Look Upstream for Solutions

Solving, not enabling, leads to longevity

I've been so perplexed by fitness posts in which people demonstrating squats place a weight plate under their heels. I kept thinking that I was missing something… I didn’t remember people squatting with their heels lifted so I did a quick search. Turns out, it is supposed to alleviate heel pain. Hmmmm. Interesting. My next thought was, why do people have heel pain? New search. Turns out the Achilles tendon that connects the back of the calf muscle to the heel can become tight over time, limiting the range of motion. Hmmmm. Interesting. So instead of addressing the tight tendons with targeted stretches and movements, people are accommodating them. My observational guess is that those tight tendons will be here to stay and only get tighter over time.

I believe this propensity to accommodate and “keep in check” the dizzying array of health issues plaguing our society has had a truly detrimental effect not only on our lifespan, but more importantly, on our healthspan. When my elderly mother moved in with us and we took care of her for 13 years, I learned many valuable lessons about aging (and life) in general. At the top of the list of lessons learned is when seeking solutions to health issues, look for root causes, not quick fixes.

Look upstream. Imagine the headwater of a stream—the water is pure, clean. But as it flows downstream, it gathers all sorts of contaminants and junk along the way, or pools in areas where it levels off, stagnates, and putrefies. Life is much the same way. Our lifestream starts pure but gathers many things—fitness habits, emotional cemeteries, diet consequences, drug side effects—that compound over the years, both positively and negatively.

Downstream ails
I’ve written about my mom quite a bit in past posts—We Are Our Parents Keepers, A Fat Girl’s Cautionary Tale—but in a nutshell, my mom had been a very large woman her whole life, and by the time she lived with us, at the age of 85, she was nearly 250 pounds at only 5’2”. And, she could barely walk with a walker…while at the same time, I had a 9-month-old baby on my hip. My husband and I had a difficult situation on our hands. I feel a bit panicked now just thinking back on it.

Along with the weight worry, she arrived with a big bag of prescriptions that she had been on for years for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and something else that frankly escapes me. My initial reaction was twofold: first, I needed to get her weight down and second, get her off of the prescriptions. While most medications have some side effects that are generally tolerable and transitory in the short term, statins in particular can cause muscle wasting (the enemy of age) and blood pressure medication may be associated with kidney failure. My goal for my mom was for her to be able to move and be prescription-free.

Over the course of the next year and a half, with the elimination of all processed food from her diet (I wasn’t her favorite person), a kindly naturopathic doctor, and a very patient, saintly physical therapist, she (we) managed to shed close to 75 pounds. In the process, as her blood pressure and cholesterol levels normalized, she was able to discontinue all of her medications. She did it without any cutting-edge, magical fat loss pills, or any other fancy intervention. Just whole, nutritious, home-cooked food and movement. At the age of 87.

From temporary to permanent
As I saw my mom’s body responding to her new regime, it kept occurring to me that all the years that she took medications to manage her blood pressure and cholesterol numbers, combined with the numerous “helpers” that she used around the house to assist with daily living—the grabber tools to pick up an item without bending over, or the riser under the easy chair to make getting up, well, easier—enabled her to ignore the underlying weight issue… which in turn wreaked havoc on her body and soul. She could barely lift her feet up to walk, her knee joints were wearing down under the burden (we did have one replaced in her 90s), and she had sadly lost her independence due to immobility.

This was a powerful lesson that I apply to my life every day: rather than trying to “manage” a problem which is basically enabling it, the lasting solution is going back to basics and looking at the root cause. Yet, as a society, we are inundated with the opposite message at every step and turn. The plethora of band-aids and crutches for all aspects of life are so readily available and alluring, it is easy to be tempted to latch onto them as saviors. Yet most are only short-term solutions that sneakily morph from temporary to permanent, and sometimes at great risk.

Take for example the latest craze of glamorous weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Indeed, these drugs are producing too-good-to-be-true reductions in overall body weight, but it’s hard to see this weight loss as positive because of all the red flags. First and foremost is the fact that in order to maintain the benefit, people will need to be on the drugs indefinitely. Red flag. As most people do not need to change their lifestyle to achieve results, this means while alleviating some ills, they have merely masked bad habits that will eventually lead to other problems. Red flag. Red flag. Additionally, these drugs are currently undergoing trials for cardiovascular and cancer risks, amongst other long-term side effects which won’t fully be known until after—you guessed it—long-term use. Red flag. Red flag. Red flag.

Upstream basics
My mantra is look upstream for resolution, not downstream where you and the problem reside. Go back to basics. For instance, recently when my back was bothering me, I went back to what nature intended: I started going barefoot, began sitting differently, and focused on stretching and strengthening my back. Problem alleviated.

There is much we can learn from examining the essence of what was once pure and clean about our lifestream source. If we look hard enough, we will discover that we are already equipped with most of the tools that we need to live well, age great.

---