Holistic Healing, Mar 06

Aging with Attitude
You too can feel sensational at 77.

By Stephen Hanks

    Over the centuries hundreds of notables—from William Shakespeare to Benjamin Franklin to the ageless astronaut John Glenn—have chimed in on the subject of aging, often with pithy one-liners. But as a baseball fan I was pleased to find that the most appropriate quote for this piece was uttered by the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. At age 43, Paige was a rookie because as an African-American he couldn’t play in the major leagues until 1948. In 1965, Paige pitched three scoreless innings at age 60 and a lot of people thought he was older than that. Paige’s real age was always a mystery and when asked how old he was, Paige would respond, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”
    Talk about saying volumes with one sentence. What Paige was alluding to in Yogi Berra-esque style is that our age is all in our minds and in our bodies, that one is as old—or as young—as one feels.

Chronological Age vs. Real Age
    Isn’t age, after all, just a number that informs how long we’ve been alive and how long it may be before we’re gone? When you read a magazine profile on a celebrity or a newspaper obituary about some unknown person, you are always told their age, but what does that number really tell you about the person’s “real” age?
    “Our culture attaches undue importance to age,” says Barbara Morris, a pharmacist from California, who has written Put Old On Hold (Image FX Pub), a book that reads like a life-coaching primer on aging. Morris is 77, says she feels more like 47, and wants everybody to feel the same. “We assign parameters of behavior to each decade, thereby controlling, for too many people, how much or how little they can get out of life. Chronological age has no relationship to ability or state of health. It is far more important and humane to focus on biological or physiological age, how well the mind and body maintains itself over time. This is the real age that matters and you have enormous control over it.”
    Benita von Klingspor is another vibrant 77-year-old who has always had control over her mind and body. Born a baroness in Vienna, Austria in 1929, von Klingspor also grew up in Czechoslovakia and Germany (where she was a champion youth gymnast) before moving to America after World War II. She has had careers as a corporate graphic artist, a clothing designer and, most recently, as a nutritional consultant. Now living in California, in 2003 she published her own health and beauty book Rejuvenate! so, as she says, “The reader may benefit from my knowledge of over seven decades on how to be vital and healthy at any age.”
    One of the first things von Klingspor noticed when she came to America was that women hid their age. Being from Europe she found that puzzling and still does.
    “People I meet in California always say to me, ‘Why don’t you say you’re in your 40s?’ Well, I’m proud of who I am at this age.” Then with a laugh, she adds, “Besides, I’m not interested in finding a man anymore.”
    As a nutritionist and alternative medicine consultant, von Klingspor sees many clients with aging issues. She finds it ironic that Southern California, which was the breeding ground for natural and healthy lifestyles, has become one of the superficial capitals of the world. “It’s all about face lifts in California now,” von Klingspor observes. “Many of my clients in their 40s feel like they are over-the-hill and a couple of my clients are jealous of their teenage daughters.” Barbara Morris is also keenly aware of that mindset. “With cosmetic surgery you can look young until the day you die or until the money runs out,” she says. “But the important thing is what’s going on in your mind and in your body.”

Old Mindset
    Morris says that she sees countless women her age trapped in what she calls a “senior mindset,” a lifestyle in which “you’re supposed to do certain things or be a certain way at a certain age.” But she also adds that it’s tough to get younger in mind and body once you’re into your 50s. “If you haven’t been living well your entire adult life, it will take a lot to turn that around.”
    Benita von Klingspor doesn’t like the phrase “reversing the aging process.” “That doesn’t work,” she insists. “If it did, then I would be in diapers right now. But you can improve yourself with better nutrition and a healthier lifestyle.”
    Von Klingspor has been a vegetarian for more than 40 years, exercises religiously and swears by supplements. She takes 40 mg of lutein a day for eye health and says it’s given her perfect vision. She also uses calcium, magnesium and the anti-aging antioxidants CoQ10 and alpha lipoic acid. Morris is also a huge proponent of CoQ10 for brain and heart health and vitamin D to help prevent osteoporosis, along with antioxidant vitamins C and E, and healthful omega-3 fatty acids. She also lifts weights and walks on a treadmill a half-hour a day.
    These two inspirational women prove that it’s possible to delay the aging process, that for healthy people the 70s may very well be the new 50s. After all, as Mark Twain—and Satchel Paige—said: “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

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