Live on the radio!!

Susan Almeida, from WJBC AM1230’s show the Broad View, interviewed Dr. Deoskar (my father) and I on Saturday, March 6, 2010. It was pretty exciting to be on the radio and sit in the studio.

Susan: I want to welcome to the Broad View, Dr. Deoskar, who is a geriatrician in town and his son Anand who has had a really interesting time getting in shape. Dr. Deoskar, welcome to the Broad View. It is wonderful to have you. Now you have a Successful Aging Center because you are telling people how to successfully age and they needed to learn more about it. Is that how you started the Successful Aging Center?

Dr. I ran out of effective treatments because people have established chronic diseases which progress and we don’t really have a good solution once we get established advanced chronic disease. So, I thought, how am I going to help people aging well? That’s how I got interested in healthy, active aging and found out that we don’t have to have a lot of these conditions in the first place. There is a concept of compression of morbidity. What it means is that you are going to get chronic diseases…why not push them towards the last two or three years. Until that time, you should enjoy life, be active and productive. What is inevitable, you don’t have to have for 10 years.

Susan: Well, people probably think that it’s inevitable that they would get sick so when they start to feel a little bit sick, maybe they just give into it too soon. Is that what you are saying?

Dr: I don’t think they give in. They probably may not know what to do about it. Some of the people may be just giving up, but most others really feel mistakenly that getting a lot of medical care might get them out of this. Well, medical care is essential, sometimes it is very useful. But, it can’t be very useful if you don’t look after many other things that doctors don’t look after.

Susan: So, how long should people live, do you think?

Dr: Well, there are several things that we need to understand. One is, what is the estimated maximum human life span. A lot of scientists and gerontologists have come to the conclusion that at this point our maximum lifespan is probably 120 years.

Susan: Whoa!

Dr: Our life expectancy at birth is going up gradually. During the times of Romans it was about 22 years. At the beginning of last century, about 1900, it was about 48 years and we have gained about 30 years of life expectancy in the last century.

Susan: Well, if we’ve gained that much in the last century, then when should people start to think that they are getting old?

Dr: I don’t think they should start thinking they are getting old at all. In fact, they should know that the aging process starts at 25 or about that time.

Susan: Now, what do you mean by that, the aging process? They used to say that when you are born you start to actually die.

Dr: Well, you are coming closer to the end, right from conception, but you are not growing old until almost 25. You are growing, but not getting old. At about 25, we start the process. It’s like the seed of aging is sown by that time.

Susan: What is manifested by that ‘starting to get old.’

Dr: It doesn’t manifest unless you really do a very deep study about an individual, but this is the knowledge that scientists have given to us, that the aging process in the body starts at about 25. As you go more and more, 30, 35, 40, we can then start seeing and feeling changes. But, a lot of people don’t feel, they don’t necessarily feel that they are getting old, so they don’t feel the need to do anything about it.

Susan: So, we kind of contribute to our aging prematurely? Would you say that’s a fair statement?

Dr: The speed of aging is something that we can change. We can slow it down, or we can accelerate it by a lot of decisions we make.

Susan: Now, your son happened to do that, I think. Anand Deoskar, let’s bring you in here. You kind of thought that you have retarded your aging.

Anand: I definitely believe so, I mean, I was on the brink of disaster, I guess, if you put it that way. I was leading a pretty unhealthy lifestyle.

Susan: Like what?

Anand: In the sense that I wasn’t eating very well. I would eat out a lot, and whenever I was eating I was overeating. I wasn’t active. I’m 34 years old right now and when I was in high school, I was kind of athletic, I played a lot of tennis, I was 1st singles tennis player in my high school and I was really into it. I weighed 165 or something like that at that time. After I finished high school and went to college, I kind of stopped. A lot people I think do this, they stop playing sports or whatever, or stop being active, and I certainly was one of those people, and eventually, I gained a lot of weight, I started smoking at some point, and I found myself last year at about 235 pounds which is almost 70 pounds more than what I was in high school, and I was a smoker, I wasn’t eating well, and I wasn’t active.

Susan: And did your body respond to this abuse?

Anand: Yes, it responded in a way… in that I had a heart attack.

Susan: At that age of…

Anand: At the age of 33.

Susan: So your body said, enough of this junk, Anand, and you had a heart attack, and then what happened.

Anand: Well, I had a heart attack and I didn’t know I had a heart attack at the time. I just knew that I had experienced some pain and I wasn’t sure what the reason for that was, so I just made a doctor’s appointment to see what it was about and one thing led to another and they found out that I had a lot of blockage.

Susan: So the blockage led to surgery. What, six bypass surgery?

Anand: Yeah, yeah, I had bypass surgery with 6 bypasses.

Susan: So, how has your life changed since?

Anand: Well, it has changed actually in a positive way. I totally changed as far as my lifestyle. Bypass surgery is a new lease on life. But, it is not a guaranteed pass that you can do whatever you want. It’s not like you call the plumber and then they snake the pipe, or the drain or whatever, and you can go fill it back up, and they can come back and snake it up again. You can’t keep going into the pipe, because we’re not made out of copper tubes, you know… or iron tubes.

Susan: That’s a good pictures. So, you really have to stop abusing your body, which you are.

Anand: Which I am, absolutely.

Susan: So, you’ve lost a lot of weight, you look great by the way.

Anand: I appreciate that.

Susan: I’m really struck by what you say about eating out. Would you explain that?

Anand: You know, there’s a big draw to eating out. It’s a lot of fun, you don’t have to do anything, you just go drive somewhere, you get to spend time with somebody and somebody waits on you hand and foot, and they give you all this food, and it’s pretty tasty food. It’s really a lot of fun just to go out, especially when you’re young. So, I was eating out a lot, it’s convenient, I thought it was cheaper. Which it isn’t by the way. Basically it is very loaded. Eating out is really a loaded thing. There’s not really a lot of options. It’s almost like anywhere you go the worst menu items in almost any place will be almost equally as horrible for you. It’s unbelievable when you look at some of the numbers as to how much… like there are certain food items that you can eat at certain places which literally have twice as many calories than what you should probably eat in a meal.

Susan: And we don’t know that.

Anand: We don’t even realize it. The problem too is that even though it’s twice as many calories, even the content of those calories are really bad for you.

Susan: So, have you stopped eating out totally?

Anand: Pretty much, I would say 99.9%, yes.

Susan: Have you found anything that you’ve found that you and your wife can eat?

Anand: We go to… I wish I remember the name of the place, it’s that new sushi place?