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It would be a great regret...

7K views 15 replies 9 participants last post by  Eddie 
#1 ·
One of my most important tenets in life is to be the best angler that I possibly can by the time I retire and can spend the time doing it a lot, and that means physically as well as mentally.

I assume for most of us youth is a thing of the past, and it's a cruel thing that at this point in our lives we spend the vast majority earning our keep while our health so easily slips away.

I never want to look back and regret losing my hard-earned angling years because I didn't maintain my health to reach these years.

I want to do the death march until it can be taken literally :smokin:
 
#4 ·
Certainly helps...

but I wonder what the ratio of preventable ailments downs us in our golden years verses genetics.

Susceptibility to heart disease (a major killer) is preventable or at least modifiable by diet and excercise. Avoidance of habit-forming and addictive substances like alchohol and nicotine certainly helps.

Many forms of cancer are preventable by behavior, while others are not. Susceptibility seems to be hereditary but not exposure.

Where and how we live helps.

Even our perspectives.
 
#7 · (Edited)
OK,

I admit this is a bit deeper than your original post (and a bit off subject) Juro, but . . . I can't help myself from recommending a book that I'm really only half way through: "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.

It's one of the most important and fascinating I've ever read about our food supply, the environment, economics, public policy . . . etc. I'd enjoyed one of his previous books (The Botany of Desire) but this one simply blows me away. The natural processes illuminated in the book are astounding. The subject might sound dry, but it's extremely well written. It certainly seems to fit with the natural contemplative nature of us fly fishers.

om•ni•vore (n)
1) An animal that will feed on any kind or many different kinds of food, including both plants and animals.
2) somebody who has very wide interests and will read, study, or generally absorb anything that is available.

Still in Oregon. Will probably head to the Umpqua next week (if I can pull myself away from reading).

Bill
 
#9 ·
old age

As I get older, 66 now. I find that the muscles involved in casting a Spey rod are only kept in shape by fishing. I exercise and treead mill but only fishing works the muscles that you need to cast.

I have arthritis and a back that was broken back 1968. Those things you just have to learn to deal with. Most of us as we have grown older have pain of some kind to deal with. Some Advil befpr leaving home helps, and sometime you just have to concentrate on something else and ignore the pain.

Skilly
 
#10 ·
Skilly, very good points.

Also, I find that when I cast a lot my body and mind start to calm down after the intial excitement and arenalin surge from going fishing. Then I get into a groove where I start to save energy and cast smoothly and effortlessly. The rest of the week is much less on my body once I get over that 'hump'.

I hope when I am older I will start that way from the first cast. That's one reason I am a dedicated student of the cast today, to understand it so when my body is less durable I will be that much more economical with my casting energy :)
 
#12 ·
It's all about the lifestyle we choose...

and how important it is for us to stay healthy for as long as possible. We all know that exercise is important for the body, that is just an accepted fact.

Now when it comes to diet things get a little more dicey. Many people think they can get everything they need from their diet, and that is true if you want to try and help prevent scurvy and rickets. How many people do you know that are still dying of these infectious diseases today? We are dying of degenerative diseases, and in order to give ourselves the best chance of fighting these we need to look away from the RDA recommendations on food and start looking at the optimum daily allowances of intake. The surgeon general stated that 67% of all diseases are caused by a bad diet and not getting enough of the essential vitamins and minerals in our diet, along with even the equally important anti-oxidants is a major factor. The optimum daily allowances are far, far greater than the those old standards of the RDA. I have literally read hundreds and hundreds of studies conducted throughout the world that show without a doubt what a diet using optimum daily allowances does for the prevention of degenerative diseases.

Our country is run by big business and the medical business is one of the biggest. Who do you think pays for a the testing and gives grant money for almost all of the research into diseases? Yep, pharmecuetical companies. So, when you read research on specific diseases please take it with a grain of salt. If these drugs are doing such a great job then why do the numbers for heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc. keep going up year after year? Our doctors are not trained in helping to prevent these diseases they are trained to diagnose and then write a prescription or schedule a surgery. I'm not bashing on Dr's one bit, that's just the way they are taught. My mother is a Dr. and she will flat out agree with me. Medicine these days is about prescribing drugs and cutting people up, that's how they make the money, plain and simple. We are not getting to the root cause of the problem and instead just applying a bandage.

Now, before you run out to the local grocery, or health food store to get your vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants please do some research. The stuff you buy at any store is most likely worthless. You see, the vitamin and minerals are guided by the FDA and there are NO strict guidelines for product, they are manufactured according to food grade guidelines, not pharmecuetical guidelines. The FDA states that the product only needs to have 10% of what's on the label actually in the product!!!!! Not only that, but they can also have things in the product that isn't on the label. Hence, the anti-doping committee for the olympics banning all athletes from taking supplements. You see, many athletes were taking supplements to help them recover and stay healthy for training purposes but some of them were testing positive when actually all they were taking were health supplements. They found that many of the products had banned substances in them even though they were not listed on the label. Now, only a few supplement companies are approved for use with athletes because these few companies, VOLUNTARILY, comply with pharmecuetical standards not the FDA standards. I won't get into how much the potency, ratios, and bio-availability of off the shelf stuffs affects their abilty to work in the body but please just do some research on the stuff you take.

Sorry for the rant everyone but this has become one of my passions. I quit a career of 13 years and went into helping people with their nutritional needs, it's just so much more fulfilling. I just like everyone else reading this wants to give their body the best nutrition we can in order to enjoy the things we love so much. The more you read the more scared you'll be about what we lack in our diets. The bright side is that the more you read the more you'll understand that we can do so much to help prevent these diseases that are so rampant in our world.

If you would like more information on what you should be taking please feel free to pm or email me. I'm only 32 years old but for the past 2 years I've been doing all I can to help myself down the road. I want to be able to wade the rivers and cast my spey for as long as I can and I will do anything I can to help others get what they want from their health.

Take care everyone,
Shannon
 
#13 ·
flyjunky said:
Our country is run by big business and the medical business is one of the biggest. Who do you think pays for a the testing and gives grant money for almost all of the research into diseases? Yep, pharmecuetical companies. So, when you read research on specific diseases please take it with a grain of salt. If these drugs are doing such a great job then why do the numbers for heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc. keep going up year after year?
I appreciate most of your insightful post, but this portion is misleading in a number of ways.

Of course pharmaceutical companies are funding a lot of medical research. They are shelling out their own monies to do this. I'm not sure what you mean by taking research with a grain of salt. Anything published in a medical journal undergoes the scrutiny of peer review and is picked apart ad nauseum before being made available to the public. Clinical trials are picked apart even more by the FDA, and there are at least three levels of trials that must be passed before a company can even apply for a BLA for the drug. If the drug goes through this much scrutiny and passes muster, why must we take research with a grain of salt? Your insunuation that there are other agendas is incorrect.

Why do the numbers of heart attacks, strokes, and cancers keep increasing? There are a multitude of factors at play with each one of these medical conditions, and another multitude of factors that are unique to each individual patient. We can also add the fact that the world's population continues to grow, and therefore provides more opportunities for these diseases to occur.

You have chosen to ask about the top three killers, and there's a reason that they are the top three killers: they are complex diseases that have both genetic predispositions and behavioral components. If you think that there are companies out there that have found cures for these diseases and are just sitting on them so that they can milk patients for prescription money, then you live in a very jaded world. Cures for these diseases would result in billions of dollars for the companies that found them, and since you've insinuated that money is what drives pharmaceutical companies, then it would only be in their best interests to divulge such discoveries. As it is, there are many drugs available to help manage and/or prevent these diseases, and they have been made available as soon as possible after discovery and proving in clinical trials.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. Again, I'm thankful for the other portions of your post, particularly regarding nutrition, but in regards to pharmaceuticals, I respectfully suggest that you are off target.
 
#14 ·
flyjunky said:
Now when it comes to diet things get a little more dicey. Many people think they can get everything they need from their diet, and that is true if you want to try and help prevent scurvy and rickets. How many people do you know that are still dying of these infectious diseases today? We are dying of degenerative diseases,
I came across this board by accident when searching for instructions on how to use hackle guards of all things. I saw this post and felt compelled to respond, so I signed up. This seems to be a nice forum. Shannon however has said several incorrect things. I am a practicing physician. First off, scurvy and rickets are not infectious diseases. They are vitamin deficiencies. They are not infections.

The RDA is very accurate information. Virtually no one eating a well-rounded western diet (as we in the USA do) will suffer from any type of vitamin deficiency in this day and age. I don't believe for a minute that the SG says 67% of all disease is caused by problems with diet. That's ridiculous. Not in the USA. The RDA has new, updated standards that are available online. I share them with my patients all the time. They are accurate, and now referred to as DRI's. (Guess that didn't come up in those hundreds of papers you read):

USDA website said:
In 1997, the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences did something dramatic: they changed the way nutritionists and nutrition scientists evaluate the diets of healthy people with the creation of the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). Remember the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs)? From 1941 until 1989, the RDAs were established and used to evaluate and plan menus that would meet the nutrient requirements of groups as well as other applications such as interpreting food consumption records of populations, establishing standards for food assistance programs, establishing guidelines for nutrition labeling, to name a few. Their primary goal was to prevent diseases caused by nutrient deficiencies. Technically speaking, the RDAs were not intended to evaluate the diets of individuals, but they were often used this way.
Link

DRI Tables

The USDA website is an invaluable tool for both physician and nutritionist and, moreover, all the information is available to everyone. It is a wonderful tool for those committed to their health.

I think Mark did a fair job discussing the trials and the FDA approval process. Studies don't get published in large credible journals (NEJM, JAMA, etc...) without being doggedly reviewed, looking at many parameters: strength of study, design of study, bias, methods, etc.

While heart disease and cancer remain the two greatest killers, we have come so far in controlling so many other diseases it is incredible. Everybody has to die from something Shannon. If you live long enough everyone will either suffer heart disease or cancer. The few cancers that we have accepted screening methods for have dropped tremendously in their numbers. I'm thinking about coln cancer as proof of this. Link.

I could go on, but it is best that I don't. Suffice it to say that the most uninformed statement you made was that being a doctor is all about "writing prescriptions and cutting people up." Walk a mile in my shoes and you would see how wrong you are. My job is to be well informed and use my education and training to act as the primary health advocate for each person that I treat. Writing prescriptions is only a small part of what I do. I take that responsibility with a great deal of seriousness, as do my colleagues. Every time a pateint swallows a pill, or takes an injection, or goes for surgery that I have recommended there are possible good and bad outcomes. Each doctor visit is about the patient and the doctor weighing them out together for the best interest of the patient.

Now you'll have to forgive the newbie for the rant. :cool:

Regards,

Mike
 
#15 ·
Thanks, Mike, for your insightful and experiencially based comments.

I want to take a different tack on aging and fishing:

Namely, that as we age, some of our desire to get out at every opportunity under every condition wanes a bit. More of us (certainly not all of us geezers) seem to focus on the quality of the experience, and maybe a philosophy of angling, rather than just on the "doing of the thing."

Roderick Haig-Brown comes to mind as an example. His early writings were quite technical and focused on catching fish (viz. _The Western Angler_). As he aged, he became more philosophical in his views, stressing more the conversation and enhancement of the resource and environs than the mere techniques leading to a bigger bag. I suspect his time on the water declined as he moved into this frame of mind.

This is certainly not universal. Witness Lefty Kreh, who seems an enthuiastic angler despite decades of pursuing the sport.

Me? I don't know. I look forward all year to my Kodiak fishing; but, today, when I should have assembled the 14 footer and done some serious practicing off the dock, I went and tried out some Noels on the organ instead.

It was cold and rainy here today. But: I think I don't want to live in the country of old men. I resolve to get out there and participate to the best of my abilities, despite the rotten weather, the lack of fish, and more "necessary" pursuits, until my nurse handcuffs me to my deathbed.

Resolved in Waldport
 
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