July 12, 2025 • 8 mins
A quest for eternal vigor led to less drinking, more exercise and an epiphany about learning to let go.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Year of Aging Dangerously by Howard chua Ouan, read
by Mike Cooper. I always believed in rejuvenation, so I
shuddered at a recent Stamford University medical paper about the
human timetable for aging. It concluded that people grow older
not gradually, but in two clumps, approximately when we turned
(00:21):
forty four and sixty years on. The researchers reached this
conclusion after tracking the blood samples of one hundred and
eight individuals and compiling profiles of their omis shorthand for
biological data based on microbiomes, proteomes, lipodomes, transcriptomes, and so on.
That would be the microbes at work in our guts
and organs, as well as the proteins and lipids at
(00:43):
the cellular level, plus the genes transcribed into our rene molecules.
This so called multiomic approach sounded terribly authoritative and terrifying
for some one already headed toward his sixty sixth birthday.
Was it too late to be healthy and vigorous? In
January twenty twenty five, I resolved to defy the study.
After all, I'd rejuvenated myself before at thirty, after being
(01:06):
overweight since childhood and looking ten years older than my age,
I lost seventy five pounds over the course of two months,
going from two twenty five to one fifty. I did
it by cutting out all carbs and most fats. I
also ate only one meal a day. It worked so
well that when I picked up my sister at a
New York airport, she walked right by me because she
didn't recognize her slim down big brother. I quickly realized, however,
(01:29):
that a life of constant hunger was not ideal law sustainable.
I liked to eat, drink and be merry, so I
took up running. I'd never pursued any kind of sport before,
but I loved doing the six mile loops around Central Park,
and pounded out the circuit until my mid fifties, when
a wobbly knee made me taper off. By the time
I moved to London and embarked on my sixth decade
(01:50):
on Earth, I was still clocking in miles, but walking
them instead of racing. Still, the years of merriment got
the better of me. The life of a bomb vivant
outpaced all the miles I wore and penitence. That's why
in January. Jostled by the Stanford Paper and by Hubris,
I made my attempt to turn back time. I bought
running shoes and an Apple watch to trap my miles
(02:10):
and caloric output. I also decided to temporarily suspend my drinking.
I'd been dry for extended periods before, mainly the forty
days of Lent. In my zeal to return to vibrant health,
I booked a doctor's appointment to deal with minor skinn ailments.
That's when twenty twenty five turned into my year of
aging dangerously. I wanted help with a carbuncle, but as
(02:32):
his customary with the UK's National Health Service, my general
practitioner interviewed me as well as pricked and prodded me
for a health profile that included a lot of omix.
They weren't flattering. I love wine, and she was alarmed
at the amount I imbibed. Ultrasound revealed a fatty pancreas,
and my blood tests indicated elevated ferretin levels, which accompany
alcohol abuse. As well as information. She said, my voluntary
(02:55):
abstinence had to be compulsory, maybe forever. Meanwhile, michelles Strall
levels weren't ideal. I said I was resuming a running
regimen that would help lower them. That's when I hurt
my leg. I'd run for a month and slowly built
up my miles from one to three every other day,
but an all too sudden downhill badly strained my calf
and thigh, aggravating the wobbly knee. I limped around for
(03:17):
two weeks, determined that hobbling was better than inactivity. Confident
i'd recovered, I dashed to beat a dump walk signal
and re injured myself. It happened to be April Fool's Day.
I stayed calm and carried on. I had to. My
sister and her husband were visiting from California for three weeks,
and we'd made plans to visit Edinburgh, Ah those hills
in Paris. She made sure I took every escalator and
(03:40):
elevator to avoid stressing my injury. That helped the healing.
But ten days after she left, I developed severe abdominal
pains and rushed myself to the Royal London Hospital for
an emergency appendectomy. I'm almost completely recovered from the surgery,
but the scars have become a momentum. Maury if I'd
come down with appendicitis at the wrong place and the
wrong time. The results might have been financially ruinous or worse.
(04:04):
The condition is also uncommon for sexagenarians, probably the reason
for a post surgery request from the hospital that I
get a colonoscopy that made me and my GP nervous.
I found a study that tumors may be a cause
for inflamed appendixes among older people. The Royal London's endoscopy
team eventually said the procedure wasn't necessary, but it sowed
(04:24):
self doubt about my capacity to defy age. A few
things became ominous in retrospect. Did my skin have a
gray pallor leading up to the appendicitis? My mother grew
pale just as she developed the blood disease that killed
her in six months. She was only sixty eight. Was
it a sign? Good God? What else could happen to me?
The stress induced a kind of hypochondria that propelled me
(04:46):
back to the doctor because I thought I was seeing
spikes in my blood pressure. The GP put me in
an ambulatory monitor for fifteen waking hours. My readings turned
out okay few, but the machine seemed to detect an
irregular heartbeat that sent me across town to another facility
for an electrocardiogram. The attending nurse peered at the results.
Everything looks normal, she snorted, as if I'd wasted her
(05:09):
time anyway. She added with force cheer, it's always good
to check. I feel fine right now, truthfully, better than ever,
except for a pinch every now and then that makes
me imagine I have phantom appendix syndrome and an overhang
of foreboding about what new blood tests might reveal. The
last six months have messed with my head and self confidence.
(05:29):
Abstinence from alcohol so far a hundred and sixty days
plus or more than four lents has resulted in some
weight loss. I'm grateful for that, though I'm still ten
pounds away from what my thirty something self saw on scales.
I await with an energetic clarity I can't quite remember
from my exhausting decades of career building. But lucidity is overrated.
(05:50):
It forces you to contemplate mortality without blinkers, and all
that vim makes it hard to escape into sleep. I've
tried to distract myself with reading my advice, do not
pick up Marguerite Yusena's Memoirs of Hadrian, as I did
in my search for comforting words. It's a masterpiece, of course,
but it begins with the aging Roman emperor Hadrian, just
(06:10):
sixty years old, bewailing his health and seeing death, if
not at his door, then waving at him from a
visible distance and sending illness ahead to cause trouble. The
novel's epigraph is the Stoic autocrats beautifully brief but depressing
Latin poem Anemula Vagula Blandula, which ends with the naked soul,
dispossessed of the body, shivering and unable to joke and
(06:31):
be jolly anymore. The Stoicism that appeals to me is
not the resignation practiced by Hadrian, but the militancy of Seneca,
who died ten years before the emperor was born. Living
is fighting, he said of the nature of existence, perhaps
implying exercise. In any case, do not go gentle into
that good night. Even so, Stoic philosophy, in all its
(06:53):
austere grandeur, is the opposite of the epicurean instincts that
have powered me through most of my life. While I
can't turn back time, there is much that can be
conserved in spirit as well as sinew to make physical
decline more bearable. You can cultivate good taste, good friends,
fresh discoveries through travel and art contemplative long walks. I
(07:14):
used suggest that I wanted a cell by tag attached
to me best before July twenty thirty nine. That's when
I turn eighty. I'm no longer amused by that quip.
This vexing year and the struggles of younger friends with
truly bad maladies have taught me to number my days
and want more, even as I let go of my
fantasies of eternal vigor. The poignant notion of numbering one's
(07:35):
days originates in Psalm ninety, which is traditionally ascribed to
Moses in his final years. It is glorious poetry, cosmic
and divine, where Hadrian is brisk and existential. A thousand
years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is passed, and as a watch in the night, the
prophet says of God's perspective. Famously, the Psalm proclaims we
(07:56):
spend our years as a tale that is told, and
sets down the human life life span as three school
years and ten and if by reason of strength they
be four school years. Yet is their strength labor and sorrow. Yet,
the scripture asserts, as it reaches its crescendo, Oh, satisfy
us early with thy mercy, that we may rejoice and
be glad all our days, and let the beauty of
(08:17):
the Lord our Gone be upon us. I'd like to
add a corollary by way of the fourteenth century English
mystic Julian of Norwich. In a vision, she heard God
declare that life will always be a struggle against troubles,
that none of us are exempt from tempests, travail, and disease.
But she also received this divine promise for those who persevere,
(08:37):
thou shalt not be overcome. Now where did I put
my running shoes? They'll be just as good for walking
The Year of Aging Dangerously by Howard chua Ouan, read
by Mike Cooper. I always believed in rejuvenation, so I
shuddered at a recent Stamford University medical paper about the
human timetable for aging. It concluded that people grow older
not gradually, but in two clumps, approximately when we turned
(00:21):
forty four and sixty years on. The researchers reached this
conclusion after tracking the blood samples of one hundred and
eight individuals and compiling profiles of their omis shorthand for
biological data based on microbiomes, proteomes, lipodomes, transcriptomes, and so on.
That would be the microbes at work in our guts
and organs, as well as the proteins and lipids at
(00:43):
the cellular level, plus the genes transcribed into our rene molecules.
This so called multiomic approach sounded terribly authoritative and terrifying
for some one already headed toward his sixty sixth birthday.
Was it too late to be healthy and vigorous? In
January twenty twenty five, I resolved to defy the study.
After all, I'd rejuvenated myself before at thirty, after being
(01:06):
overweight since childhood and looking ten years older than my age,
I lost seventy five pounds over the course of two months,
going from two twenty five to one fifty. I did
it by cutting out all carbs and most fats. I
also ate only one meal a day. It worked so
well that when I picked up my sister at a
New York airport, she walked right by me because she
didn't recognize her slim down big brother. I quickly realized, however,
(01:29):
that a life of constant hunger was not ideal law sustainable.
I liked to eat, drink and be merry, so I
took up running. I'd never pursued any kind of sport before,
but I loved doing the six mile loops around Central Park,
and pounded out the circuit until my mid fifties, when
a wobbly knee made me taper off. By the time
I moved to London and embarked on my sixth decade
(01:50):
on Earth, I was still clocking in miles, but walking
them instead of racing. Still, the years of merriment got
the better of me. The life of a bomb vivant
outpaced all the miles I wore and penitence. That's why
in January. Jostled by the Stanford Paper and by Hubris,
I made my attempt to turn back time. I bought
running shoes and an Apple watch to trap my miles
(02:10):
and caloric output. I also decided to temporarily suspend my drinking.
I'd been dry for extended periods before, mainly the forty
days of Lent. In my zeal to return to vibrant health,
I booked a doctor's appointment to deal with minor skinn ailments.
That's when twenty twenty five turned into my year of
aging dangerously. I wanted help with a carbuncle, but as
(02:32):
his customary with the UK's National Health Service, my general
practitioner interviewed me as well as pricked and prodded me
for a health profile that included a lot of omix.
They weren't flattering. I love wine, and she was alarmed
at the amount I imbibed. Ultrasound revealed a fatty pancreas,
and my blood tests indicated elevated ferretin levels, which accompany
alcohol abuse. As well as information. She said, my voluntary
(02:55):
abstinence had to be compulsory, maybe forever. Meanwhile, michelles Strall
levels weren't ideal. I said I was resuming a running
regimen that would help lower them. That's when I hurt
my leg. I'd run for a month and slowly built
up my miles from one to three every other day,
but an all too sudden downhill badly strained my calf
and thigh, aggravating the wobbly knee. I limped around for
(03:17):
two weeks, determined that hobbling was better than inactivity. Confident
i'd recovered, I dashed to beat a dump walk signal
and re injured myself. It happened to be April Fool's Day.
I stayed calm and carried on. I had to. My
sister and her husband were visiting from California for three weeks,
and we'd made plans to visit Edinburgh, Ah those hills
in Paris. She made sure I took every escalator and
(03:40):
elevator to avoid stressing my injury. That helped the healing.
But ten days after she left, I developed severe abdominal
pains and rushed myself to the Royal London Hospital for
an emergency appendectomy. I'm almost completely recovered from the surgery,
but the scars have become a momentum. Maury if I'd
come down with appendicitis at the wrong place and the
wrong time. The results might have been financially ruinous or worse.
(04:04):
The condition is also uncommon for sexagenarians, probably the reason
for a post surgery request from the hospital that I
get a colonoscopy that made me and my GP nervous.
I found a study that tumors may be a cause
for inflamed appendixes among older people. The Royal London's endoscopy
team eventually said the procedure wasn't necessary, but it sowed
(04:24):
self doubt about my capacity to defy age. A few
things became ominous in retrospect. Did my skin have a
gray pallor leading up to the appendicitis? My mother grew
pale just as she developed the blood disease that killed
her in six months. She was only sixty eight. Was
it a sign? Good God? What else could happen to me?
The stress induced a kind of hypochondria that propelled me
(04:46):
back to the doctor because I thought I was seeing
spikes in my blood pressure. The GP put me in
an ambulatory monitor for fifteen waking hours. My readings turned
out okay few, but the machine seemed to detect an
irregular heartbeat that sent me across town to another facility
for an electrocardiogram. The attending nurse peered at the results.
Everything looks normal, she snorted, as if I'd wasted her
(05:09):
time anyway. She added with force cheer, it's always good
to check. I feel fine right now, truthfully, better than ever,
except for a pinch every now and then that makes
me imagine I have phantom appendix syndrome and an overhang
of foreboding about what new blood tests might reveal. The
last six months have messed with my head and self confidence.
(05:29):
Abstinence from alcohol so far a hundred and sixty days
plus or more than four lents has resulted in some
weight loss. I'm grateful for that, though I'm still ten
pounds away from what my thirty something self saw on scales.
I await with an energetic clarity I can't quite remember
from my exhausting decades of career building. But lucidity is overrated.
(05:50):
It forces you to contemplate mortality without blinkers, and all
that vim makes it hard to escape into sleep. I've
tried to distract myself with reading my advice, do not
pick up Marguerite Yusena's Memoirs of Hadrian, as I did
in my search for comforting words. It's a masterpiece, of course,
but it begins with the aging Roman emperor Hadrian, just
(06:10):
sixty years old, bewailing his health and seeing death, if
not at his door, then waving at him from a
visible distance and sending illness ahead to cause trouble. The
novel's epigraph is the Stoic autocrats beautifully brief but depressing
Latin poem Anemula Vagula Blandula, which ends with the naked soul,
dispossessed of the body, shivering and unable to joke and
(06:31):
be jolly anymore. The Stoicism that appeals to me is
not the resignation practiced by Hadrian, but the militancy of Seneca,
who died ten years before the emperor was born. Living
is fighting, he said of the nature of existence, perhaps
implying exercise. In any case, do not go gentle into
that good night. Even so, Stoic philosophy, in all its
(06:53):
austere grandeur, is the opposite of the epicurean instincts that
have powered me through most of my life. While I
can't turn back time, there is much that can be
conserved in spirit as well as sinew to make physical
decline more bearable. You can cultivate good taste, good friends,
fresh discoveries through travel and art contemplative long walks. I
(07:14):
used suggest that I wanted a cell by tag attached
to me best before July twenty thirty nine. That's when
I turn eighty. I'm no longer amused by that quip.
This vexing year and the struggles of younger friends with
truly bad maladies have taught me to number my days
and want more, even as I let go of my
fantasies of eternal vigor. The poignant notion of numbering one's
(07:35):
days originates in Psalm ninety, which is traditionally ascribed to
Moses in his final years. It is glorious poetry, cosmic
and divine, where Hadrian is brisk and existential. A thousand
years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is passed, and as a watch in the night, the
prophet says of God's perspective. Famously, the Psalm proclaims we
(07:56):
spend our years as a tale that is told, and
sets down the human life life span as three school
years and ten and if by reason of strength they
be four school years. Yet is their strength labor and sorrow. Yet,
the scripture asserts, as it reaches its crescendo, Oh, satisfy
us early with thy mercy, that we may rejoice and
be glad all our days, and let the beauty of
(08:17):
the Lord our Gone be upon us. I'd like to
add a corollary by way of the fourteenth century English
mystic Julian of Norwich. In a vision, she heard God
declare that life will always be a struggle against troubles,
that none of us are exempt from tempests, travail, and disease.
But she also received this divine promise for those who persevere,
(08:37):
thou shalt not be overcome. Now where did I put
my running shoes? They'll be just as good for walking
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