---I tried this eighty year old man on a treadmill to see how well he could do. He was so proud of the fact that “I walk three times a week” and that “I’ve never been sick a day in my life,” that he hopped right onto the treadmill and began walking. I started him off at a slow pace just to see the nature of his overall bodily reaction to a progression of his level of activity.

---hAnd actually, for an eigthy year old man, medically, via most medical parameters usually used nowadays...blood pressure, blood chemistries, x-rays, whatever...you could hardly say he was ill or ‘diseased’ in any way.

---However, as you might have guessed, I have learned to look beyond the currently used medical parameters normally used to reflect the status of one’s health. And for good reason. I noticed that despite his normal blood pressure and pulse rate as judged by the speed of his gait, as I gradually increased his rate to just 2 miles per hour, the nature of his gait seemed somewhat strained, not to mention the suggestion of a touch of labored breathing.

---Now one might say that for an eigthy year old man this type of bodily reaction might be expected. Perhaps. But after years of experience in doing this, there was just something about the nature of the way he walked that I didn’t like. So I checked his pulse again. For his two miles per hour rate, any medical doctor would say it was normal (although most medical doctors don’t work with people this way, ‘hands on’ so to speak in a gym as I have come to do).

---...Most medical doctors just say, “I think you need to exercise,” and that’s about it! Or perhaps they’ll go over some details with their patient as to how often and how long they should walk or whatever. But to actually work with them. When is the last time your medical doctor worked with you in a gym? It’s done, although rarely, and usually it’s left up to a physical therapist when it’s done in a hospital. But the physical therapist, unfortunately, hardly has the knowledge of a medical doctor (just as the medical doctor hardly has the experience of a physical therapist). It seems obvious both of these fields should have been put together years ago so as to be able to 'properly' help the patient.

JIt’s no wonder when I checked his pulse, although via currently known medical parameters it appeared fine, I just didn’t like something about the nature of the way it felt. When you've been working for so many years this way with people, as a medical doctor in a gym doing things doctors don't usually do--but should have been--you begin to see things, and pick things up, that few people know about...a sort of 'sixth sense' you might say.

---So, as I felt his radial pulse tapping against my finger, I’ve come to know over the years that what I've learned to feel are perhaps signs heretofore not written down in books, nor known by the medical profession...different, such as Far Eastern Medicine differentiates 32 different radial pulses a three different levels, although what I've learned to feel is even different than that.

I ttokAt any rate, the nature of his pulse prompted me me to tell him, “Sir...I think you’d better stop now and sit down.”

---“Why?” he answered. “I feel fine.”

---“Please...just listen to what I say. I want to check something out.”

---...Actually, I knew that if he had continued walking for another minute or two, his cardiovascular system would have become significantly compromised to such extent that he’d begin to feel dizzy, another sign often indicative of a decrease in the perfusion of blood to his brain, which is often caused in turn by a drop in blood pressure.

---You see, a fitness training person or physical therapist not used to working with people in the way and to the extent I do with my underlying medical knowledge, would usually only first recognize that something was wrong when the patient complained of the dizziness. Even when taking a medical stress test for cardiovascular status or 'disease' diagnosis in a hospital setting, for example, it’s routine to stop the test for safety’s sake when the patient complains of some symptom, such as pain or dizziness, or when some other medical sign shows up, such as in the nature of a rapid pulse or blood pressure.

---But to me...reaching that point can actually turn out to be a point of no return, quite literally, for it can lead to a significantly dangerous arrythmia of the heart (among other harmful effects often unrecognized by the non-medical person) and in turn to complete cardiovascaular collapse and death. For, fact is, depending upon the underlying nature of the individual’s physiological status of his or her body, a sudden drop in blood pressure can have all sorts of deleterious effects. You see, once the blood pressure drops, even though it is often easily reversed by having the patient stop walking and lie down with his or her legs elevated so that gravity helps to bring blood back to the heart (with the effect to offset the drop in blood pressure), every once in a while this doesn’t work.

---Yet, it’s routine for the fitness person or physical therapist or even cardiologist doing the stress test to allow the individual to continue exercising until a sign such as dizziness occurs!
---...You see, even though the sign of dizziness hardly ever leads to cardiovascular collapse and/or death, even one time out of thousands is unacceptable, especially when the mere nature of the pulse can forewarn as to the onset of dizzness ('before' it occurs) with its potential for vascular collapse.

---I’ve learned to call or refer to these kinds of occurrences as: ‘a weakened cardiovascular status.’ It’s a term or sign I use to refer to a combination of factors such as:

...a subtle change in the nature of the pulse (as mentioned above which is often beyond what the medical community currently reports in medical texts and otherwise)

...and along with a certain look or overall appearance of the person which I have come to recognize over the years, or bodily sign a patient might emanate while they might be walking or jogging on a treadmill, or even while lifting a weight doing strength training.

---To me, again depending upon the underlying 'strain resistant status' of a given person’s body, the cardiovascular system might or might not be overly strained, sometimes, although rarely, to the point of no return. And this is regardless of the person’s negative medical history regarding disease or otherwise! Actually, I’ve found it relates largely to the way a person lives, to his or her lifestyle...to the way a person thinks: their underlying emotional state, the nature of the exercise they might or might not reguarly be engaged in, and the nature of their food intake, believe it or not (and not just the food they have taken into their bodies within the past few hours, but within the past few days).

---If the individual’s cardiovascular status is in this ‘weakened state’ (again, a state I have come to recognize and which is little known, if at all, in medicine today)...and I’m not talking here of any currently known medical condition such as heart failure or otherwise, well then, fact is, in such case even ‘harmless’ exercise might result in severely compromising the body. If anything, it (the ‘weakened’ bodily state) might reflect the lack of previous multilevel conditioning of the body, which unfortunately, is common to most all people nowadays, especially as they become older. I say 'as they become older' not so much because they are older, but because older people have gone for that many years longer without the requisite multilevel conditioning needed to offset this ‘weakened bodily and cardiovascular state’ I’m talking about (again, a state currently not yet known about nor written about in books).

---I’ve simply recognized the occurrence of this 'weaked state' from having worked with so many people for so long as both a medical doctor, surgeon, and certified personal fitness trainer well versed in conventional and alternative forms of nutrition and exercise, and the mind/body connection and one’s phsycological state.

---In other words, putting all these fields together in practice, not just theorizing about it all, has given me an insight heretofore otherwise unknown to man, and which significantly relates to why we appear so much older than we should for any given age. [Again, I refer you here to the many long-lived populations of the world who look, appear, and who are physiologically much younger than we are in our current modern day societies for any given age (ironically, and all this in the face of our modern scientific and medical technology)].

---...That this should be the case...that this knowledge and know-how should have been missed till now, is an inexcusable shame...and we are paying for it big-time with our health, or more properly put, lack of it and markedly advanced deterioration with age!

---You see, the way it was with this gent...I couldn’t at the time tell him why I really wanted him to sit down. Actually, I had him lie down with his legs up on the foot rest of one of those rowing machines you often see in gyms habitated by the more elderly people. Had I told him what was really on my mind, his emotional reaction to it all might have made his reaction that much worse.

---...Like I said, the way it was after a minute or so of his having lied down he said, “Hey, ya know doc...I feel a little dizzy...and I have this slight heaviness in my chest."

---Another minute or so and his symptoms all went away. What was really interesting, all the while he was having his symptoms, his pulse and blood pressure were within normal limits. No decrease in blood pressure nor elevation of pulse rate as is often seen with a drop in blood pressure. Yet, I felt this change in the nature of his pulse (which I've come to recognize as I noted above). Had I not had him lie down, then his blood pressure might have dropped to recognizable parameters.

---Needless to say, when the nature of his pulse ‘normalized’ (according to my own new found parameters)...that’s when he’d begun to feel perfectly fine. “Hey...doc...I feel fine. Let me get back on the treadmill again.”

---Fact is, like I said, he had a 'norma'l medical history, 'normal' just about 'everything'...and even a normal stress test. I didn’t let him go back on the treadmill. Instead, we had a long discussion, and I advised him to go back to see his cardiologist. The way it turned out, after having had more advanced tests than a stress test, he was eventually diagnosed as having 'significant blockages' of his coronary arteries, a condition which I'd lay odds is ocurring significantly not just in the thirties and forties nowadays...but even in the twenties! And the 'kicker' is, these 'symptom free' young people have no idea that anything going on inside their bodies...and which, unless certain changes are made in their lifestyle and which I'll get to...these underlying changes are eventually gonna eventually get them, unfortunately, many times when it's too late!

---There are a number of things this little Scenario demonstrates.
---...The more obvious, that 'exercise stress tests' can be normal in the face of serious cardiovascular disease.
---...And the much, much less obvious, that a lifestyle related lack of multilevel conditioning perpetuated over a period of years can result in many of the signs and symptoms of that which we otherwise call 'disease'...and 'aging' (heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, deteriorated joints and musculoskeletal system, demineralized bones and bone fractures, even autoimmune diseases and cancer...and the list goes on to those signs and symptoms we normally refer to as signs and symptoms of aging...ruddy and vascularized complexion of the face, inelasticity of the skin, decreased functional ability of the lungs, ‘weakened’ cardiovascular and bodily status with concomitant decreased ability to move and walk and to balance, enlargement of the features of and falling down and wrinkling of the face, under eye puffiness, skeletal and postural deformities or irregularities of the musculoskeletal system and their skeletal frame, decreased height...
---...As I said, I could go on and on naming an untold number of the signs and symptoms of 'aging,' at least of the first thirty or forty years of what we currently call 'aging' and interpret as 'the look of old age'...but much of which is not 'aging' so much as it is an 'overall, multilevel and multisystem deterioration of the body secondary to a prolonged lack of multilevel conditioning and improper lifestyle alien to the underlying nature of our genetic heritage going back to the time of Ancient Man!

---Although again I must categorize my above conlusions as personal theoretical observations, you’ll find they’ll one day turn out to be ‘no brainers’ heretfore not recognized by modern society and modern medicine, secondary to our having not yet interrelated 'medicine' with so many other fields I speak about on this web site (from nutrition, fitness, anthropology, sociology, human behavior to even theoretical physics, and so on),and the necessity of which fields would be necessary to make these discorveries and to come to these realizations I have come to.