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In this podcast episode, Mike Roth talks to Joe Casper, an exercise physiologist, about the importance of proper nutrition for seniors. Joe shares his passion for health and his belief that better nutrition and exercise can prevent diseases commonly seen in families. They discuss the role of genetics and behavior in disease prevention and the importance of individual choices in maintaining health. Joe also talks about the truth about vitamins, emphasizing that they should supplement a healthy diet and not be relied upon to compensate for poor eating habits. He warns against mixing alcohol and medication and highlights the need for real food and healthy living practices. Joe also mentions his book, "Fire Your Diet," which provides tips for entering the doctor's office in a healthy way, including increasing water intake. Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages, Florida podcast. In this show, we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs, and interesting folks who live here in the villages to get perspectives of what is happening here in the Villages, Florida. We are a listener-supported podcast. There will be shout-outs for supporters in episodes. In Season 6, we will continue making substantial improvements to the podcast. This is Mike Roth. And listeners, I'm thrilled to share with you this podcast, which is my passion project for you. This podcast brings me joy, brings you knowledge, inspiration, and a lot of things that people need to know about the villages and the people living here. Be sure to hit the follow button to get the newest episode each week. Creating this podcast is a labor of love, even though it demands more time than I can easily spare. Now, here's where you come in. You can help us keep the podcast alive and thriving. How? By becoming a supporter. The easy way for you to support us is to visit our podcast web page, openforuminthevillagesflorida.com and click on the supporter button at the top of the page or the purple supporter box on the right side of the page. Even a small donation of $3 to $10 a month makes a big difference. And guess what? You can cancel your subscription at any time. No strings attached. Your support means the world to us. Stay curious, stay inspired, and keep those headphones on. I hope everyone enjoys today's show. This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in the Villages, Florida. I'm here with Joe Casper, an exercise physiologist, and he engages in conversations about how to get proper nutrition as a senior. Is that fair, Joe? Correct. Why are you passionate about health? The reason goes back to childhood. Mike, I've always had a fear of death. That's the reality. I remember when I was six, my Aunt Jean passed away. And I didn't know what that meant. I remember she, and my father goes, she left, she's not coming back. I go, why not? And he couldn't explain it to me. And my father, he lied to me. He said, Dad, then if she's not coming back, you make sure you never die either. Obviously he did. Dying early doesn't have to happen. I've been passionate about health since I was a teenager. Most of what we have, people talk about genetically you can have all these diseases. Why do we have to accept that? I don't think we should. But most people do. In most family households, whatever the illness and disease, the parents had, the grandparents have, the kids have. And I believe you can change that paradigm by having better nutrition. And I really believe that's an exercise and being consistent. So I started as a teenager to become healthy. And all the diseases that my parents got, I don't have them at 58. And do you believe that everyone should have genetic testing so that we understand where are genetic faults, why, or should we just say, Mom had heart disease, I might have heart disease. I'll eat and exercise as if I'm going to get heart disease. Interesting question. It makes sense. I think it depends on the individual because if you have this fear, and I don't have a fear, I just work to be healthy. If you have a fear that, okay, my parents had this disease, I'm going to get it too. I did the opposite. The key here is behavior. If your parents got cancer and smoked and drank a lot, don't smoke and drink and your chances are less. Common sense is a lot of this. Cancer, I've always felt it's more than one disease. If you've got lung or brain cancer from smoking, that's because you smoked. But there are people who get brain cancer who never smoke. People who get lung cancer never smoke. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, people were in rooms or airplanes where people were smoking, so they got secondary smoke. No question. Turns out to be fatal. My mom went to the doctor in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and the doctors gave you cigarettes. Really? Yes. True. My mom told me. I could never smoke cigarettes. I was playing trombone in high school. I wanted to be first trombone, so you had to play loud, it's not necessarily best. Very smart. It wasn't for a health reason, it was for playing the trombone. Joey, you've got a new expression, aging gracefully, live fully. Can you tell our listeners what that means? One of my newsman coming out is going to be called Age Gracefully, Live Fully. People always talk about getting older, and you always hear, Michael, all this scientific research on all these diseases. Have you ever noticed that with all the research, we're getting sicker and heavier? Our country is not healthy, because unfortunately, we live in a country where it's always money first, health last. You could say that's not true. It sure is. It shouldn't be. Again, I'm just saying for most of the population, there's always exceptions to the rules, of course. Right. But if you want to age, it takes work. Here's a fact, most people above 50 drink some alcohol, take some medication, and don't exercise as much as they could. That's a reality. Most people are not willing to give up those three things. They won't, because their friends do it, and their family does it. No one wants to be the black sheep. I've written books for only vitamins, like no one in the world. My family doesn't take my stuff, and it's life. I'd like to help them, but they don't want to be helped. Yeah. I took a lot of vitamins, probably to the time I was about 21. But how are the vitamins made? It's probably made better years ago than now. Now there's almost every company ... 100% natural. Today, they're not. Mine are natural, but most aren't, because they have chemicals and fillers. It's a bad thing. I use Nutrilite. It's still sold through Panway. It's mass-produced. In those days, it was watercress, alfalfa, and parsley. That's good. Today, it's not. I have bone vitamins, colostrum, and protein, and ghee. My stuff is pure, but I can't hit the masses. I don't sell them stores. They'll never happen. It's a whole different business. Sure. Yeah. Why don't you tell our listeners what the truth about vitamins is? Sure. I'll do it. There are some vitamins which have real benefits, like prevention of scurvy. I think vitamin B12 has been proven in memory care units to improve 25% to 50% of people there because they were there for vitamin deficiency as opposed to true Alzheimer's disease. Some vitamins are in supplements. They're supplementation to real food. We have water-soluble, fat-soluble vitamins, but here's the issue, Mike. We live in a world where people take vitamins they eat terribly, and they think it's going to rescue them. It's not going to work that way. It's real food first. Again, I said supplementation. The vitamins supplement what you're doing in addition to healthy living, but think about this. We live here in the villages, Mike, right? Everyone wants to go out to eat. How many people do we know take a medication with alcohol at the same time? It happens more than you think, and that's just not intelligent. It's really not necessary. Tell our listeners why that's not a good idea. If you take alcohol and you mix it with medication, which people do, okay? Your body can't break it down, so your liver and pancreas isn't going to function right, so they cannot be taken together, but people do it because what do most people say? What's wrong with a nice glass of wine? Whoever said it was nice, it has double the alcohol content of beer. Everything comes down to this. It's not moderation. It's how it's produced. Our country, which is a great country, is listed as the 37th healthiest country in the world. That's wrong, and it bothers me. We mass-produce everything. We buy stuff as quick as possible. We go into certain stores, stuff that's on the shelf forever. If you want to be healthier, take vitamins at a food base, number one. When you see ingredients that say titanium dioxide, magnesium stearate, a yellow dye, remember this, blue dye, remember that, throw them in the garbage. Your body can't absorb them, but the companies that make them will tell you it's only a trace amount. Don't put them in, but it's cheap. These are cheap fillers that most companies use because the bottom line is money. Pharmaceutical companies don't want you to live forever. There are drugs that help you live a healthier life and lifestyle because of the drugs primary care physicians prescribe. The primary care physicians, why won't they prescribe nutrition? Why won't they tell you, here's a better way to eat? There's no money in that. Some do. But how can a doctor put a meal plan together? They don't have time. My friend, Dr. Curtis, who we'll hear from later, talks about the MIND diet, okay? Now, he doesn't teach you the MIND diet. He says he has a book on the MIND diet, but I wanted to eat healthier, I said, the book is nice. Tell me why the MIND diet is good. So I went out to Amazon and bought a cookbook for the MIND diet, and we wind up buying a bunch of different ingredients for the foods we make at home. That's a great move. But I found out there was a MIND diet cookbook, I said, wow, I got to buy one for $10, $12. It was a great deal. And some things were very tasty. It's funny, Mike, there's more recipe books sold than ever, and people cook less. They do? People are busy. Oh, yeah. My book called Fire Your Diet has recipes in it, but it has other things as well. What is your book called? Fire Your Diet, 17 ways to enter the doctor's office. Give our listeners a quick tip from the book. Increase your water intake, purified water. Reverse osmosis water. Yeah, that's great water. People should drink water. It's okay to go to the bathroom. Don't be dehydrated. A lot of times people are dehydrated before they start the day, but it's 12 o'clock, you haven't had one glass of water yet. How many glasses of water should a person take? It depends on your body frame size, your exercise level. They recommend half your body weight in ounces, but it's not going to happen. If you can drink 40, 50 ounces a day, that's good. But they recommend more. And coffee doesn't count. My urologist said coffee doesn't count. So I drink very little coffee. Smart move. Eight ounces every meal. Of water. Purified water is bad. That's why I put in the reverse osmosis system, which takes everything out. And you get six parts per million on them. If you're going to do a reverse osmosis water, you obviously lack minerals so you can squeeze a lemon. The body needs minerals, Mike. So sometimes minerals are needed. They make mineral supplements. But anytime you add to your food, your vitamins, your water, make sure whatever you're adding, the ingredients are as least as possible. Buy things with one, two, or three ingredients, not with a hundred of them. You like simple ingredients. Yes. I do. I buy six vitamin pills, because six different vitamins you want to get. But I'm saying, but I don't want something that has a million ingredients in it, because a lot of times they add chemicals and fillers. What do you think of Centrum vitamin pills for seniors? Waste of money. Waste of money. They're loaded with ingredients. You can grab a bottle, all with chemicals and fillers in them. Yeah. That might be it. I'm sorry. I bought a bottle, read the ingredients, took one or two. Didn't feel any better. Stopped taking them. That's smart. The doctor recommended it, which means nothing. My doctor said don't take it. That's smart. I should have asked him before I bought it. Why do you think so many people are ill as they get older? They expect to get ill. Let me give an example. My grandmother had a stroke in the late 1960s, because she didn't take a blood pressure medicine. When my mom turned 50, she was 59, my mom knew she'd be on medication. She didn't say to the doctor, hey, is there anything else I can do? Can I eat better? Can I do whatever? She said, when you're on high blood pressure, take some medication. It was almost like she was looking forward to it, because she expected that outcome. And that's not the way I teach. It bothered me, but my mom was afraid. She took it her whole life. She was 59 until she died at 82. I've heard several classes of medications prescribed a lot around here. Blood pressure, blood thinners, like Eliquis. What do you think of that? Remember, Mike, I'm a PhD, not an MD, so I can't really go into that. I think, though, if people take medicine, the doctor should absolutely explain all the side effects, which they usually don't. The side effects. So if you take cholesterol medicine, blood pressure medicine, whatever it is, for 20, 30, 40 years, and you're, how can my kidneys and liver not function right, there you go. There's always a side effect. I get it. Some people need it. I'm not anti-medicine, but we rely on it too much. And I use my mom as that example, because she really, in my opinion, could have fought it better. But she didn't. And our friends are the same way. I see a lot of people around here. The big joke is that both the men and women in the villages look like they're pregnant. That's a weight control problem. Big diets don't work, because they eat and drink too much. Now, what do you think of the injectables like Oseptic? Big risk. Some people have lost substantial weight using those drugs. Okay. What's you have in 10 years? We don't know yet. We don't know. They don't know. The idea I had with those drugs, and it may not be possible, but as you take it long enough, whether it's six months or a year, taper down, and you stop taking it, after you've reached your desired weight, Your weight's going to come back. You think so? With a vengeance. And all that happens with diets. That's why there's so many different diets. You know what the word diet stands for? Diet today. D-I-E-T. Depression. Insecurity. Emotional trauma. That means everyone listening should immediately give up their diet. No, I didn't say that. What should they do? First of all, if you have a focused mindset, and you make a conscious decision to be healthy, that's where it starts. It starts in the brain. Number one. Let's take a short break and listen to a health tip from Dr. Craig Curtis. Dr. Curtis, can you give our listeners a tip on eating in a more healthy manner? Yes, I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. 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