I was playing tennis with a fellow a few years back. I was in my early fifties, and I would put him in his early sixties. He looked good and played well, matching me in singles play, stroke for stroke, sprint for sprint. Between games, I inquired about his health. 

TROY
So what’s the secret?

WISE MAN
The secret to what?

TROY (gesturing at his fit frame standing before me). 
To this. 

WISE MAN
When I was about your age, I met a guy about my age, a little older, and I asked him the same thing. 

TROY
Ok. 

WISE MAN
He said, if you stop moving, you die; if you keep moving, you hurt. So the key to a long life is pain management. 

I am finding this sentiment to be truer with every passing year. For the rare situations where, for whatever reason, I am not exercising, like with a recent illness, I am struck at how quickly my body begins to “set,” almost like someone is pouring sand into my joints and cement into my muscles. This is not something that takes months or weeks to begin but days and hours.  So the moral, in my eye, seems to be, keep moving or be prepared to stop moving altogether.

Here's another one that deals with your nasal passages, but this focuses on allergies. When I first moved to the Midwest, they had way more trees than Colorado. As a result, I had absolutely horrific allergies during different parts of the year—depending on what tree was blooming or losing its leaves. Anyone who has had allergy issues knows how debilitating and joyless they can be. 

I saw doctors. Took pills. Drank viscous elixirs straight from the bottle. They helped in some ways but always hurt in others (putting me to sleep at 2 pm at my work desk). It was annual misery without relief. 

It was again Marty who helped after seeing me struggle. She pretty casually said I needed a Neti pot. What’s that? She explained. What do you do with it? She explained. If you haven’t been introduced, a Neti pot is like a little genie's lamp that you put salinated water into and then pour into a nostril and let the water run through your nasal passage, where it then exits out the other nostril. You send half the bottle of water in one nostril and then switch and send the second half through the other. The result is what they call a nasal lavage. After she explained how it worked, I said thanks, but no sale. That actually sounds worse than the allergies. 

A few days later in the throes of allergy hell, I found myself at the bathroom sink holding my freshly acquired Neti pot. While it is undoubtedly a bizarre sensation one can't really prepare themselves for, the fact that it completely resolved my allergy issues near immediately, made it a sensation I was happy to become habituated to (if not even came to look forward to). 

Here’s why it works. When you have allergies, there are certain things (e.g., pollens) in the air that you breathe in that your body finds irritating. Western medicine's answer to this is to have you take drugs that work to suppress your body's reaction to the presence of these irritants. Those medicines can be helpful, but they often come with unappealing side effects (e.g., foggy mind, drowsiness). However, the thing those medicines do not do is remove the irritants. That’s what the Neti pot does. 

So, let’s say some trees bloom near your home and leave a fine green dusting over everything. Unfortunately, given your need to breathe, your nasal passages will also be part of that dusting. Now, the good news is you have your humidifier, or it is spring time, so your sinuses are healthy and moist. The bad news is that your beautiful sinuses are coated with this fine pollen your body finds offensive. If you take a pill, it will help you not realize that the annoying thing is there, BUT it is still there. If you instead use a Neti pot and flush all of that evil film out of your sinuses, then you will not need a pill because what was irritating you is no longer in your body. 

Since discovering the Neti pot, I have had zero issues with allergies. Not only that, when my kids were young, they and the neighbor kids loved to watch me do it over the sink, and they would ask to be called upon when I was doing it, and then I would have six small people craning their heads to get the best views of a rivulet of water pouring out of one of my nostrils. My first public performance was a little unsettling but/and now that the kids are all older, I can say I kinda miss my Neti pot audience. I imagine I could attract a new group of local youngsters to my bathroom show but fear that may introduce some new problems into my life ;-)

Here’s a fact. 

So many January resolutions fail not because people lack willpower or desire for change but because it is too jarring to go from the full-on decadence of the holidays to absolute discipline at December 31st’s stroke of midnight. The fact is, you probably could not pick a worse time in the year to attempt such a change, with the obvious aside being the start of the hol...

When we had kids in elementary school, there was almost always someone in our house in some stage of illness. That is becoming sick, being sick, or getting better. And it made perfect sense. When you’d drop your kids off at school and see the hundreds of other kids, several of which would be delivered with mucus-plugged noses and what-not, you only marveled that there was anyone in this collective who wasn’t sick.

Then, one day, Marty installed a humidifier in each of our home’s bedrooms. I was appalled. For someone who grew up in the humidity-free climate of Colorado, the notion of ADDING humidity to a climate already dripping with moisture seemed foolhardy. She explained that in the winter, the humidity went down and was not in the 140% range as it is the rest of the year. Great! Why aren’t we celebrating that instead of manufacturing more of it? Here’s what she said: I found her explanation compelling. But what was even more compelling were the results. After installing the humidifiers in our home, illnesses in our family all but disappeared, and having a sick person was no longer the norm; it was a surprising outlier. Consider me and my delightfully gelatinous nasal passages a zealous convert.

I recently fell ill.

And that is how long it took for it to happen, the equivalent of falling on the ground. On Sunday I felt fine. In the late afternoon I even went on a 25 mile bike ride and returned feeling strong and knowing I could have easily done another ten. I had dinner. I did some reading and went to bed spot on time (@ 10:30). When I woke in the morning, I could barely move. My skin, each and every pore was sensitive to touch. Movement of any sort was met with limp and resistant muscles. What in the world happened while I slept?

I don’t get sick very often. Like anyone else, I hate it. But I am a good sick person. Though you might not agree with my interpretation. You would probably think Marty is a good sick person. When Marty gets sick, she acts like she is not sick and muscles her way through the responsibilities of the day—some call that putting on one’s big girl pants and handling business. When I get sick I completely shut down regardless of my level of illness or what was on the schedule—whatever it is, it will have to wait because, like can’t you see, I’m fending off death here. But, I think this is the definition of a good sick person. Someone who accepts it, and gives their body the time and resources to handle its affairs.

One positive I feel illness brings is a renewed appreciation for all the days we wake up to a healthful body. In fact, that is one of the VERY FIRST touchstones of my morning ritual—acknowledging the good health gifted to me on this day. Because let’s be clear, as the above story illustrates, these days of health are gifts and like our bodies themselves, have been handed to us with little to nothing asked for in return.

As for my morning ritual giving thanks for my health, I do so specifically by looking at this picture. It is of Randy Pausch, of the Last Lecture fame from 2008. He was a vivacious father of three who went to the doctor because of a head cold he couldn’t shake and by week’s end was told he had six months to live.

Admittedly, given the complexity of these bodies we were given, we should all spend more time reveling in amazement that they work as well and as effortlessly (on our part) as they do—and if you are at all like me, their continued operation is doubly impressive given all the bad decisions I’ve made over the decades. These bodies are an unequivocal marvel and will without compare be the single greatest things we will ever encounter (let alone be given). But they are also fragile beyond comprehension.

As I emerged from this latest malady, I thought instead of posting the silly yarns and stories I had planned, I would instead use the week to share five of my favorite health hacks I’ve come upon in the last twenty years. The first is noted above—be grateful for every day you wake in a healthy body that is ready to do your bidding. Because every now and then we are reminded how little influence we have over whether or not that happens.