FIGHTING THE FITNESS URGE

I’ve spent most of my life convinced that my lifestyle meant I was doomed and destined for a premature handing in of my dinner pail. In 2018 a study determined that any alcoholic drink at all was very, very bad for you. Occasionally, so convinced was I of this, I had a “dry” month and felt exceedingly virtuous but was very grumpy  and restless.

Doctors seemed united and thin lipped about this. These cheerless cynics bleakly asserted that when it came to alcohol nil by mouth was what we should aspire to.  Yet if we really had to drink then 14 units a week (disapproving sniff) was the absolute limit; exceeding this would be akin to committing suicide. Despite this a 2019 BMJ Open study of 417 NHS doctors found that 44% of them resorted to binge drinking themselves.

So what the hell was going on? 

Earlier this month a new study came up with a differing account. Here’s the story:

“The European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care will be presented with this study from the University Hospital Bonn in Germany.

628 adults took part with an average age of 72 who were undergoing elective surgery.

The 186 adults in the "medium to hazardous alcohol consumption group" were significantly less likely to be obese or overweight than those who did not drink or drank only occasionally.

The high-drinking group also reported better overall health, less pain and found it easier to perform activities such as getting dressed and seeing family.

Vera Guttenthaler, the study's author, said: "One explanation may be that higher alcohol consumption may lead to elevated mood, enhanced sociability and reduced stress.

"The results may lead to the conclusion that alcohol consumption ... might support older patients to experience a better quality of life before and after elective surgery."

Vera Guttenthaler’s conclusion that alcohol might give you a better quality of life was encouraging to those of us who enjoy drinking. Cheers Vera.

But having established  drinking may, after all, be quite good for you what other lifestyle issues need to be re-examined. Let’s start with exercise. I’m afraid I belong to the Billy Butlin view:

“Whenever I feel the urge to take exercise I sit down until it passes away”. 

But seeing all the rest of my family power-walking, jogging, doing Pilates and generally turning their bodies into objects of well-muscled tautness prompted me to start the restorative process.

I bought a pedometer and now  unless I get in my 10,000 steps a day I feel very uneasy. My wife has watched in alarm as I rush up and down the stairs – 59 of them from top to bottom of the house - or walk round and round the sitting room. I ache all over . But soon I’ll resemble Joe Wicks rather than Mr Blobby.

Next it’s brain exercises. The daily Wordle which I do with my wife honing a series of strategies which have produced a “streak” (that’s a winning run) of over a hundred. 

I might learn a foreign language although that sounds like an  awesome task or write that book I’ve been talking about for ages. Meanwhile I’m trying to fathom the strategy underlying our government’s chaotic activities. Now that’s real brain exercise.

Finally food. My body is a temple – it must be appropriately worshipped. No more pies, no meat, no dairy, nothing that tastes nice. Yeah, well, I’ve tried this before and I doesn’t work. Vegan food just makes me flatulent.

It’s very simple. Let’s listen to Epicurus:- 

“Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”

 

CARRY ON WORRYING

The funniest  film they never made would have been about hypochondria. I speak with great authority. Had there been a degree course in the topic when I went to University, many years ago, I should have certainly got a first, and for my piteous groaning, a straight alpha. Compared with many my health would be judged as pretty good but deep inside I know I am on the brink of some obscure ailment. And of course I also regard this as being quite funny too. I may be a hypochondriac but first of all I’m a comedian.

Since early this year I’ve had a wheezy cough and cold which has been disabling . As I’ve piteously groaned in bed taking to heart the medical advice that to recover I must rest and checking my temperature with a thermometer that is clearly under-reading,  I reflect on health.

A new coronavirus has hit Wuhan in China (some 800 km. west of Shanghai). It’s linked to Mers or Sars and there have been an estimated 1700 incidents and a few deaths.  I’m pretty certain this is a mild strain of what I’ve just had. I applaud my own courage and return to reading my latest copy of Undertakers Weekly.

Generally world health is improving dramatically. Recently I read that the average human temperature, which today is 37C, was probably 1.5C higher in 1800. As the planet warms, humans cool. This is probably because our immune systems are less frenetically warding off a host of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, measles and so on. Additionally our ancestors had inflammation in their bodies producing proteins called cytokines that ramped up the body's metabolic rate, thus generating heat.

Our temperature controlled lives, mostly at around 20c indoors, means we have less need to heat up which is yet another factor.

So Dickens, Keats, Shelley and the rest were “hot” and unwell most of their short lives. Dickens, that inveterate night walker, often covering 20-30 miles in a walk describes illness in a way with which we can identify. The description of Joe the Fat Boy in Pickwick papers has led to medical analysis up to 160 years later into narcolepsy. Being slightly unwell may not be a deterrent to creativity and success.  Byron at 36 found therapeutic bleeding weakened  him when he was ill, persisted and so died. But he got quite a lot done in his short life.

I’m feeling rather better already but I keep on recalling Mr Woodhouse the father of Emma, Jane Austen’s heroine, whom she described as a valetudinarian – the only time I’ve ever seen that word. It means a person who’s unduly anxious about their health.

C’est moi.

We’re  all getting healthier but also getting more anxious. About our weight, about our alcohol consumption, about our state of mind and  about newish causes of death – sepsis now exceeds cancer as a cause of death.  All I can advise is, if in doubt, rest. And stop worrying…….Goodnight. 

"I'M NOT TOO BAD ..... CONSIDERING"

This miserable response to the question “hi, how are you?” invites an invitation to ask to know more… and more is what you usually get. A torrent of misery about health, injustice and ill fortune. The only responses to the hi-how-are-you question that are worse are “fine” which = fucked-up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. Or “could be worse - musn’t grumble”… but you are going to mate, aren’t you, aren’t you? … any second from now.

(The lion on the left has just asked that “hi how are you” question by the way.)

When life in Britain gets sunnier every day, when the weather is heading towards a possible heat wave, when wherever I walk I see vibrant street theatre, investment, new art and enterprise why do I detect the whiff of “fings aint wot they used to be” UKIPism? Well actually I don’t see it amongst the young so much as the middle aged and elderly bewailing the dismantlement of Old Britain. Overall the young seem pretty fine to me. For the first time in years I even like and appreciate some of their music and some of the recent advertising…Look at the current World Cup McDonald’s ad which is pure generous genius

http://www.mobiledia.com/

And last week when Rik Mayall died and we all rushed to You Tube to watch the astonishing tour de force of his Lord Flashheart in Blackadder we appreciate the joy of “tour de force” rather than grumble and mutter. And what a tour de force this was. Deliciously we learn he didn’t do it quite like that in rehearsal so this is also a piece of glorious upstaging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKfbSHW9uGA

The tired old cliché is that life isn’t a rehearsal either. Why Mayall and his various characters struck a chord is they weren’t careful, they weren’t sensible, they were just full of ranting life. Alan B’Stard was not admirable in any way bar one. He too was enormously full of life. Just like that old boy with his unforgotten football skills in the McDonald’s ad. Because this isn’t about age it’s about attitude.

Wake up, feel glad to be doing whatever you’ve got to do that day, do it with vitality, energy and laughter. The world really is a better place than it was and more than 50% of what happens is great (which means, if my arithmetic is right, that we’re winning). So what do we do about those whingers and grumblers - the “not too bad considerings”?

Do a Rick Mayall and say loudly “not too bad? … Bollocks….you are so, so lucky…the sun’s shining and life is great” and then laugh. They’ll think you’ve gone mad but you’ll have achieved an important thing. You’ll have communicated that how you feel depends on how you see things. There’s a phrase I hear more of now than the dreaded “whatever!”.

 “What’s not to like?”

Apart from that football result….but look on the bright side….we might be Spanish.

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

This is what Oprah Winfrey said:

“Follow your passion. Do what you love, and the money will follow. Most people don’t believe it but it’s true”

Which sounds great until you look at your debt, your food and fuel bill and your rent or mortgage repayments…..But I don’t think Oprah was suggesting you followed your passion into bankruptcy, merely that you decided what you really wanted and that you went for it.

It’s like love. You don’t marry the first person who comes along. You don’t get hitched to a call-centre of a person – “I don’t enjoy them but they get the cooking done”. You marry for better, for richer, in health and in fun.

So here are three questions:

i)    Do you really know what your passion is?
ii)    What do you really need in life?
iii)    Do you actually want to follow your passion?

Most people say loosely I want to be …”fulfilled” and rather weakly flap their hands. What you need to identify is what exactly it is that fills your mind and about which you want to know everything, a focus for all your learning urges.

I met Nicholas Showam MD of Jaly Ltd. at an RSA conference on Saturday. His passion is machines and making things. He could talk forever about the latest bit of kit. He believes we can out manufacture the worlds if we choose to.

He’s followed his passion.

We don’t have to be passionate 100% of the time. We can earn what we need and be pragmatic about budgeting but we must follow that passion like the wonderfully talented Richard Crane, playwright, dramatist and  actor who observed jovially “I’m on the stage…I know all about austerity…and how to deal with it.”

He’s followed his passion.

On Friday I went to Birmingham to the great Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition in their Art Gallery. Birmingham is rocking. Great customer service; taxi drivers who tell you how wonderful the place is and the new Bullring…a revelation of 21st century quality retailing. I love positivism, art and great business. I want more of this and we all need more of it to break out of the austerity trap.

So on Friday I too followed my passion and I believe the money will follow.