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A Doctor’s Advice on Living a Long, Healthy Life: “No idea!”
Hilton Head is an odd place to practice medicine. No one is from here. They all spend their lives somewhere else (usually Midwest or Northeast) working hard enough to make enough money to retire in a place like Hilton Head. Then they move down here and begin their long-anticipated life of leisure. They sleep until they’re hungry and they eat until they’re sleepy and after a few years of this they notice that they don’t feel very well, their pants don’t fit, and they’re on more BP meds now than they were when they were stressed out and working so they decide to get in shape.
My patient Jim followed this path and reached the point where he decided to rededicate himself to his health. I tell him that’s a great idea. He says he’s going to buy a bicycle; I tell him that’s a bad idea. I tell him that bicycles make you healthier but they don’t make you live longer. I’ve seen horrible accidents over the years. I mean horrible stuff. I have four close friends who either died or were crippled by bicycle accidents. Jim figures that I’m just being a typical overly cautious doctor (which was probably true), and buys a bike. He rides a lot, starts losing weight, and feels much better. We even stopped some of his meds.
Then, he wiped out. He wasn’t going very fast (he says less than 10mph), and he thinks maybe he hit a pine cone or something. Anyway, he broke his pelvis in two places plus various other bones. Very serious injuries for a 68-year-old man. The surgical repair went well, but he developed pneumonia in the hospital. We treated that, sent him home, and he came back a week later with a blood clot. The next year was a brutal journey of one setback after another, being transferred from nursing facilities to hospitals to rehab centers and back again, but he eventually overcame everything, and a year later was nearly back to normal, although he had a lot of back pain at that point. Since his wife now takes a similar view of his bicycle as I do, he’s looking for another way to get back in shape.
I see this sort of thing all the time. What’s frustrating is that Jim really didn’t do anything wrong. He worked hard, and saved for a nice retirement. He sat around a bit too much for a while – big deal. Then he responds appropriately by getting back in shape, and in the process nearly dies several times in a long series of medical catastrophes. It happens. Where exactly did Jim screw up? I’m not sure.
Because of my job, I have a bias against bicycles, but a lot of people really do get healthy on them.
If they don’t end up in a wheelchair.
Ha! Sorry!
But that’s the trick, right? Was it a good idea for Jim to start riding a bicycle? Absolutely. Of course, it was. Until it wasn’t.
How is he supposed to be able to anticipate when that is likely to transition from a good decision to a bad decision? It’s still the same decision. It only looks different in retrospect.
I’m sometimes asked how much of what I treat is a self-inflicted disease. I’ve noticed that the people who ask me this are often very trim, fit, and tan. But whatever.
I answer that everything I treat is self-inflicted. Or, possibly none of it. It’s surprisingly difficult to say because it’s not always clear which of our actions are self-destructive until later when we see how everything turns out.
I’ve noticed that my 90-year-old patients generally did not follow a particularly healthy lifestyle. Some of them did, of course, but many did not.
Americans have the longest lifespan on the planet (if you don’t count inner-city gun violence), and we’re mostly fat and out of shape. We eat garbage. We drink and smoke too much. And we live a really long time. I don’t get it.
So how does one live a long, healthy life? My first two suggestions are genetics and luck.
Some things are clearly dangerous. Cigarettes, excessive alcohol, street drugs, motorcycles, bicycles. But some people who indulge in all those things live long healthy lives. Still, you’re not helping your odds by engaging in certain behaviors.
But I see so many horrible things happen to people for no real good reason.
Winston Churchill, whose healthy lifestyle enabled him to live to the age of 90.
So my patients ask me how they can live a long, healthy, happy life. Early in my career, I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Now, after decades of study, I have absolutely no idea how to answer that. The more I learn, the less I understand. This stuff doesn’t make any sense.
It was simpler when I didn’t know all this stuff. “Get in shape! C’mon!” But now, having studied this for decades, I really don’t understand what it is that makes people live long, healthy lives. I just don’t understand.
Gosh, I’m a great physician. Sheesh…
Published in General
I do get frustrated with cyclists choosing to ride on busy, narrow 55-mile-an-hour roads with steep drop-offs and no shoulder. It seems ill-considered and inconsiderate. This road is on my route to work, and I occasionally have to skirt bikes. We do have bike paths in our town . . .
And I’m sure riding to the top of Going-to-the-Sun Road is a beautiful experience, but not when you have a line of cars behind you wondering when they can pass with all the blind curves and extremely narrow lanes.
I would have thought JP’s injury came when he dismounted his high horse.
That url goes to the item. The rest that you included previously:
/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=LED+Road+Flares+Safety+Turn+Arrow+Light+Emergency+Roadside+Flashing+Flares+Safety+Strobe+Light+-+Road+Warning+Beacon%2C+Detachable+Magnetic%2C+Unfolding+Rotating+blade%2C+Emergency+Car+Kit%2C+MADE+IN+KOREA&qid=1627312040&sr=8-3
does nothing but customize “related items you may be interested in” etc.
Thanks for the URL efficiency discussion.
Flash all the time uses more battery.
I’m not so sure about the this next item, but touring cyclists have often noticed how much better the approaching cars behave when they see things like a back-facing camera. (Cyclists get annoyed with me when I anthropomorphize cars like that, but that’s what I do.) Maybe a light that seems to notice them would have some of the same effect. Hard to say.
I expect to have a Garmin RTL 515 ordered in the next few minutes. It seems they do work with at least some Wahoo devices, and also with phones. I have a phone mounted on my handlebars, too. And they can be rigged to do audible alerts on the Wahoo Roam or bluetooth headsets, which is good, because I don’t keep my eye on my computer all the time. I miss a lot of turns that way, but I’m out on the road to see the scenery, not watch my computer.
I hear cars approaching when I’m riding out in the country, and can’t think of a time when I was surprised by one, but one of my favorite YouTube reviewers (who is younger than I am and probably has better hearing) says his Varia notices cars before he hears them.
Come to think of it, Back in the early 1990s I was once surprised by a vehicle coming behind me. There was a car-truck-bicycle crash, in which my bicycle was the only vehicle to emerge unscathed. It was a case of poor judgment and good reflexes on the part of the young driver who came up behind me. I was thankful for the good reflexes. I was riding into the wind, something I prefer not to do, but when riding into a wind I don’t hear cars coming up behind me so well. One of these Varias would definitely help with that situation.
Those Teslas are really quiet…. as are many hybrids etc…
@thereticulator Very interesting.
Unless those cameras are awfully big and noticeable, I have a hard time believing that any driver who’s paying little enough attention to cause problems for a cyclist is going to be deterred by them.
Just a quick comment for people that are shopping for anti-collision systems. I finally saw a good ***general*** article about these things. Subaru’s ***stereoscopic color cameras*** are probably the best standalone system. When you combine them, radar detects velocity better and the cameras and LiDAR detect shapes better. Cameras and LiDAR increase the field of vision.
It was quite a few years ago when I last heard a discussion about this, well before the days of action cameras. A lot of cyclists do mount rear-facing action cameras these days, but those I have would probably not be noticed unless I made a special effort to make them noticeable. And as you may guess, that would probably be hard.
When I first got my GoPro 360 degree camera this year, I tried mounting it on the rear just to see how it would work. I tried mounting it several inches above the rear rack; probably not enough to catch most drivers’ attention. When I got back home after the first such use I looked at the video and decided I didn’t like the view of my butt, so never did it again. I wouldn’t include that view in my reframing into a normal video, but still, I’d end up looking at aome of it while reframing. No thanks. I now have a handlebar mount that I like and can manipulate while riding, so long as it’s not in a situation where I’m dodging traffic.
The same riders who talked about rear-facing cameras also noticed how cars would seem to give them a wider berth when their bicycles had panniers mounted. That is probably true, though I don’t know about one pannier mounted on the right. I always ride with a full-sized red pannier mounted on the right to carry my rain jacket, tire repairs, lunch, extra camera equipment, etc. As far as I know, I was one of the first to do that just for day rides, but I’ve now seen a lot of bicyclers doing it that way in Germany and to a lesser extent, here in the U.S. There are special brief-case panniers for commuters, too, designed to hold your computer in a somewhat protected fashion.Dunno if using one of those gets a cyclist any extra respect from drivers.
I have a couple of those but haven’t used them since retiring. At least I still think I have the older of the two; I have a lot of old panniers that I really need to get rid of. I’m not giving away any of my Orlieb stuff, though. In fact, I’m going to expand my collection if Ortlieb (a Germany company) ever gets production going again post-Covid.
It does work with a Wahoo Element. There was a mod made to Wahoo to accommodate it.
The design was to get the greatest amount of time out of the battery. Flashing constantly simply uses more battery power. Originally they were designed to flash all of the time, but they changed it to preserve the battery. The flashing light is much more intense than the normal steady light. I also have a flashing light on my handlebars for oncoming cars. It flashes white LED. I got it through Portland Design Works. It is an excellent design since it can also be used for riding in the dark as a headlight.
Radar isn’t marketing. It allows me to see what is coming up behind me without having to turn around. When moving the left across a lane prior to making a left hand turn, it is essential and much safer. I have been riding with it for three years, about 25,000 miles on the road. It has been essential.
He’s talking about how I created the URL. I was confused until I asked about it.
That wasn’t my point.
https://www.amazon.com/Flares-Arrow-Emergency-Roadside-Flashing/dp/B07SGY8ZTR
is the url needed to get to the item, buy it, etc, etc. The other felgerkarb that was included:
/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=LED+Road+Flares+Safety+Turn+Arrow+Light+Emergency+Roadside+Flashing+Flares+Safety+Strobe+Light+-+Road+Warning+Beacon%2C+Detachable+Magnetic%2C+Unfolding+Rotating+blade%2C+Emergency+Car+Kit%2C+MADE+IN+KOREA&qid=1627312040&sr=8-3
does nothing but customize “related items you may be interested in” etc.
I always use the shortest url possible. If you don’t see the value of that, try looking up an item in like “google shopping” and then see what their full url is.
Here, allow me: (I looked up “flares arrow emergency roadside flashing”)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj9lbXY14HyAhXT3J4KHaXxAAMQFjABegQIBxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FFlares-Arrow-Emergency-Roadside-Flashing%2Fdp%2FB07SGY8ZTR&usg=AOvVaw1xVQBTa63Fu1MgN9r12HP8
And I’ve seen them much bigger than that too.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj9lbXY14HyAhXT3J4KHaXxAAMQtwIwAnoECAIQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fm.made-in-china.com%2Fproduct%2FLED-Road-Flares-Safety-Emergency-Roadside-Flashing-Safety-Strobe-Turn-Arrow-Light-918664665.html&usg=AOvVaw3vtTvgRE5-ogrZLJsSOoRW
How’s that? Same search. And I’ve had some come out at least twice that long, but I think I’ve shown enough.
https://www.amazon.com/Flares-Arrow-Emergency-Roadside-Flashing/dp/B07SGY8ZTR
is just SO MUCH BETTER. Nobody needs to see the
/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=LED+Road+Flares+Safety+Turn+Arrow+Light+Emergency+Roadside+Flashing+Flares+Safety+Strobe+Light+-+Road+Warning+Beacon%2C+Detachable+Magnetic%2C+Unfolding+Rotating+blade%2C+Emergency+Car+Kit%2C+MADE+IN+KOREA&qid=1627312040&sr=8-3
We have a bike trail in this area. Unfortunately, I often ride routes that have no bike path. I would guess that many of the cyclists you are talking about are riding to work and have to ride the roads to get there. In my case, I ride long routes, generally over 50 miles. They are often on rolling terrain. I ride on the right side of the road as close to the shoulder as I safely can. In most states cars are required to allow bikes a 4′ clearance when passing a cyclist. There is a simple reason for this. If a cyclist has to steer around some object on the road they should have sufficient clearance to do so. Last year a young man riding to work in Seattle was run over and killed by a truck that was riding too close. The rider hit something and went down. The truck ran over him. Cyclists have as much right to use the roads as you do, so long as those aren’t limited access highways. Cyclists prefer to ride road shoulders if they are clear of debris, but if there isn’t a shoulder, they have to ride where they can. It is your obligation to respect their rights.
Sorry about the overlap.
One of the real advantages is that the Varia will show multiple cars approaching. I have had as many as 10 dots representing oncoming cars show on my computer. After one car passes the tendency is to relax. If there is a second, third or fourth or more cars, knowing that they are coming is a real advantage. The radar can pick up a car as far as a half mile back. Depending on their speed, it gives you sufficient warning long before you actually hear them coming.
The cameras I have seen are about the same size as the Varia. Not very noticeable. Essentially, their value is if you survive someone hitting you, you have evidence to use to catch them or prove that they were in the wrong. I don’t think there is much real use for them. If someone doesn’t see a bright, flashing light and bright clothing, they are too busy texting someone to care about a camera.
If I were really worried about that, I might want some kind of “live stream” camera rather than something that records internally, in case the camera/memory was destroyed by whatever happened.
There are a lot of incidents that don’t cause a violent enough crash to be likely to destroy the memory card, but that can cause damage to bicycle and rider.
Of course, and the live-stream camera works for those too.
I don’t mean that it’s showing on YouTube as you ride, but being recorded somewhere else means that it’s not dependent on your camera/memory-card surviving whatever happens.
For that matter, what happens if someone runs you down/over/whatever, sees you had a camera recording, and takes it? Even if you could somehow prove that the camera was taken, and THEY specifically took it, the actual evidence would likely be gone by then.
The old joke used to be, “If you run over someone, go back and make sure they’re dead. Because causing a death is a lot less expensive than paying for someone’s everyday care for maybe 50 years.”
The next one might be, “If you run over someone with a camera, make sure you take the camera so there’s no evidence against you.”
This is a really interesting discussion.
Can you imagine what a hash it would be if it were “nested?”
I know what you mean and have thought about it for other situations, such as when one of Hillary’s thugs decides it’s time to get rid of some troublesome priests. (Thomas a Becket reference, there.) But where is the bandwidth going to come from?
That concept has already been worked into Russian detective shows (the only kind I’ve seen in the internet era.)
Great right up to the point you develop joint and spine problems from the extra energy absorbed with each step. You can tell the senior infantry sergeant from the senior administrative specialty sergeant without checking their skills and schools badges. The infantry sergeant looks about a decade older because he has led the life of a minor league athlete.
Certainly weight training is important, although perhaps lap swimming, alternating strokes to hit all the muscle groups, gives you all of the above.
I ride an exercycle and watch episodes of ID
I’m a neurosurgeon. Bicycles keep me employed.
I got my Varia today and took it out for a little ride tonight. It works. No problem pairing with my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt. In every case but two it notified me of oncoming cars before I heard them. In two cases I heard the car before the alarm sounded. In one of those cases it was after going around a wooded bend in the road. I don’t think the Varia noticed it until it had a line of sight on the vehicle, but then it noticed it right away.
In a few cases, even though it noticed the car before I heard it, I didn’t think it saw the car as far back as I had been led to believe it could do, but it was still good to have. I don’t think I’d want to go back to riding without one.
I suspect the problem is that I have a rear rack (on all my bicycles) and being a short person, there is not a lot of room on the seat post. I don’t think there is as much clearance to give the device the angle of view that Garmin recommends. I knew that before I went out on the ride, but I wanted to try it anyway.
My folding bike with 20″ wheels has a lot of seat post clearance, so I may try that one tomorrow.
However, for a longer term solution I ordered a Arkel Tailrider rack bag, and plan to attach the Varia to the back of that. (That requires a mount that wasn’t included with the Varia, so am ordering that, too.) I’ve had my eyes on an Arkel Tailrider for the last 15 years, but never pulled the trigger and ordered one. It has been a lot longer than that since I’ve used a rear rack bag at all. But now I have an excuse. It may also allow me to reconfigure some of the other stuff I’ve been carrying with me on my bicycle rides, to make a nicer, more compact setup now that I use action cameras to record some of the sights along the way.
And if the Tailrider doesn’t work as a mounting location, I just now saw a video on another technique for shorter riders who don’t have so much seatpost space, for attaching on the back of the saddle bag where I carry tools and such. It would require my exchanging my current bag for another, but that’s a change I’d be willing to make. (For tonight’s ride I just left the bag off so I’d have room for the Varia.)
I told my wife about you and that you are the person who called my attention to the Varia and caused me to take another look at them. I also told her that you are 76 years old and that you ride at a pace of 19 mph, in country that is hillier than ours. She was impressed, because she knows I don’t ride anywhere near that fast.