It’s my ambition to be the last living baby boomer. (We lost the last American World War I combat veteran just last year.) So it’s my goal to outlive everybody who was born in the U.S.A. between 1946 and 1964 ó and I’m the oldest boomer born in ’46.
And yep, I’m going to outlive both of my bosses, too. Even though they’re longer lived females and I’ve spotted them almost 20 years. They are Katie, my editor, and Julia my work/therapy supervisor at the VA hospital.
(They’ll pass on in their late nineties and I’ll still be alive and vital, “the man,” at close to 120 years old ó alas, Katie and Julia, it’s been good to know ye.)
What’s going to be my secret to super longevity? I take herbal and vitamin supplements! Lots of them ó 32 different ones a day. You may think I’m crazy (and you’d be right) but I’m convinced this will be my ticket to making the Guinness Book of Records!Actually, taking this many supplements, along with my psychotropic medicine, is a bit of an organizational challenge. I load four large (four-compartment) one-week pill boxes once every fortnight with 57 pills a day (I take multiple pills of some of my supplements.)
It takes me more than an hour every two weeks just to load them all into my giant pill minders. It’s kind of fun. The pills are all different shapes and colors and sort of remind me of my marble collection when I was a kid.
(Again, you may say I’ve lost my marbles about this.)
I wash them down with two beers a day because studies show that light drinkers live longer than teetotalers.
So what do I take?
Well, lots of antioxidants to keep me from “rusting away.” I take a supplement for my neck arthritis that was used 4,000 years ago in ancient Egypt.
I take a supplement with the healthy ingredient found in red wine that in studies has kept muscular old rats running in treadmills long after they should have been dead.
On the Internet I found a book titled “The Baby Boomers’ guide to living FOREVER.” (And yes, the M.D. editor is serious!) The “longevitists” in the book recommend some common sense stuff like keeping well hydrated by drinking lots of water ó and thus not withering up like a prune in old age. And some downright dangerous stuff like injecting human growth hormones.But the book’s ace-in-the-hole is the science of cryogenics, which is the practice of hard-down freezing you in liquid nitrogen right after the first time you die so you can be revived in a future highly advanced medical era that will cure what killed you in the first place and restore your youth. And it’s darned expensive to be kept frozen for a century or more.
Fewer than a hundred people have been cryogenically frozen to date, and most of them have opted to have their heads lopped off and then kept frozen in a canister so when they are resuscitated in the future their personalities and memories will (presumably) remain intact. Then science will stem-cell them a new body.
Hmmmm. Sounds kind of fishy to me, and I don’t mean fish oil capsules. Nope, I’m going to stick with my supplements and get cremated when I finally expire.
Hugh Deadwyler lives in Salisbury.