. I think it's what keeps me vital, is I sort of have a reputation of when I am at a social engagement. People kind of think of me as like, don't ask him because he'll tell you. And I think that's not a bad thing.

Sometimes they want to know and mostly they do want to know, whether it's vitamin C or, you know, and now I'll be telling people about this, about their ulterior sclerosis with vitamin C and vitamin and lysine. Yeah.

Speaker 3: How great is that? You know, Richard, if I can just talk a little bit about this effort that Dad made recently to write another book, 100 years of age, about retirement residence living.

You know, it does pain me a great deal. My brothers and I watched my parents make the move. You know, I hope we supported them in making the move as a lot of kids around the world do. And it's not easy. It's a major life change for people at a very delicate stage of life. But the fact is, the companies that are operating these retirement residences or the governments that are operating the retirement residences aren't really doing the job very well.

And my father's opinion and in my opinion too. There's so much more that could be doing to first and foremost, you know, live and breathe what they say they're doing, which is safety first. But I can assure you there's big gaps. There's big gaps that my father has mentioned in things like the way that units are organized in the bathrooms being a, you know, a very dangerous room in the house. But there's lots of other things that have to do with how these facilities handle infections, how they handle fire alarms, how they handle visitors. It goes on and on.

Speaker 2: Could I interject before I forget about it? And that is Paul and when I interviewed him about cardiovascular disease, the end of the interview, he said, oh, one thing more, doctor, I should tell you, I take 20,000 milligrams of vitamin C every night. That's a hell of a big dose. He also added, you know, I've never constipated. I've never constipated. And in the retirement home that the residence and I'm currently located, most people are overweight. They've got type 2 diabetes and they're constipated. And when I say to the nurses that are employed here, why do, why don't you give them a thousand milligrams of C one night? And if that doesn't work, 2000 the next night, 3000 the next night. And I can tell you, by the time you got the 4000, they're not going to be constipated. But you know, it goes through one ear and right out the other. I go back and say, what are you, how are you treating constipation? The usual things you can buy in the pharmacy. And it's so wrong because vitamin C is safe, it's relatively cheap, and it's totally effective. And it will do no one any harm. Where the chronic use of laxatives over and over and over,

Speaker 2: The tragedy of this is that sooner or later, you know, some things are silent and you really don't know they're happening. One week you can get off the toilet, the next week you find all of a sudden your bones and you are not acting in the same way and you can't get off the toilet and I don't know whether that happens in Japan, but it certainly happens in retirement residence in Canada and the US and there's an easy way to get rid of that. When I'm watching TV at night, I put one fist against the other and push, push. Charles Atlas taught me this maybe 50 years ago and when you do that exercise, I've got pretty good biceps muscles now from doing this and I hope I'm never going to have this problem to me, but I've got good biceps muscles just because I do it by looking at sometimes these idiotic programs that come out after dinner and but it's cheap. You don't need any apparatus, you just put your fists together and push for 10 seconds, stop and then one was later, another 10 seconds and stop and you will be surprised how the biceps muscles become quite respondent to that treatment.

Speaker 1: So it's just a resistance treatment, you're not really lifting or you're just really doing an isometric exercise, which takes no equipment and you don't have to put a headband on or leotards or anything, you

Speaker 2: can stay at home and do it. That's amazing, that's amazing. I love that idea.

Speaker 1: Back to Japan for a moment, Diana. Also in Japan, they have the culture of hot springs and hot, they have whole amazing, I have friends who have traveled to Japan repeatedly and send me photographs of like, oh man, it's beautiful.

Wow, it's amazing. And the land of Natto, which I love so much, that they really believe in taking the waters, which used to be an old timey phrase here, but we've seemed to have wandered off from that. I live close to Calistoga, which is a hot water capital of Northern-California, but talk about that part of the culture as well. They really respect time out and quiet and taking the waters with monkeys.

Speaker 3: I think I can say with honesty that there's not a person in Japan that doesn't take a bath at night. The entire country enjoys a hot soak at the end of the day, whether it's in their own bath at home or in a public bath in the city or in a hot spring in the mountains. And of course, it's particularly lovely if you get the chance to enjoy it at a hot spring in the mountains. Yeah.

With monkeys, with the snow monkeys and the snow around you, and it's absolutely spectacular. But I think actually, the hot soak is one thing. It's also, again, the socialization bit that's I think important because individuals and families and society as a whole are all engaging in this ritual of well-being at the end of the day. And that sort of permeates through society. They think about each other's well-being and they care for each other differently than I think we do here.

In our societies, it's all about the individual and how are you doing compared to the other person, whereas in Japan, it's all about how are we doing. And that's a remarkable feature. You mentioned natto, the fermented soybeans, which probably not many people know about, but they also eat a lot of fermented foods and that's an example of it. And we're learning more and more about the importance of fermented food in our diet.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I can never have too much natto. I actually do the thing. I happen to be fortunate enough that I have somebody locally that produces natto from organic soybeans.

Speaker 3: Yeah, we make it at home. It's not hard to make, by the way. It just tastes awful. It doesn't taste awful. But that's my father for you. He's a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1: It's an acquired... It is an acquired... I would put it in the... It's an acquired taste category, but I happen to really like the taste. I discovered it in sushi bars many years ago. I'm always the, you know, older white gentleman asking, could I have a natto maki? And they're always looking at me like, how do you even know what that is?

Speaker 1: That's weird. But I really like the preparation where you have warm rice, the natto on that, and a little bit of soy and wasabe. And it's delicious. It's just delicious. It fits all of the flavor profiles I like.

Speaker 3: And here's another interesting fact about Japan. You know, they've always been accused of having a little bit too much salt in their diet, from all the soy sauce and fish and so on. That has noticeably gone down too. I saw for the first time on this trip, people enjoying sushi without soy sauce entirely, and also, you know, much less use of salt in the diet to the point, actually, that they are concerned that there's not enough salt in the diet of some young people, and going a little bit to the extreme the other way.

Speaker 1: Really, sushi without dipping in the soy, I can't get there from here.

Speaker 3: Well, I was surprised too, but then I thought about it. And, you know, again, it was, it's when the Japanese choose to do something, they all do it, you know? And I think word got out, must have gotten out that they were having a little bit too much salt intake. They do have high incidence of stroke in the country, and they're developing cancer at higher rates in other countries.

So they're trying to figure out maybe the salt has something to do with it, and they obviously made a conscious decision and a public health decision, and it's taking effect. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Well, no, no, do you think you could sweet all the people in California to buy my book for the circumstances?

Speaker 1: I'll be putting the link in the show notes. Absolutely. I love that idea. Maybe we could all meet in Japan. Yeah, I'm happy. I actually have friends who, as I say, go to Japan every other year or so, and they have photographs of being in the mountains, exactly what you described, Diana, in the mountains against the, you know, cliff or, you know, the rocky face, hot steaming water, monkeys in the far distance, no monkeys like just hanging out in the water too, and it's just breathtaking. I mean, not only is it beautiful, organic hot water coming out of the earth, which I love, and just the beauty and the serenity, and it's so, it's like, but I find this of being in hot water in general, particularly clean hot water like that. It's very meditative. It puts you into a meditative state because you're so relaxed. I think also the minerals pass into the tissue, and you get the benefit of all those wonderful, wild minerals.

Speaker 3: No, there's, yeah, so that's, that was where I was recently, but then I went on to East Africa, which was a different story entirely of, you know, some health time bombs, I might say.

Speaker 3: So, so they, you know, all around the world, my father's written in all of his books about this epidemic of, you know, obesity and type 2 diabetes, and now a pandemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes, where you can't go anywhere in the world and not see.

Speaker 2: And in young children. Young children. Yeah. And as a surgeon, of course, I used to do over a lot of abdomens, and you could use some days you think, why are they doing this to me? This, but God was a fatty tissue around the pancreas, the intestines, the liver. And it's not as if you're operating on someone who's 300 pounds twice as hard as operating in 150 pounds. It's 10 times harder and 10 times more complicated so that obesity and type 2 diabetes is going to cripple our healthcare system if we don't get smart.

Speaker 1: I mean, I leaned back into Diana for a little bit about Japan. Is Japan, because as you say, when they dive in, they dive in, they fully commit. And are they as hooked on what I call junk food as the American culture? You know, I see people, you know, I'm not a junk food person. Like, why would I have that when I can go out and have a grass-fed burger and great fries and maybe a bitter beer? Why would I go eat junk food? Are they into junk food? Is that part of what the possible skew is of getting bad diets?

Speaker 3: I don't think so. And I had an opportunity to spend time in people's homes, you know, my host family and my friends, and also to spend time sort of on a business trip with people from around the world that are going to Japan for some business purpose and they tend to eat in restaurants. And what I witnessed this trip was that the restaurants that are catering to the foreigners, the Japanese restaurants that are catering to the foreigners are adopting our Western ways. They're serving portions that are too big and they're laying on all of the, you know, sugars and other, you know, junk food kind of approaches. Whereas if you visit a home, a Japanese person's home, they're still eating fresh food that they bought that day in just the quantity that they need to feed the people that are in the house and no more. And they have an expression, you know, in Japanese that 80% is enough.

It's something like that. It means basically if you fill your stomach to 80%, that's just about the right amount. You should always avoid eating any more than that. No second helplines. No second helplines. No desserts.

You know, it's not a country of desserts. So yeah, I think that tells a bit of a story. You know, the Japanese people themselves have got it right, but they're letting the rest of us kind of continue on with their bad ways.

Speaker 1: That's Japanese. I've spent a lot of time studying Japanese cinema, so that's a whole other show. Yeah, very much so. And Doc, what do you think in your book you talk about in the retirement book? You talk about a big misconception that families have when helping loved ones to transition to retirement living.

Speaker 2: Well, the tremendous transition really is that you reserve three good meals a day. You don't have to take too much sugar, too much sucrose, and they invariably get the weight slowly and slowly. And it's very hard to find a thin person in a retirement home. There, you know, of course there are some people that are genetically thin, but it's a bad atmosphere to gain weight. And it's going to take, and certainly as far as the overall society, it's going to take a Manhattan project after the war to try to get people living in the right way. And one of the sad things that I see is that some people who are living a good life and do all the right things, but they unfortunately develop a disease early in life sometimes and die from it. And that is the real tragedy, that they don't have any Irish luck in them to sidetrack these other problems that lie always in state for them. But getting back to the retirement home, it's a bad place to look on as an ideal lifestyle situation.

Speaker 1: And there, so it's really, it comes back to, I use this hashtag a lot, self-caring. At some point, it really comes down to us making a choice. I think I can say this fairly about you.

I suspect that you're a little stubborn. And I mean, in a kind, complimentary way. You know, like you don't want help getting up off the chair.

You want to do it because you know that you want to be able to do that until you fall over dead someday. And that you're a little stubborn about those sorts of things. And you'll have your shot of room. There are things that you do to help maintain your attitude and you have an active mind.

Speaker 2: One of my great fears, Richard, is that 102 in a few months. And my great fear is that may need, but they call here in the retirement residence as a caregiver. I'd rather be dead than have a caregiver.

It's not, it's not my way to go out of this world. And please don't wait so long, Richard, to call me again. Because, you know, if you don't do it quickly, I won't be here.

Speaker 1: I don't know. I have to say that I have a goal for you. My grandmother lived to be 106. And my grandmother, now she died in the 70s. But she came across the United States in a wagon, not a travel choice, in a wagon from Michigan to Salt Lake City. And her entire life, she unintentionally ate organic because they grew their own food. They didn't use any chemicals. They didn't use any pesticides. That's how you grew food. You saved the cow manure. You fed it, you know, you put it on your plants. You grow your own food. You grow your own beef.

You grow your own chickens. So she ate organic her whole life. And she was completely and totally ambulatory until at 99. She fell shoveling snow at 99 from her front porch. And she fell and broke her hip.

And she eventually got fed up with being care taken and walked out of the hospital and just healed and went on to be active and ambulatory. And still she for, I don't know, over 60 years had a pie shop next to the Mormon Tabernacle. And she was renowned for her pies. And so she would get up every day. And she did it up until her 90s because she wanted to, not because she had to, but because that was her life. That was her social scene.

That was everything. She was very devout to the church. So it was a perfect location for her. But I mean, she lived to be 106 and was totally completely cognitive and ambulatory and self-contained. No caretakers for her. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 3: You know, what would be a good feature for retirement residences that simply isn't here now? You know, when people like my father are active in their minds and still working, in today's day and age, they have no choice but to be using technology. You know, so whether it's their iPhone or their laptop or their desktop or their printer or their email system or their Wi-Fi, what's needed is as somebody that can be on hand to fix little problems that come up day by day.

Speaker 2: What Diana is really saying, yeah, how many times have you called me on this?

Speaker 3: That's true, too. But my point is that, you know, we probably can be identifying, like you did in the moments before we went live, Richard, solutions to problems. But we're sort of treating this age group as kind of the people that we don't really need to fuss about too much. We'll just put them in a place that they get taken care of and we can go on with our lives. But in fact, how awful is that? You know, I think a lot of societies that take care of their seniors at home would be shocked at what we do.

Speaker 2: One other thing in my column, over and over again, by a bathroom scale, people, the patients tell me that when I was in practice, oh, I think I can, I can, I know what I'm gaining, leaders are losing their way. I can tell by my clothes, whether they're tighter or higher.

It's absolute nonsense. The scale never lies by a calorie counter, too. And realize the amount of calories that you're taking day after day after day, you know, eating half a pizza, having two scoops of ice cream, you've got 80 or 100 calories there and you only need 2000 calories a day so that the bathroom scale could save more and more orthopedic problems and other problems that I think would be a good way to do anything and anything else that I would recommend.

Speaker 1: I know a tech reporter that had bought a bathroom scale that would taking this is going with what you're also talking about Diana. This was a social media thing. Every time you'd get on the scale, it would then broadcast on Twitter back when it was called Twitter, his weight. Wow. And he was stunned at what an effect that had on him. Just stunned.

He never thought that it would have so much like, you know, good job Leo, what a great thing you lost half a pound. I mean, people were really tracking it because he had a radio audience, he did a weekend radio show two days a week on Saturdays and Sundays and each show would have a million listeners. Yeah. So he had a huge audience.

Speaker 3: It's a great example. It's a great example. And I don't know why we don't do more of that.

Speaker 1: I think that would be a phenomenal thing to have, you know, have your way to I'm not doing this. But I mean, I think for other people that would be great to have it tweeted out there. Yeah, like build a build a circle of people supporting you.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So true. So those are the kinds of options we need to be putting on the menu in these retirement residences. Instead of putting on the menu. Here's today's menu. And come down for cards at four o'clock, you know,

Speaker 1: Yes, there will be bowls of beer nuts and pretzels.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think we need to have some high tech solutions. And and they deserve it. You know, these are the people that are entering senior homes now are, you know, the boomers, the boomers are going to go on a big wave through the senior years now. And they've been around technology for a long time.

So they'll be happy to take up some of these opportunities. Yeah. And I think you should say a word or two about that slippery bathroom floor. You and dad both were talking about that earlier.

And dad was, he's written a chapter in his book about how the bathroom is most dangerous room in the house, because you're going to fall down and then at some point, and unless you have grab bars and other, you know, features that make the room safer, it's it's it's a disaster waiting to happen.

Speaker 2: And if you fall down and you're under 65, more than likely, not a bad injury. If you're over 75, more than likely, a bad injury. Yeah, and we break your hip at any age. You're dead within a year.

Speaker 1: That's amazing and appalling. Yeah. And that's when we were talking backstage. And I said that I used to be in the water purification business for pools and spas ozone, not chemicals. And they're amazing pool surfaces. I don't mean inside the pool, but they do it inside the pool as well. But surfaces where it's roughly speaking, epoxy with sand in it. And you can paint any surface with this epoxy. And once it cures, it will always have a little bit of texture to it. So it's not slippery. So that's why they put it around the edge of pools. So when that child is running, which they're not supposed to do, they won't slip.

Yeah. And every every floor in every retirement home bathroom in the country should be painted with this surface. There should be a surface that should come in and just play all the surfaces that are in the bathroom areas. It's it would change everything and not change everything, but it eliminates that because that's all it takes.

Speaker 2: And could I put in a good word for William Shakespeare? Certainly. If you look at you say what what is this book that give her Jones has written? He one time said the fault, the fault there, Brutus is not in our stars. It's in ourselves.

And that really tells a lot of the story about the book. That is what the things that were the stupid thing that we were doing that we don't have to do. And it'll keep us a lot healthier. It's not that hard to be healthier.

Speaker 1: Everybody feels like you need a special outfit or you need to join a gym. I like pumping iron myself for years. I used pumping iron as a way to is a meditation. It got me out of my overthinking head in physically fully into my body. So I'd go work out.

Speaker 2: I can't wait to my side of my computer. And every now and then I'll wake up and do 50 workshops. Nice. Very nice. At any age.

Speaker 1: At any age. Yeah. Before we leave, I want you to talk about since it's been long enough that since since we've talked that you've come out with your own vitamin C and lysine combination. Would you talk about cardio vibe?

Speaker 3: Sure, I'd be happy to tell you this is dad's latest improved formula. It's a natural health product for cardiovascular care. And also for immune support and vitamin C as you know, in high doses does all kinds of other good things for the body. But it's called cardio vibes called Gips own cardio vibe because at 100 years of age, dad's launched his own new company.

Speaker 1: Of course, something to do.

Speaker 3: Exactly something to do. So I'm getting busy and keep my brother than me busy to. Yep. And yeah, it's a high dose vitamin C lysine magnesium, who ends on Q10, quercetin and proline. And that's a nice collective set of ingredients for heart health. And, and, and it's available on a website, Richard, which I can share as well as it would be Gips own dot CA. And the book, healthy retirement residence is available in two locations. It's on Amazon.

You can find it on Amazon, but it's also available on my father's own website, which is really a treasure trove of not just places you can find his books, but also, you know, over 2000 of his articles that he's written since 1974. And the location is www.gif .com. So that's D O C for doctor G I F F for Gifford Jones dot gift.com. And I think those listening to the show today will really enjoy taking a look at that website and all of information that is posted there.

Speaker 1: I highly recommend going to Giff's site and just reading the columns. I don't mean just as a ignoring everything else. But the collection of columns is a fun read, partially because they hear Doc's voice, but also because there's such great material there. I mean, such interesting. They're short.

They're nutrient dense. You know, there's a great article there on we are as old as our arteries. I'll be posting that in the show notes. There's there's great material, great information there.

Speaker 3: It's a wonderful archive to the health issues that we've been facing over the years in North America. So you can you can go back to, you know, 2000 or 2010 and see what was the discourse of the day.

Speaker 1: It's a great resource.gifts .com. I can't recommend it enough. This was fun. I knew it was going to be fun and it was even funner. Pleasure. Thank you both.

Speaker 2: It's great to be with you again. And my thanks for having on the show.

Speaker 1: You bet. Always, always. All right, everybody, have a great rest of the weekend and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 4: Bye bye.