Have you read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels? According to Swift, the immortals, in his book were subject to aging and disease so that by 80, they were “opinionated, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative” as well as “incapable of friendship and dread to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren.” At 90, they lost their teeth and hair and could not carry on conversations. Wow, what a view of aging. Hopefully, as you age, you will be different than Swift’s fictional characters.
Researchers today are studying the aging process and experimenting with ways to slow it down, by way of diet, drugs and genetic therapy. They are also working on new ways to replace worn-out organs, and even to help the body rebuild itself. At the University of California, San Francisco, Cynthia Kenyon found that partially disabling a single gene, called daf -2 lengthened the life of tiny worms. At Wake Forest Inst. For Regenerative Medicine, Anthony Atala has successfully grown bladders in a lab and implanted them in children and teenagers suffering from a congenital birth defect. This institute is working on growing more than 30 different organs and tissues, including livers, bones and hearts. Doris Taylor, at the University Minnesota has managed to grow a rat heart. These are some examples of aging research going on at our universities.
There are a whole host of questions and controversy regarding the aging topic. For example, Leon Kass, chairman of President Bush’s Council on bioethics saw extending life as an assault on human nature itself. One could argue that the status quo is not a good thing, and that there is nothing noble, beautiful and exciting about deterioration and decline. You decide what you want to do with your mind and body. I know what I want to do with my mind and body.
Last Saturday, Russ Kiernan, the Dipsea legend, told Secretariat and me about the American Sports Inst. The founder , Dr. Joel Kirsch formerly with the San Francisco Giants ,was setting up a school in Novato, incorporating mind , body, spirit, physical education ,health and wellness. Dr. Kirsch is a few years away from establishing this privately funded free tuition school and will begin with kindergarten age children.
A few positives about incorporating physical education into the curriculum: according to the California Department of Education, students who are physically fit and engage in regular physical activity, perform better academically than unfit students. For 23 years, the now retired, Pete Saccone and his fifth-grade students went for a 45 to 50 minute run on the school grounds every morning at eight o’clock to start their day at the Meridian elementary school in El Cajon, California, which is near San Diego. After each run, the students would go into their classrooms to do math and writing assignments related to the running. According to the Meridian principal, his class always had the highest test scores in that school. Too bad he wasn’t your kid’s teacher.
I encourage you to go to American Sports Inst.com to get more information, especially if you are a parent or teacher. Dr. Kirsch has found his passion. Have you found yours?
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