Aging a choice!
We sometimes don’t appreciate the importance of fitness until we lose it with age.

Losing is a very gradual process almost imperceptible. Initially it maybe just walking a little slower. Acceptable for advancing age but acceptable only if you accept it! Then preference for using a lift rather than the stairs.

I have never been athletic in my youth but once I finished my MBBS, I looked around me and saw life style ailments in my patients. I also saw my own father who had prematurely aged.
He discovered he was hypertensive only when he developed a nose bleed.

He had only one of his original teeth left. He was born in a time where dental care was in a nascent stage in India, so the treatment for dental caries was extraction. My mother jokingly commented that getting his teeth extracted has become a hobby with him. She also recounted an incident where the dentist mistakenly extracted a healthy tooth.
In those days in Uttar Pradesh you had itinerant dentist, invariably of Chinese origin, who set up a roadside stall with a barbers chair for a dental chair. The diseased tooth was identified by tapping and eliciting pain. The extraction would be sans anesthetics. People of that era were more stoic and had a high threshold to pain.

There is a classical description of a tooth extraction in Mark Twain’s ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The boy would complain of toothache and the mother would identity the tooth and tie a string around it. Then she would tie the string to the foot end of the bed and take an embering log from the fire place and bring it near his face. Defensively he would move back and out would pop the tooth.

As a result of not having teeth his cheeks and lips caved in because the lack of support from the teeth. He used a full denture which he removed in the night.

Towards his last days he was never satisfied with his denture despite having it refitted numerous times. He felt it poked his gums or palate. His past time was to file the denture with a nail file to smoothen the protuberances.

He was also unable to sit astride as a pillion on my scooter and had to sit side saddle.
All this made me firm in my resolve to remain active and at least slow down aging if not arrest it.

First in my actions was to give up smoking and it’s been 36 years since I’ve touched a cigarette.

There was a fitness wave abroad and the media promoted at least half an hour of aerobic activity for cardiovascular health. I started with running followed by skipping, then swimming and finally gyming and running.

I may have had cardiovascular benefits from running, swimming and skipping but gyming and weight training made me realize the benefits of muscle training and flexibility.

We visited Manas National Park in Assam and went for an elephant safari. Unlike in other places where they balance a ‘hathi howdah’ on an elephant’s back and you can sit comfortably. They were more humane here and we had to sit astride on the elephant’s back. The elephant is extremely broad in the mid section and this meant doing almost a complete split! I realized how stiff I had become. The mahout was comfortably perched on the elephant’s shoulder and neck and did not have to perform such contortions. I recollected the difficulty my father had sitting astride on my scooter.

One of my classmates who visited the Great Wall of China, sent a photograph to the class group with a comment we should visit these places when we can. Implying physical disabilities later would impede us.
I have run two half marathons in Ladakh, hiked upto Tiger’s nest monastery in Bhutan. In Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh we went to the Bum La pass on the China border at an elevation of 15200 feet. Many from the group experienced altitude sickness. I guess I had got accustomed to altitudes.
Age is only a number and you are only as old as you feel. If I compare myself with my father I’m definitely in better shape. I recollect that how old my parents seemed to me when they were the same age as I am now. I go with the attitude that nothing is impossible if I set my mind to it.