Aging Wisely and Living Longer - A Personal Journey

I am now into the eighth decade of my life: I am eighty-seven years old to be exact. Thus, I have a selfish and personal reason to want to explore this question? It is surprisingly easy to-day to get an answer to a medical question. Google "longevity" or "life span" and there is a mountain of information out there at our fingertips. Anyone with a digital device and access to the internet has an up-to-date encyclopedia at his immediate disposal.

I vowed to make a personal odyssey on this question. What can or should I do to add years to my life? More importantly, how can I add time that is meaningful, invigorating, and worthwhile? How much of the information out there is solid science and how much of it interesting, titillating, even entertaining, perhaps, but actually useless nonsense? How much of it is unscrupulous money grab targeting gullible seniors? Then, it occurred to me that I might be able to take interested parties along with me on this voyage of discovery. There is, after all, nothing like trying to explain something to another person to make it clearer in your own mind.

Although I am a surgeon by training, a retired urologic surgeon, to be exact, I consider myself primarily a teacher. I have been involved in the teaching or training of two or three generations of doctors: how to become better, competent, reliable surgeons of the genitourinary tracts of men and women - a urologist, in short. In the process I have become a better student and a better human being.