The following is the first of two articles on healthy aging and contains an August 2007 interview with a healthy 69 year old woman from midcoast Maine whom I will call “CC.” I wanted to interview her because of what a role model she is for me. She started addressing health concerns through changing her diet 25 years ago and has alighted upon an eating style that suits her unique constitution. Medicare is her health insurance, but she never uses Medicare or the seniors’ prescription drug program. Is it just her good genes? Actually she may well have inherited a genetic hormone disorder and it was this that spurred her to take control of her own health.

Dietary Change

Holly Noonan– I’d like to ask you about your own health journey.

CC– I’m still working it out, actually, because I think it keeps changing. I find that as I get older I keep having to make adjustments. I think how it started was that when I started menopause, my body was going through wild changes and I knew enough not to take hormones because I had already started studying acupuncture and I knew that my body could regulate this one way or another. But I read Michio Kushi’s book, the “Cancer Prevention Diet” and that made huge sense. So I started (eating), you know, brown rice and vegetables. And pretty much cut out meat for 4 or 5 years and I felt better. I lost weight and I had more energy…

HN– What were you experiencing with the onset of menopause that made you look for different solutions?

CC– Devastating hot flashes, all night so that I wasn’t getting much sleep and then during the day. I think I wore LL Bean cotton shirt dresses for about three years. That was the only thing I could wear. But the diet helped. Then I started noticing that coffee, sugar, alcohol and rich food and some spices would bring on hot flashes and make them worse. Always. So that was the first real connection I made that what I was putting in my mouth made a difference.

HN– How long did your shift take?

CC– Years, really. I mean in the 80s and early 90s I knew not to go in to a fast food restaurant, but in the mid 90s, I was treating a woman with acupuncture who had breast cancer. She’d had a biopsy and a diagnosis. She didn’t want surgery or chemotherapy so she went to the Kushi Institute and started that diet. Doing yoga, she was doing everything except the medical route. And she was doing acupuncture, but I know it wasn’t the acupuncture that saved her. A year and a half later, she was completely clear. Her mammograms were clear, her cancer was gone and my sense was that it was because of the Macrobiotic diet that did it. So that’s when I went to the Kushi Institute and started learning more in depth about it and doing it more seriously myself. That was 12 years ago.

HN– So that means you started working with your diet to improve your health about 20 years ago?

CC– 25 years ago. But then I started taking it seriously about 12 years ago.

HN– So for the first 12 or 13 years, what did your diet look like?

CC– I cut out meat. I avoided really rich, heavy foods. I went through periods when I didn’t eat sugar. But … I was just doing it because I had an idea that it was a good thing to do. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

HN—I’d like to explore how precise you are with your diet. What are the fluctuations that you were talking about?

CC– I’m in a not very precise period right now. I go through periods when I’m strictly macro and just do brown rice and vegetables and very little meat. I started in menopause getting a little arthritic and going back on strict macro always clears all that up. When I go off the diet a bit and eat more wheat, have wine with dinner, meat occasionally, cheese… the arthritis flares up and I always kind of know when it’s time to go back to strict again.

HN– And you want to (get strict) at that time?

CC– Oh yes, because it feels better.

HN– How does it affect your emotional life?

CC– It’s slightly depressing after a while to be off the diet. And then going back on the diet strictly, that becomes depressing after a while too. I think I need the change.

HN– Do you eat fish now?

CC– I eat white fish. I eat usually halibut, cod, sole. Not sole from Penobscot Bay because I think the bottom is polluted. When I’m England I eat Dover sole or other fish from the channel, which is probably way polluted but it’s awfully good. (laughs.)

HN– What were you eating before this? What did you grow up eating?

CC– I grew up on a lot of beef because we lived near Chicago and we probably had beef in some form every night for dinner. Fresh vegetables in the summer and frozen vegetables in the winter. There were no McDonalds or fast food restaurants when I was growing up, which made it much easier.

HN– When were you born?

CC– 1938. I’m 69.

HN– So in the 30s and 40s, it was really before food got to be non-organic, before it got to industrial levels of production…

CC—Before DDT and all the pesticides and before fast food and before the real boom in frozen food.

HN—What was the classic breakfast that you had in your home while you were growing up.

CC— The word that comes to mind is “Bisquick” I mean, we ate lots of bisquick biscuits. I think she used Crisco. There was always a can of Crisco in the cupboard.

Genetic Inheritance

HN—How did your parents age and what did they die of?

CC—My mother had some sort of endocrine imbalance going on for, I don’t know, maybe the last 30 or 40 years of her life. She died of bladder cancer in her early 70s. But she’d been a heavy smoker, which definitely is connected to bladder cancer.

HN—So did her endocrine troubles start with her menopause?

CC– They started with her pregnancies, I think. She had Graves disease, a type of hypothyroidism, and then as she got older, it looked like she had Cushing’s disorder (hyperadrenalism) she had some of the signs of that. Anyway, then she had this cancer and I think she was ready to die, her body was worn out. My father died pretty much of old age, he was 92. He had one of those slow, low-grade prostate cancers, but eventually, after a couple falls and a couple broken hips, he developed pneumonia in the hospital and died from that.

HN—What’s your blood type?

CC—B Rh Positive.

HN– What age did menopause start for you?

CC– 46, 47.

HN– So you were working as a nurse at the time of perimenopause, right? So what was your life like, were you working very hard?

CC—I was working hard. I was the charge nurse in the AIDS jail psychiactric at San Francisco General. It was a locked psyche unit. It was hard work, but I loved it. It was 7am to 4pm every day. Because I can remember in staff meetings trying very hard not to laugh, because I knew that laughing would bring on a hot flash. Those were the cotton shirt-dress years. I used to turn up with my little lunchbox with brown rice and toasted sunflower seeds, for lunch, things like that.

HN— And you have no children…

CC– No.

HN– Do you think your mom’s tendency towards endocrine imbalance affected you in anyway?

CC– Not consciously. But I think because I can remember even in grade school, telling my classmates that I would never have children. I just knew it. It was a deep knowing. I think I’m probably loaded with genetic tendency for endocrine disorder and I knew for sure that I didn’t want to develop it.

HN– Do you think a pregnancy would have made you develop it?

CC– I think it might have, but I also think you don’t want to pass along that genetic material. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was diabetic and she had something else wrong that they never diagnosed. You know. You don’t want to pass that along. Without any conscious decision, just a sort of knowing (that I would not have kids.)

Weight Fluctuations

HN– Have you always been this thin and svelte?

CC– I was a plump child. I lost weight at adolescence and I’ve never really been fat.

HN– How tall are you? How much do you weigh?

CC– 5’5”. Right now, probably 114 lbs.

HN– Does it fluctuate?

CC– Usually it’s somewhere between 113 and 116.

HN– Have you ever had struggles with your weight?

CC– Only in sort of late menopause, for a period of about 3 or 4 years, I gained about 10 pounds. Nothing that I ate or exercised changed that and then suddenly…I lost 10 pounds and then was back to my “normal” weight. I have no idea what that was about.

HN– Anne Marie Colbin had this very same thing. She was determined to avoid the hormone therapies when she went through menopause and her body’s response was to create a much larger layer of subcutaneous fat in order to…

CC– oh, to hold the estrogen or to produce the estrogen!

HN– …right, because your hormones are created from your fat layer.

CC– I never thought of that, Of course that makes sense.

HN– So perhaps that was what your body needed to stay balanced and then it no longer needed after 3 or 4 years?

CC– yeah, or it figured out that this is change, it’s OK to change, let it go.

HN– Do you exercise?

CC– Yeah. Not religiously, but I walk the dog a lot and I bicycle and I do stretches.

HN– When you go for a bike ride, how far do you go?

CC– Usually it’s about 30 minutes, down Chestnut Street because it’s up a hill. It’s a 30-minute circuit.

HN– That’s a good bike ride! A couple years ago you were walking up Mount Battie everyday…

CC– I don’t do that as much any more. Maybe only about once a week.

HN– So you walk up the road?

CC— Yes, up the road.

HN– So that’s once a week and bicycling is also once a week?

CC– Yes, twice a week in the summer.

HN– And you walk the dog everyday.

CC– And I walk the dog everyday. Usually it’s about a mile.

HN– And you live in a pretty hilly neighborhood.

CC– Yes. Again, it’s a lot of uphill, downhill.

HN– This sounds very unextraordinary to you, but I think a lot of people who are 69 can’t do this.

CC– Oh. But you know, I’ve noticed that it’s not good to get too much exercise. Two years ago I was walking up Mount Battie morning and my back and hip muscles started to get way too tight and it became quite painful, even with a lot of stretching. So I cut it down to once or twice a week and it was much better. It didn’t seem to affect my weight or wellbeing.

Doctors and Meds

HN– Are you on any medication?

CC– I’ve taken Synthroid for probably 30 years. I think that most of my life I was hypothyroid and finally back in the early 80s my doctor in San Francisco—I just dropped under the line on the “normal” (scale) —so he gave me some Synthroid and it was like a lightbulb went on. It was really amazing.

HN– So that means your body was under producing thyroid hormones, so now you are more balanced?

CC– I have a more normal level of thyroid hormone circulating.

HN– And that’s what has helped you achieve your balance?

CC– Yes.

HN– Is that your only medication?

CC– Sometimes I use a bronchodialator because I have mild asthma.

HN– And what brings that on?

CC– Seasons, pollen, cats, dust, mites, things like that.

HN– Do you have health insurance?

CC– I’m on Medicare now.

HN– Do you ever use it?

CC– No. (laughs.) I think the big object is to avoid doctors and hospitals. I finally found a doctor who would take my word for it about how much thyroid medication I needed so I didn’t have to keep on getting blood tests and things. Because again, for people who need that kind of replacement medication, you can develop your own sense of what you need around it and doctors should listen.

HN– That’s a challenge for a lot of people, trusting your body instead of the doctors.

CC– It is! And you can make mistakes, but that’s how you learn.

HN– So you never use your Medicare. Did this prescription drug program help you in anyway?

CC– I don’t even use that.

Aging Gracefully

HN– So when’s your birthday?

CC– September. I’ll be 69.

HN– How do you feel about that?

CC– Fine.

HN– Getting better as you get older?

CC– Yes! There’s a huge amount of freedom in it. With increasing age, it’s increasingly clear that I don’t have to be becoming anything anymore. That I am what I am, take it or leave and I don’t even have to know exactly what that is. But it’s the not feeling driven to become.

HN– and there’s a freedom in that?

CC– Huge. It’s like, you are who you are. And certainly when I was younger I was always trying to look like something or act like something and that has all lightened up.

HN– What do you look forward to in the future? How are you anticipating the next 20 years?

CC– Life is getting quieter and slower and more home centered. Less traveling.

HN– You do quite a bit of traveling?

CC– I do now, but I can already see that it will be comfortable to do less.

HN– How much traveling do you do?

CC– In the last 3 months I’ve been to New York twice, Hawaii, San Francisco and I’m going to Germany next week and then London in October. So I would say that every two or three months I make some kind of major trip. But that won’t last much longer. I can feel myself slowing down, which is fine. I mean, it’s part of the deal.

It’s also middle aged people who keep trying to perform as if they are 20, some people can keep it up into their 70s but I think it’s very destructive for people. Being willing to let go of patterns, food patterns, social patterns, life patterns… they always change. It’s probably harder for men.

HN– For someone who is following the intellectual precepts of a diet instead of listening to their body, do you have any advice?

CC– No. Food affects your feeling state almost immediately, almost as soon as you swallow something, you can tell. The easiest thing is with sugar! Sugar is a quick little lift and then a depression and you can almost track it and that’s a good starter. But people know how they feel after a heavy meal. Not very good. Or better after exercise.

But there’s no special diet that works for everybody. I just happened to alight on the macro diet. Somebody pointed out once that the queen mother in England lived to be 104 and she was quite healthy until the last year of her life and she ate pretty much what we would call a terrible diet. Lots of meat. You know, her martinis before dinner, fish and chips, and she was fine. It suited her. So it’s just finding what suits you and it’s so different for everybody. It probably won’t be a big mac and French fries. It’s how you feel.

Part two of this series will discuss John Robbins’ book “Healthy at 100.”

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