Dr. Bob Arnot - Dr. Bob Arnots Guide to Turning Back the Clock

Copyright 1995 by Robert Arnot, M.D.

Illustrations copyright 1995 by William P. Hamilton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Consult your personal physician before beginning any diet and exercise program.

Glycemic Index Table from Timing and method of increased carbohydrate intake to cope with heavy training, competition and recovery by E. F. Coyle in the Journal of Sports Sciences 1991; 9/spec no: 2951; reprinted by permission. Best Vegetables and Healthiest Vegetables December 1991. Best Fruits May 1992. Best Grains April 1993. Best Beans May 1993. Chinese Report September 1993. Italian Report January/February 1994. From the Nutrition Action Healthletter. Copyright by Center for Science in the Public Interest. Reprinted by permission of CSPI (1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 100095728. $24.00 for 10 issues).

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First eBook Edition: November 2009

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THE BEST MEDICINE

with Charles Gaines

SPORTSELECTION

SPORTSTALENT

To my parents,
who through their vigor and enthusiasm have shown our
family how to remain young and strong through old age.

To my children,
Bobby and Hoyden, who every day motivate my wife, Courtney, and me
to do the same.

I would like to thank Jill Werman, whose skillful insight, dedication, and perseverance made this book possible. Her know-how and intelligence provided the cutting-edge research that has added so much value to this book. I am truly grateful for her partnership.

Thanks also to my editor at Little Brown, Jennifer Josephy, and her assistant, Abigail Wilentz, for their tireless efforts, enthusiasm, and cheerfulness.

And to my agents Dan and Simon Green for making this book happen.

The experts I interviewed for this book were extremely gracious with their time and knowledge. I would like to offer special thanks to the following people for extending themselves on so many occasions: Clayton Abrams, Steve Blechman, Richard Bothwell, Vic Braden, Bread & Circus Whole Foods Market, Dr. Luke Bucci, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Dr. Michael Colgan, Dr. Ed Coyle, Dr. Chuck Dillman, John Douglas, Dr. Bill Evans, Gary Fisher, Charles Gaines, Ben Gaylord, Juliann Goldman, Rick Grogan, Andrew Hall, Lee Haney, Austin Hearst, Dr. Charles H. Hennekens, Ed Irace, C.P.T., Dr. John Ivy, Gary Kiedaisch, John Kukoda, Bob LeMond, Tony Marabella, Dave Merriam, the Mount Mansfield Ski Resort and Cross Country Ski Center, Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, Jon Niednagel, Eric Ober, Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, Ned Overend, Michael Radutzky, the Royal Gorge Cross Country Ski Resort, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeanne Soper, Toga Bike Shop, the Trapp Family Lodge Cross Country Ski Center, Vail Ski School, Jim Vandergrift, Rob Vandermark, the Vic Braden Tennis College, Jim and Phil Wharton, Dr. Keith Wheeler, Warren Witherell, World Gym at Lincoln Center, and my daily cycle-training partner, Bobby Arnot.

IN 1987, I FLEW TO SAN FRANCISCO FOR A DAY OF TRAINING WITH Americas oldest living teenager, octogenarian Walt Stack, a man whose feme derives less from what he does than how he does it.

Walt met our CBS camera crew at the Dolphin Swim Club after completing his 2:00 A.M. fifty-mile morning bike ride. I joined Walt for his seventeen-mile daily training run over the Golden Gate Bridge, down through Sausalito, and then back to the Dolphin Club. Next event, a swim in the 54-degree waters of San Francisco harbor, across from Alcatraz, where he was once a guest of the federal government. Walt jumped in with no more than a rumpled swimsuit and a white swim cap. He swam over a mile in forty-five minutes. I donned a three-quarter-inch neoprene wetsuit complete with hood, booties, and gloves and swam the fastest nine seconds of my life. This wasnt the first time Walt had put a far younger man to shame. One week, building toward his one-hundred-marathon personal record, he completed the 26.2-mile Boston event, flew through the night on a red-eye, and raced again at 8:00 A.M. in California. At the twenty-four-mile mark of that Santa Rosa event, Walt punished a competitor half his age, who had tried to pass him, by tossing a can of beer over his shoulder, remarking guess that finishes the six-pack, and accelerating away from him.

After our swim, I took Walt to an exercise physiology laboratory. I asked the doctor in charge to run a maximum-oxygen-consumption test on Walt, an excellent measure of biological age. The test showed that Walt was an extraordinarily fit and healthy fifty-eight-year-old! Thats twenty-six years younger than his birth certificate would lead you to believe. Walt wasnt alone. Thousands of men have cranked their biological clocks back by decades. Others have held their biological age in their early twenties as their birth-certified age crept into their fifties.

Conventional Wisdom:

Go with the flow.

New Paradigm:

Aging is a cultural trap that programs men to abuse, misuse, and disuse their bodies.

How many times have you wished to be eighteen again, taking back with you your wisdom, experience, knowledge, and your wallet? That trip back in time was science fiction a generation ago. Today, returning to your youth can be a reality. If you are between thirty and sixty, you can crank back the time on your biological clock by a staggering amount as determined by standardized human-performance tests for biological age. Between sixty and ninety big gains can still be made. Whats changed? Dramatic breakthroughs in nutrition, fitness technology, and sports medicine. If the idea of dragging your body back through a time warp seems like a pretty weird idea, be assured, it really works.

The twenties are your last decade of maintenance-free living. You can drink, party, stay out all night, eat trash foods, yet still pick up a sport at a moments notice and show dazzling athletic prowess with little conditioning. But beginning in your thirties, body bits and pieces begin to fall apart. Your recovery slows after a hard Saturday and Sunday as a weekend warrior. You cant sprint as fast. Beginning at forty, the sedentary male will lose six pounds of muscle, nearly 7 percent of heart function, and 8 percent of lung function every ten years. Many men accept those events as an inevitable genetically programmed disintegration. Misuse and abuse are widely misinterpreted as aging. The same misfortune would befall a poorly maintained car. After 30,000 maintenance-free miles, many cars will begin to deteriorate if they are not properly cared for. Yet that same car may go to 150,000 miles if meticulously maintained.

I call the twenties the gold standard, since they represent the decade during which we functioned best. Rather than setting shallow fitness goals, resolve to function as if you were still in your twenties. When I enter mountain biking, skiing, cycling, or speed-skating races, I race in the eighteen to thirty group, although Im forty-seven. I want to be biologically twenty-five. Competing with and beating kids that age is proof of the pudding.

You can set back your biological age, like rolling back the miles on a cars odometer. How much? A sedentary forty- or fifty-year-old can realistically expect to test as a sedentary twenty-five-year-old after as little as six months. How long can you keep your biological age young? A. B. Dill, founder of the Harvard Fatigue Lab, tested himself every year for thirty years and never saw any change in his biological age, as measured by a standard oxygen-consumption test. Dr. Dave Costill, head of the Human Performance Lab at Ball State University, found that runners in their fifties showed little decrease in their performance on standardized tests when compared to their twenties. So it is possible to maintain the performance of a twenty-year-old in your early fifties! If theyre willing to train with the same intensity and volume as the twenty-year-old, we find very little decay in any of their physiology, says Dr. Costill. George Sheehan, the famous running doctor, ran his best marathon ever at age sixty, covering the 26.2-mile course in nearly three hours flat. Age thirty used to be the dreaded end of an athletes career. Now its the halfway mark.