Age & Attitude: Dr. Joe Casciani Interviewed by Podcast Host, Malin Svensson

Hi, I'm Marlene Svensson, the celebrity trainer to the 50-plus crowd, and this is Age and Attitude, a monthly show where we talk about empowering and embracing aging. Let's get started. Today I have my wonderful friend Dr. Joseph Casciani as my guest. He has a 40-year history in aging as a psychologist and manager of mental health practices. For 3 decades, he was the clinical director for multistage mental health practices for patients in nursing homes. In 2018, he extended his professional interest in aging to his new venture, the Living to 100 Club. For 6 years, Dr. Joe has hosted his own podcast with the same name, Living 200 Club. He also serves as a geropsychology consultant, trainer, and public speaker. And that's actually how we met. We were both speaking at a conference called International Council on Active Aging in Florida. And I took his very inspirational workshop. So glad to see you. Welcome, Dr. Joe. How are you?

I'm great, Malin. Thanks very much for this invitation.

You're so welcome. And as with all my podcasts, I start off with the first two questions about age and attitude. So what is your age?

My age is 75.

And what is your attitude towards life?

Well, that's a loaded question. You know, it's overall to keep pushing, keep learning, keep opening new doors. Learning new things. Ever since I was young, I just wanted to take courses, take classes, new skills, all of that. So more recently, it's focused on kind of recognizing what is present is what's most important. I came across— I had written this series of card decks, and one of the theories I came across is the Block Theory of the Universe. And I don't know if you know about it, but Basically, they're saying there is no past and there is no future. All we have is present. I mean, past is memories and museums and books, and future is, you know, schedules and appointments. But all we really have is this moment. And I think that had a profound effect on me, and it's affected me in a lot of ways. So focus a lot on what we have today, not what I don't have anymore, what I'm going to get in the future. It's what I have right now.

That's great. I love that. Yeah, it's very profound, yet so simple, living in the present. Now, you were awarded the first contracts from California Department of Aging in 1982 to develop mental health training for the state's nursing homes. If you were to develop the mental health training today in 2024, How would it look different?

Well, you know, I go back to that manual from time to time and I look at— there were 12 chapters and I did it with a partner, a co-author. A lot of the themes are the same: communication, depression, behavior problems, families, sexuality, just a lot of usual mental health issues. And I think I would probably focus on a lot of the same topics. To do it over, I would bring in more tools for the staff rather than relying on the mental health professional to help with these issues. I would want to empower the staff more than we did and give them exercises, give them programs to use with their own residents, nurses, LVNs, CNAs, whoever's there, rehab, social services, and allow them to have more of a role in elevating the person's mental health. And that's what That's what the manual is for from the state.

Great. Yeah, that is a great focus to— the issue seems to be the same, but now to give the staff more training to help the patients or, yeah, nursing patients better. So what are the reasons people move from living at home to living in a nursing home? And have those reasons changed from 1982?

Well, I'm sure they have changed, but, you know, typically people have to move to this higher level of care because they need around-the-clock nursing, 24-hour nursing care. And that means they have some medical events, medical frailties, medical conditions that are serious enough to warrant this kind of ongoing nursing care. As I was phasing out of my work, a big shift that I saw was away from the long-term care frail patient population to what we call the short-term rehabilitation population. And if you go by nursing homes these days, you're gonna see nursing and rehab center. And the rehab is all about short-term admissions. And the people come in for physical therapy, speech therapy after a stroke or a fall or an accident, hip fracture. That's where the focus is because that's much more, that's where the nursing homes make their money. That's the Part A Medicare benefits. If the patient is not there on rehab, they go to long-term care units and that's covered by Medi-Cal, Medicare, and other states. So there's not as much revenue on those long-term care patients. So that's, that's the trend that I see.

Yeah. And even though it's two things here that the nursing home makes more money on the rehab versus the other option, I know coming from Sweden, when my mom was in a home, they had just the last 3 years of her life, they had many different departments, people that just came for the day, maybe just wanted to have lunch and maybe some care, and they basically lived independently. But then it was different departments up until where they needed help with everything. And that's, is that how you see it as well here in America?

Yeah, I think so. That's it. They're very active, a lot of multidisciplinary programs going on. So you have rehab, you have nutrition, you have activities, nursing, pastoral counseling sometimes. So it's much more involved staffing for the short-term stay. The long-term stay, the long-term patients, sometimes they're just kind of very, very frail and very compromised medically. So there's not a lot of active intervention. It's really more kind of custodial care.

Yeah. And just to let the audience know, some of these severe conditions, like a stroke, are there any other things that we now can take care of to prevent from happening? So for example, stroke, anything else that you've seen when people have had to go from living in— at home to a nursing home?

Yeah. Kidney failure is not uncommon. People lose their kidney function, so they have to go on dialysis, and sometimes that means a nursing home stay, not always. And I think people are trend toward more outpatient kind of dialysis treatment programs. Respiratory conditions, very prominent in long-term care, emphysema, COPD, asthma, depending on the severity. I mean, these things can be mitigated somewhat. At home. Diabetes is, you know, advanced diabetes. That's not that it needs nursing home care necessarily, but diabetes type 2 is really prominent in skilled nursing facilities. You know, there's a whole syndrome, we call it the metabolic syndrome, and that's a combination of a lot of these conditions all interacting in the same person. And, you know, many docs will say this is all it's all kind of caused by lifestyle, right? Activity level, nutrition, a lot of these things, smoking, toxins in the air. A lot of it is contributing to this metabolic syndrome. And that's huge.

Yeah. And sometimes we take the body for granted, and then one day when something happens, we go, why did this happen? But if you look back, to how it could be prevented. People probably have a lot of regrets. Oh, I should have done this. So again, we're here to empower the audience as they're aging to make sure that you really take care of your health now. Like you said, living in the present, living in this moment.

Yeah, if I could just take a minute to talk about the preventable dementias. We're now seeing a whole range of, they're called modifiable risk factors for dementia. If they're not treated, if they're not addressed, it can produce this kind of confusion and disorientation. Sometimes it's reversible, but sometimes it progresses to an irreversible condition. You know, like I mentioned, toxins and diabetes, depression, hearing loss, medication. There are a lot of reversible conditions now that untreated can lead to really severe cognitive impairment.

Yeah, I hear about hearing loss a lot. That people ignore because of not feeling comfortable wearing a hearing aid. But it's so important to, again, prevent from anything further going wrong with that cognitive. So anything else that you can think about that can be reversible with dementia?

Well, they talk about vision. That's kind of borderline, visual impairment. It's not really approved yet as one of these modifiable risk factors, but it's, it's being considered. There are probably others, none of them come to mind.

What about balance?

That's not, that's not a condition that can progress to dementia. I mean, you know, muscle loss and loss of balance, these are, these are important factors for lifestyle, so strength, but I don't, I haven't heard that they're associated with cognitive impairment.

Right. Okay, so I'm going to jump over to the mental health or go deeper into it because it's such a hot topic today, which I and we all welcome it all. We all think it really needs a lot of attention, but it has not always been that. What changed and when did it change?

You know, that's a good question. I'm approached all the time to join one group after another. Most of them are doing the online therapy. I'm just, you know, passing on all of it. But I think there's a number of factors. They say the incidence of stress and depression in children and adolescents is at an all-time high. If we look at the effects of COVID look at the effects of disasters around the country and globally, I mean, wars, weather disasters, hurricanes, forest fires, flooding, there's a lot of very strong, very intense kind of challenges to our coping ability. And I think that's— not that that's so new, but the prevalence of these conditions plus the availability of mental health practitioners. I mean, there's more mental health practitioners and there are a lot of specialties that are becoming recognized now by commercial insurance and Medicare and Medi-Cal, where in the past they weren't. So it was hard to get services. So I think the fact that, you know, I just heard that Medicare has finally authorized marriage and family counselors as providers. And when I was practicing, only psychologists and LCSWs were approved mental health professionals.

What is S— what did you say?

LCSWs, clinical social workers, licensed Clinical social workers. And now there's, like I said, MFTs that are approved. So again, there's, I think we're seeing a real increase in the types of mental health professionals, licensed professional counselors, LPCs. That's another specialty. A lot of overlap, of course. So, yeah.

So you said a few acronym, MFT, what does that stand for?

Marriage Family Therapists.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

You said the whole term, you know, term, but then you shorten it. So I was like, hmm. And then at the end you said something with L. What was that?

LPCs, Licensed Professional Counselors. And every state doesn't have all of these. They have different designations. So you might find LPCs in one state and not in another. You might find LCSWs in one and you might find CS, clinical social workers, and another. So there's not uniformity for all of the— across all the states.

So basically there's more help across the border. And it's also, we're more open to talk about it. It's more people don't, that are, you know, have mental health issues. They probably before didn't feel comfortable talking about it. They were embarrassed or ashamed or whatever, but now they are, feeling probably empowered because so many people care about them and love them. So they are inclined to seek help and get better.

That's a good point. It's lost a lot of the stigma that it used to, the negative stereotypes about seeking mental health services.

Right. I want to go back to age here and talk about that you, according to you, there are 3 different ages. We have the chronological, biological, and health age. How do you define each of those ages?

Well, yeah, these are not mine. I mean, they're not my designations. I just learned about them. Chronological age is what we all know, how many years we've been born. Biological age is another measurement that refers to how, how fast the body is aging.. And there are biomarkers that scientists can use to look at how advanced our tissues and organs are advancing. That's biological age. You know, simple biomarker is blood pressure. There are tons of other tests and there are measures of, forget the word, but it has to do with the life of the cell, the DNA connecting from one cell to another. That's a biomarker. So there are a number of ways to identify if your body's advancing faster than your chronological age. And the third one is most important, health age. Sometimes that's called psychological age, but health age, uh, is really more of an attitude, how old we think we are. And there's a lot of great research showing that if we think we are younger than our chronological age, We are healthier. We have fewer chronic diseases. We do— we perform better on measures of memory and some cognitive tests. We take more preventive health measures. And on average, we live about 7 years longer than someone who doesn't have this younger health age. So health age is, again, Do I feel like I'm 75 or do I feel like I'm 65 or do I feel like I'm 85? So the younger we think we are compared to our CA, the better we are. Like I said, it shows all of these.

Yeah, that really makes sense because it's fascinating because you tell yourself that, not that I'm concerned about the age, but just a positive way of thinking. Instead of thinking, oh, I'm 75, I'm so old. Oh, no, soon I'll be 80. But instead, just feel like, hey, but I don't feel like that. Hey, why attach myself to that age when it's just a chronological number? It doesn't say— I've said it before— it doesn't say how young you are at heart. So you have a funny story that I wanted to share with the audience.

Yeah, I was just going to bring this up. But, you know, one of my positions is that age is only a number. Let's not get hung up on age. I just read an article about Cyndi Lauper, a great article, singer, and she's on tour again. And somebody asked her her age and she said, what difference does it make? I'm not a car. So, that's a great line. I'm not a car. You know, how old the car is matters, but how old the person is, I don't think it matters. It's really more that mental image, that mindset. So, I'll tell you the story about Emile Raffelband. Emile Raffelband is a, he was a, I don't know if he still is working, but he was a newsman in Holland. And he was 69 years old and he didn't like being 69. He said, "69, I can't get dates online. I can't buy a sports car." I can't get a mortgage for a new house. I want to change my age to 49. If I change my age to 49, I can get dates online. You know, I'm not going to get rejected. I can drive whatever car I want. So dear Emil Rathelbond, working in television, he wanted to change his age to 49. He goes to the Dutch court and he makes his case and he says, you know, people can change their name. People can change even their gender nowadays. I should be able to change my age. I want to be 49. I don't want to be 69. True story. So he goes to the court and makes his case, and the court considers it, and they come back and say, sorry, Mr. Rattlebone, we cannot change your age. If we do that, we're going to eliminate 20 years of your records in our system, and we can't have that. However, you are free to feel as young as you want. If you want to feel like you're 49, be our guest. So I loved that story when I saw it, and I use that in my presentations all the time.

I so love it, and I'm so glad you told it to me before when we met because I was laughing so hard I could not stand up. So I'm more prepared now. I can sit straight and not do my famous laughter that is very loud. So, but it is a great, great story. I find it very amusing, and at the same time, it is so true to what we just said. Embrace where you are and you can feel. If you don't want to be 69, then go and feel that you are 49, whatever that means.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, there's a, you know, there's a trend toward anti-aging and that, that has this connotation that there's something wrong with aging and people try to look younger and, you know, all the interventions and surgeries and whatever. But all the field says there's nothing wrong about aging, let's accept it. Yeah, we can do things that make us feel better or younger or help us to look younger. But let's not, let's not say it's anti-aging because there's nothing wrong about aging. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I, I love how you say that. And you said somewhere aging no longer means decline, helplessness, and dependency. Can you expand on this and explain what opportunities we have ahead?

Oh yeah. That's the best part. The, the old stereotype, the what we call ageist, ageism stereotype was, you know, when we start 70s, 80s, it's time to slow down, decline. Don't, don't think about doing too much. Don't take on new things. And that, you know, aging meant helplessness and decline and dependency and, oh gee, I'm gonna, you know, give up being independent. I'm gonna have to stop driving, whatever. Some of these things may be true, but the fact is aging— as a negative stereotype is going away. And we hear about it all the time. And now I say aging is a time to look forward. It's a time to see the upsides of, you know, our later years. It's a time to embrace our later years, time to celebrate. And I wrote a whole paper about all the reasons to celebrate because we're getting older and, you know, all the advantages. So, you know, the older stereotypes aging means decline and helplessness. I think we're getting away from that and we're seeing the upside, not the downside. Good.

Yeah, I love that. I love that vision and attitude and the whole philosophy. Now, you started the Living to 100 Club. What motivated you to start that and how does it work? Can anyone join or how do you join?

Yeah. Working in nursing homes, I could see so many times where people, same condition, you know, one person would say, "I can't handle this anymore." You know, maybe a stroke and I got to go to rehab and I can't handle it. And another person would say, "This is really hard. I've got to dig deep and I'm going to fight and see if I can get back home." So what's going on? All things being equal, it's whatever the attitude is, as you rightly point out, is so important. Age and attitude. So the whole idea of what allows somebody to continue to get back up, tap into their resilience, tap into their motivation, determination, and keep moving. So I wanted to bring a lot of that experience to the community, to people still living at home. So I started my Living to 100 Club. A friend of mine had written a book called Living to— it wasn't Living to 100, something like that. And I, I talked to him and I said, look, I want to start this other. So I found livingto100.club. As a URL. And I said, that's it. That's what I wanna do. I'm gonna focus on successful aging. I wanna bring together resources and information for people to start seeing how to age successfully, no matter what gets in the way. And I say, you know, living to 100 is a great goal, but it's not in the cards. It's not in the cards for everybody. Not everybody's gonna do it, but we can stay positive while trying, no matter what gets in the way. So that's what I do. That's what I write about. That's what I talk about. And try to bring these concepts to people that help them deal with these challenges and hurdles. It's not a smooth road. You know, I say there's always going to be potholes and there's always going to be turns and there's always going to be something getting in the way, but we can still get back up and keep moving forward. Yeah.

So this website, Living to 100, is basically resources. You can go and look up things, but how can you join it? Like, would you Or you can just, anyone can go and look at the website.

Yeah, anyone can go. I had a membership for a while and it, I just couldn't, I couldn't continue to justify it because I didn't wanna sell things that were already available on the internet. So I have a lot of podcasts, I have articles. If people go to my website, they can download my 9 Tips for Living Well While Living Longer. It's a nice PDF, it's about 10 pages, 15 pages, and it's a summary of a lot of what I'm talking about the 9 tips. So livingto100.club, not .com, not .org, but .club. You can find those resources there. And I sign up for my newsletter. I've got a newsletter coming out this week with some of my articles, other articles I come across. I summarize my podcasts. I have a quote of the month. I show one of the cards from my new card deck series. So, so it's a nice rich A newsletter.

Yeah. I totally hear you with a membership, but at the same time, I wanted to revisit that. Now I'm talking as a businesswoman here because as we're aging, we're all looking for community. And what you have created is a perfect community that people want to belong to. And you can, you don't have to charge or anything, but just have, so when you send out the newsletters, everyone will get your email, et cetera. So it's more about creating community. It's not about charging people a membership fee or anything, but it's just having that feeling that, hey, I'm part of the Living to 100 Club and have different challenges and what have you. So I can go on and on and on. We can talk later about that.

Well, we can talk about that more. You're right. You're right.

Yeah. Yeah.

I consider everybody— I have several hundred people, probably 800 or 900 people on my email list, so I consider them members.

Exactly.

They access all my information.

Yeah. Perfect. So I love playing games and cards, and I know that you have developed that 12-deck or 12-card deck that's called The Better, Longer, and Happier Guide. I'm not sure it's a card game you can play, though, but what are they and how do you use them?

Yeah, it's not a card game. It's really developed for people who are responsible for activities, programs, and senior living communities, retirement communities, assisted living communities. And here's education about aging, and here's some activities that you can bring to your residents, and here's a collection of inspirational stories. So each deck has 60 cards. They're all numbered, and there's 4 sections. The first section is Knowledge, key thoughts, that's kind of short, quick information. Knowledge deep dive has more in-depth, and then activities, and then inspirational story. But the beauty of it is that each card has a QR code on it. So I can only put so much information. You'll see a little QR code here, right? So this is research from the National Institute of Health about what causes us to live longer.. And they found that 30% is genetic and 70% is lifestyle. Yeah. It's good information. And again, the original article, go to the QR code. So that's, that's what these 12 decks are all about.

Nice. Yeah. So it's, it's for, again, you said in the beginning that it's very important to train the staff. So this is a great way to, to train the staff in different nursing homes. So they have the right equipment and activities to knowledge.

Yeah.

The fact to learn from. Yeah.

Yeah. Evidence-based material. I talk about the Blue Zones. I talk about coping styles. Talk about overcoming depression.

Yeah.

Well, the last one was the most fun. Number 12 is all about what opportunities lie ahead.

Yes.

What new things can we go after now that I've got 20 more years or 30 more years to live? How can I learn a new language, take up music, travel, new partners, new relationships? There's even a card on rebranding yourself if you want to create a new brand, a new personal brand. So it's great stuff.

Yeah. And I love that that's chapter 12 because it's possibilities. And it's kind of like my book, Wake Up Your Body Mind After 50. I have the 12th chapter is anything is possible at any age because Up till then, we have built up people's health. And then the last chapter, okay, now that you're healthy and practicing, you're taking care of your health. Now what dreams do you want to still fulfill, et cetera? Well, that's great. So it's very interesting. It's 12 chapters as well. So there's something specific with that 12 number. We're going to take a short break. See you back in 30 seconds.

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Welcome back. But I want to go back to your philosophy on how we can live longer and more important, healthier. What's your philosophy?

Probably most of your listeners are familiar with the Blue Zones. Yeah, Blue Zones researchers discovered these areas around the world where we have the most centenarians living relative to the population. And there were 5 of them and now there's number 6. And I've heard there's even a location here in San Diego that's been designated number 8 or 9. And I was just shocked to hear that. Oh, it was a senior living community. But, you know, the Blue Zones really research what, you know, what allows these people to live longer. And they came up with a number of lifestyle characteristics and they were common among all these these Blue Zones, things like social engagement, healthy, you know, meals, whole food plant-based meals, not a lot of red meat, no processed foods, physical activity, the things that we all hear about. But they, they show that in these Blue Zones, these centenarians really have that. So I think anybody that wants to learn more about longevity, sign up for the Blue Zones website. They have a newsletter, they have recipes that come out. It's good stuff. And I consider that kind of the foundation. When I talk about longevity, these are, these are the basics. These are the fundamentals. And it's all about lifestyle. Like I said, just a couple minutes ago, I talked about that one card. Globally, the research shows our longevity is only due to genetics about 30% of the time. Yeah. And my parents didn't know that. Earlier generations didn't know that. They said, well, dad or gramps only lived till he was 85. I'm not gonna live much. No, that's not so true. We don't know that we can live longer by changing our lifestyle. Yeah, that's the beauty of all this.

I love it. Yeah. Great news. Now, when we experience life-changing events, how do you advise us to restart with a blank screen and maybe even reinvent ourselves?

Yeah, well, we're always going through these life-changing events. Some of them are desired, that we want, and some of them are not so welcome, not so desired. And yet we still have to do it. Maybe a divorce, maybe a forced move. We have to give up our home and move into an assisted living. Maybe we have to stop driving. Maybe a spouse comes down with Alzheimer's disease and now we become a full-time caregiver for our spouse. Or maybe we want to remarry and maybe we want to move to a new location. Something positive. But there are all these changes. I consider it kind of a blank screen and we can create whatever kind of character we want. We can write whatever script we want. We can paint whatever picture we want. And I like to say I'm not defined by who I was yesterday. A lot of people think their future is determined by who they were in the past. And I say, no, no, no. You know, you're an accountant, you're a nurse, you're a doctor, you're a cook, you're an author, you're a homemaker. That doesn't mean that that's who you'd have to be tomorrow. So starting new chapters is all about saying, okay, I'm not going to let my personal history color who I want to be tomorrow. And that, again, that opens up all kinds of doors. It's not easy, of course. I mean, sometimes, you know, look at, you know, being a full-time caregiver for spouse who has Parkinson's now, or, you know, Lewy body dementia. I didn't want this role, but this is my, this is my role. I'm now a full-time caregiver and I have to find a way. I have to dig deep and find ways to cope with this and manage it and be the best I can. So it is starting new chapters. And there's a great book written by Joanne Lipman. It's called Next. It's called Reinventing Ourself at Home and at Work. And she talks about all these stories of people who were going down the road and they made a right turn and they left what they were doing and started something entirely new. It's a great book because it is all about letting go of who I was. And now I'm trying to find out who I am going to be tomorrow. It is, it's that whole notion that we don't have to be defined by who I was yesterday.

Yeah. Well, it's probably easier to reinvent yourself when you feel good and healthy. But if something, not just for the person that would be the caretaker, but actually for somebody that is going through the stroke, the dementia, knowing what can be next, how do you deal with that? How do you create a blank screen and go from, you know, move on and feel motivated to do something about it?

Well, you know, sometimes when we're put in those situations we don't want to be in, but we are, there's a lot of help out there. There's a lot of information. There's a lot of support groups. There's a lot of guidance that you can get in helping you cope with some of these new challenges, you know, like being a full-time caregiver. So we're not at it alone. I mean, there's great, great organizations for Alzheimer's and all kinds of kidney failure and diabetes. They're great resources to people going through it themselves and people being the caregivers. So we're not alone. We're not alone. Just to touch on support for whatever, you know, the condition is. Yeah.

So it goes hand in hand with how we deal with setbacks. What are some effective coping skills we can use when we're faced with setbacks?

Yeah. You know, it's easy to focus on what's wrong. It's easy to dwell on what I cannot do anymore. It's easy to see all my limitations, but it's just as good. It's better to see what I still can do.

Right.

What I still have, not what I don't have anymore. I love to do an exercise when I have these discussion groups. I talk around the, go around the group, say, what are the things you used to do that you can't do anymore? You really enjoy it, but you can't do anymore. Okay, everybody goes around mountain climbing, playing football, cooking. And then the second time around, okay, what are the things that you used to do that you still can do and you still enjoy? And it puts them, you know, puts them in a different mindset. Well, gee, I've always enjoyed doing this and I can still do it. So I encourage people to let go of, or not let go, but just not dwell on what they can't do anymore. But let's recognize the residual strengths, things I'm still good at.

Yeah, I love that. That's very positive. It's very easy to go, oh, I can't do this, and then change it to, but what can I do? And it's being grateful for what we have. And it's easy to say, but if we really think about it, we have a lot to be grateful for. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, we probably have to dig much deeper when things are not going so well, that's when we really have to really dig deep, like you said, to see what we still can do.

Can I just share a quick story? When I do big groups, I'll divide the room into a right half and left half. I say, everybody on the right side, you're the optimists in the room. Put your optimism hat on, look around the room and find everything that's good about it. You know, the healthy plants, the nice fixtures, the sunlight coming in, the furniture is nice. Okay, everybody on the other side of the room, you're the pessimist. You put your pessimist them head on, find everything that's wrong, marks on the wall, stains on the carpet, maybe some furniture that's broken. And then I reconvene and I get feedback and positive group found this and negative group found this. I said, okay, it's the same room. What are you looking for? If you're looking for what's good about it, you'll find it. If you're looking for what's wrong with it, you'll find it. So is the glass half full or half empty? It's the same thing. If we're looking for what's good, we'll find it. If we're looking for what's not so good, we'll find that too.

Great.

Yeah.

Yeah. I love that. Great vision. And yeah, it's the same room.

Same room. Yeah. Yeah.

So unfortunately, it's quite common for people as they age to feel isolated, lonely, and even depressed. What are some of your solutions to overcome depression?

Mm-hmm. You're right. You're right. Depression, not uncommon in seniors, and a lot of it is, you know, reactive to loss or decline and, you know, very real issues. And it's similar to what I was just saying. But, you know, one thing that depression affects us in a lot of ways, right? It affects our thinking, it affects our mood, our emotions, our appetite, our sleep. And one thing that it does very, very well is that it narrows our perception. It gives us this tunnel vision. All we see is what's wrong. It's almost like we're wearing blinkers. You know, horses are fitted with blinkers so they're not distracted from what's going on. And I say, when we're depressed, we've got these blinkers on and all we see is what's wrong. It's our tunnel vision. We can't see anything good. So the goal is, the strategy is to find ways to remove the blinkers. And one way to do that is to look for exceptions. Look for an exception to everything is wrong. And I'll give you a short story. I had a woman in a nursing home. She was very negative, the most negative person I had encountered. And she said, you know, all the residents don't like me. I don't like the food. I don't like the nurses. I don't like the administrator. You know, nothing is good. I went into her one week and I said, Harriet, you seem really negative today. Was there Was there anything good that happened to you this week? Just looking for the exception. And she said, well, you know, the man that came in to fix my air conditioner yesterday, he smiled at me and he said good morning. And I said, aha, there's the exception. So in the midst of everything that's going wrong, she found one exception. And that's proof that if there's one exception, there's more. So you help them to take the blinders off and see the whole picture, not just see everything that's going wrong. Kind of recognizing there are some positives too. Yeah.

Great story. I love that. Reminds me of a client I used to have. He's no longer on this planet, unfortunately, but he was Mr. Sunshine. He came into the room and the room lit up. He was married to Mrs. Thunderstorm. Had totally the opposite effect. He died a few years earlier. And I think that she died because he was such a light in her life.

She lost her light.

And I think that's what kept her going.

Yeah.

So thank you for sharing that story. Now let's talk about how you take care of yourself. How do you take care of your physical health?

I try to stay physically active. I'm on a treadmill every morning. I do some strength training twice a week. My wife is a nurse and she takes pretty good care of me meal-wise, nutrition-wise. I mean, she—

You have a personal chef?

She does a pretty good job. And, you know, she's been doing yoga for 40 years, so she's also very conscious of health and nutrition and exercise. Anyway, she does a good job. But I tell you one thing that, you know, that I really love and I bought myself a set of drums about 4 years ago, just before COVID These are electronic drums, so you wear a headset and you bang away and nobody can hear you unless you plug it into the speaker. But I can, you know, nobody can enjoy my drum playing. And I've started taking lessons about 8 months ago and I go in once a week and I just love to play the drums. When I go to the lessons, they're acoustic drums, so they're, really loud and bang away. And when I'm home, I practice on the electronic drum. So to me, that's my— I won't say just physical, but mental health too. Yeah.

I love that. When do we get to see you in action?

Yeah, that's, you know, I have a goal of doing some stand-up comedy down the road, and maybe I'll do some drumming in my set. I don't know.

Well, my next question is probably pretty fitting then. Do you have any dreams that you still want to fulfill?

Oh, that's a good question. I probably do. You know, nothing very immediate because I'm so focused on getting this card deck series launched. You know, I've got some real plans for that. I'd love to do some public speaking and supporting the, you know, the facilities that buy them. You know, I've been half facetious about doing stand-up comedy, but I kind of think that would be a lot of fun, you know, going to And as a drum player, maybe you can start a band with the Living 200 Club. I like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So let's turn to the other side. Do you have any regrets in your life?

Oh, regrets. You know, I was with a big company. I started a big company, the nursing home company. I was with them 15 years and they brought in some new CEOs and I was the clinical lead and we didn't hit it off. You know, we had such potential. We were in almost 1,000 nursing homes around the country. 8 or 9 states. And we were huge. We were the biggest. And we kept growing and contracting with nursing homes, hiring psychologists. And I just didn't hit it off with the new CEO. I didn't like his style. I didn't like the— he was changing the whole quality of the company. So, I quit. And I think that was not the right thing to do. I think I should have found a way to work out our differences, negotiate. Compromise and meet each other halfway. I mean, I went on to start my own nursing home practice, which was fine, and I did very well and I sold that. But I wouldn't say it's the major life regret, but it's a big one.

Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. And it's when one door closes, another one opens. So I like that you have started on your own. Because otherwise we wouldn't have you with all this knowledge and the card, 12 card decks that you have developed. Do you have any fears as you're aging?

Well, I see, I've been hearing, went to a couple of seminars on Alzheimer's disease and it's scary. It's scary. And there are ways to minimize the risk, but Nobody in my family. I think I have an aunt who had it. There's always a concern about, you know, losing that cognitive function, memory loss, word finding difficulty, you know, losing your keys, things like that. Those are all little, little worrying signs. So I don't feel any of that yet, but it's always there.

That's a fear. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now, do you have any other questions you want me to ask you regarding how you empower, embrace aging at age 75?

Any other questions? Well, I, you know, I guess it's— I think of this saying from Leonard Cohen in one of his songs. He said, there's a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. So, you know, you want to ask, let's not strive for perfection. You know, let's recognize, you know, we can give up on being perfect and one of my favorite lines is, done is better than perfect. Yeah. So let's not get caught up in doing everything just right. Let's just get out there and keep opening new doors.

So, yeah, great. And what is your main motivational message to the audience when it comes to aging?

Yeah. Well, what goes on in between our ears is, is really important. You know, and we've got to pay attention and we've got to monitor. And we find ourselves into that negative thinking, we can stop it and shift into something positive. We have to monitor. We have to be, you know, very vigilant that we can go down that slope. And it's hard. Sometimes the depression can kind of suck us in. And some people feel safe in their depression. Well, the walls are up and they're not going to get hurt anymore. I'm not going to take any more risks. I'm not going to venture out. I'm going to stay here. And that protection is very limiting. So I said, let's resist that temptation to pull back and isolate and retreat. It might seem safe, but there's no life there. Yeah. Watch out.

Very, very interesting. I thank you so very much, Dr. Joe, for taking the time today to be my guest. It's been so interesting and very valuable. And everyone listening, make sure you follow him on Facebook, Living 200, and that is the numbers 1-0-0, Instagram, living200.club, and visit his website, www.living200.com. Club. And for more information on how to follow Dr. Joe, check our show notes located under today's episode title.

Thank you very much, Malin.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, that's great that you're doing this, so keep up the good work. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Bye.

I'll talk to you later. Bye. Age and Attitude is brought to you by Nordic Body. We are created and produced by me, Malin Svensson. Our audio mixer is Steve Zipper. If you like Age and Attitude, tell someone else about it and be sure to follow us @nueticbody on Instagram and Facebook. Follow and subscribe to our podcast, Age and Attitude, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next month.