Alexa Fleckenstein M.D. - Own Your Health: Healthy to 100: Aging with Vigor and Grace

O WN Y OUR H EALTH: Healthy to 100

OWN YOUR
HEALTH

The Best of Alternative & Conventional Medicine

Healthy to 100

AGING WITH VIGOR AND GRACE

ALEXA FLECKENSTEIN, M.D. AND ROANNE WEISMAN

Health Communications, Inc.
Deerfield Beach, Florida

www.hcibooks.com

This book is not intended to be a substitute for the advice and/or medical care of the readers physician. The reader should consult with a physician in all matters related to his or her health.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available from the Library of Congress

2006 Alexa Fleckenstein and Roanne Weisman

eISBN-13: 978-0-7573-9909-1 eISBN-10: 0-7573-9909-6

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos and marks are trademarks of
Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
3201 S.W. 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, FL 334428190

Cover and inside book design by Lawna Patterson Oldfield
Cover photos Artville, Shutterstock

CONTENTS

by Roanne Weisman

Introduction

1 What Can We Learn from People
Who Live to Be 100?

14 Ailments You Might Face and
What to Do About Them

T o me, owning my health means taking as much responsibility as possible for what goes on in my body. It is the opposite of feeling like the helpless victim of pain, disease or disability. It also means working in a collaborative partnership with my doctor to find the best ways to prevent and treat disease from all worlds of medicine: alternative and complementary, as well as conventional.

Here is how I learned to own my health: In 1995, I woke up from heart-valve surgery with the left side of my body paralyzed from a stroke. A tiny piece of tissue had broken away from the valve, traveled through blood vessels and lodged in my brain, blocking the flow of blood with its essential supply of oxygen to the neurons that controlled movement on my left side.

If I had obediently followed the prescribed role of stroke patient in the world of conventional medicine, I would be dependent on adaptive devices and other people for many of the activities of daily life. Instead, I have recovered completely and am back to my life as a medical journalist, wife and mother.

I quickly learned that while the advances of modern medicine can save your life, the conventional medical systemalong with the insurers who pay for itis not set up for true healing. The goal of the system was to get me to a minimal level of functioning, out of the hospital or rehabilitation facility and back home. What happened after that was up to me.

As a patient, it often feels as if the conventional health-care system wants us to accept and adapt to our health problemswhether we are recovering from a heart attack or stroke or suffering from chronic illness or pain. We often feel as if we are being treated as collections of body parts to be fixed with pills or adaptive devices, rather than as whole people with emotions, relationships, minds and spirits.

By contrast, integrative medicine, which is the philosophy of this Own Your Health book series, encourages people to combine complementary and alternative medicine (often called CAM) with conventional medicine to find true healing of body, mind and spiritto achieve wholeness.

As we grow older, we often feel particularly alone in the world of conventional medicine. In her Introduction to this book, Dr. Alexa Fleckenstein, a board-certified internist with a subspecialty in European Natural Medicine, shares with us many of the fears that her patients have voiced about growing older. These include pain, loss of function, depression, loneliness and fear of catastrophic illness. From her perspective of more than two decades of medical practice, Dr. Fleckenstein assures us, however, that growing older can be blissful. She guides us in how to listen to the wisdom of our bodies, engage in healthy living, and make use of complementary and alternative health systems as well as conventional medicine. And, she tells us, no matter what your age, it is never too soon or too late to start preparing for a long, healthy, vigorous life.

Going outside of the conventional medical system can be a tough thing to do for those of us who are accustomed to seeing our doctors as omniscient beings who control our health, but with Dr. Fleckensteins guidance, you will learn about many effective options for aging with vigor and grace. When I looked for ways to expand my own healing options, I found treatments that helped me both recover movement and reduce pain. These included acupuncture and tai chi from the ancient system of Traditional Chinese Medicine; yoga, from the equally ancient Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine; the Alexander Techniquea powerful system of movement education that teaches you to use your body with less effort and reduced pain; craniosacral therapy; and various forms of bodywork and massage.

In addition to these healing methods, Dr. Fleckenstein shares easy ways to incorporate nutritional changes, exercise and joy into a lifestyle that promotes longevity and good healthadding life to your years and years to your life. I am grateful that Dr. Fleckenstein of WholeHealth New England, an integrative medical practice, is the coauthor of this book. She will be a wonderful travel guide on your journey toward owning your health and a healthy and vigorous long life.

Roanne Weisman

One sees a flame in the eyes
of the young, but in the eyes of
the old, one sees light.

VICTOR HUGO

W hen I was seventeen, I thought how absolutely devastating it must be to grow oldtwenty-five, for exampleand not to dance to rock and roll every night. By 25 I was a mother (probably as a direct consequence of having danced to rock-and roll-every night....) and had developed a different set of interests and values. I had made new friends and had a new life. Rock and roll was still funbut only occasionally.

Are you afraid of getting older? In a society that puts much emphasis on youth, getting older can be scary. Hitting forty or fifty, or any other round number that you do not even want to whisper to yourself, can pull the rug out from under your feet. You feel as if you are losing your balancesometimes physically as well as emotionallyand you have to find a new center for each new stage of life: children leaving home, the end of a career, the loss of some physical function, a change in your relationship with your spouse, losses and bereavements of all kinds.

Here are some fears of getting older that my patients have shared with me:

Never having the chance to live the life of my dreams

Losing my marbles

Being unable to care for myself

Being sexually unattractive/never having sex again

Becoming homeless

Never finding a partner

Being unable to keep my present partner

Never having the children I always wanted

Dying without having grandchildren

Being put on the invisible shelffeeling useless to society

Running out of money

Never resolving family feuds

Having to care for aging relatives

Fearing Gods wrath because Ive lost my belief

Being alone and lonely

Leaving my partner alone and lonely