What's Luck Got To Do With It

We’ve known for some time that fitness doesn’t mean longevity.  The fact that one of the men who is credited for starting America’s fitness craze in the 1970’s, Jim Fixx—author of the Complete Book of Running—died at the age of 52 didn’t really faze too many people.  He had spent the previous ten years extolling the benefits of cardiovascular exercise, including “a considerable increase in the average life expectancy.”  Most concluded he was just “unlucky,” although a closer look suggests there were genetic factors in his death (his father died of heart failure at 43), and some earlier habits that had inflicted damage on his body.  This explanation allowed people to ignore his death, possibly ascribing it to bad luck, and still subscribe to his message. 

Last week, another data point showed up on my screen, when a good friend of mine dropped dead getting off the treadmill at the hotel where he was staying.   Here was a believer in fitness who had a “widowmaker,” a sudden complete occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery.  The thing about the widowmaker is that it can lead to death in minutes, so survival is dependent upon how quickly surgical intervention can be had.  Having it happen when you are alone leaves you without much chance of survival.  There is no good explanation for why his attack occurred while he was alone.  It was just luck.  

As I thought about it this week, I remembered a book I first picked up several years ago and read.  But, one thing led to another, and I got preoccupied with other things.  I not only forgot having the book and how it affected me, I forgot the main message of the book.  I let it sit on my bookshelf amongst all the other books I had collected when I was trying to decide how to do this retirement thing.  

Then I was telling a friend about what I just recently decided to do exercise-wise, based on a lecture I heard in D.C. by a prominent brain research scientist.  She reminded me about this book and I picked it up again.  I immediately understood why she had brought it up. This book had made the same point in 2007.  The authors have an almost magical way of getting that message across, while providing the science that goes along with it.  It’s called, Younger Next Year, and it is written by a retired attorney and his doctor.  The attorney, Chris Crowley, has lived its message over a period of years and makes no bones about his message, he wants to make you understand that seventy percent of what we think of as aging in this country is not aging, it’s decay—from lack of use and abuse.  He and his physician, an internist and gerontologist, go on to offer an engaging and informative view of how you can change your life and avoid the sort of decline you see in the lives of many who reach the last third of their lives.   

A quick review of his book might lead you to conclude that you will live longer if you follow his rules.  But, Crowley points out in his own book that you can just as easily quote “grow a tangerine in your brainpan and be dead in the morning or ski into a tree…” unquote, if you are following his rules, so no, there are no guarantees.   See what a charming way he has of getting his point across?

What does all this have to do with luck, or what does luck have to do with it?  Until quite recently, I would view books like this as the means to an end.   They allow some of us to deny the fact that life has an end.  If we will only do this or follow those rules, we will live a lot longer. 

If you know me, you know I have taken exercise much more seriously in the past three or four years.  Only recently I’ve taken a different tack in enhancing my efforts.   Now I shoot for 45 minute of aerobic exercise at 80 to 85% of theoretical maximum heart rate four days each week, in addition to the other forms of exercise I do.  Do I expect to live longer?  Noooooo. 

But, back to Younger Next Year, the book is about enhancing the quality of your life, not necessarily extending it.  His view is that life expectancy is a matter of luck, but the quality of the life you lead as you approach your 90’s (if you do) is a matter of choice.   You can choose to let decay take over and see your quality of life arc downward for your last 20 years or you can follow his rules and become a little younger each year and live into your 80’s as you would in your 50’s, by becoming “younger next year.” 

Chris Crowley’s life has, luckily, worked out as it’s laid out in the book.  He wrote it in 2005, when he was 72, and it described his situation as it had evolved in the years since he and his doctor got together, some ten years earlier.  Today, he is 80 and he still skis and does other things that men fifteen (15) years his junior would not attempt.   He’s lucky, but he understands what many gurus of fitness seem not to, and that is that “Luck never gives, it only lends.”