Acorns & Oaks: Youth vs Maturity

I started tramping when I was 12. At 13 two of us came within a gnats bollocks of succumbing to hypothermia on Ruapehu. So I know all about youthful inexperience and ignorance. And in the years since I can count at least six instances where I came very close to killing myself. Very. Having said that - I've never regretted pushing the boundaries from time to time. Facing real risk and overcoming is important to being fully human. What I can say is that while youth may be inexperienced it makes up for it with strength and a fast recovery. With age comes the need to be more miserly with how you portion out your energy, but there is a more vivid wisdom of your limitations and mortality. Overall it balances out.

i'm approaching 50, resting heart rate 45, 12% body fat, perfect blood pressure and cholesterol, i'm used to tramping several hours without stopping other than to snap photos. body still works fine despite my share of injuries. don't judge a book by its cover. look after yourself and theres nothing to stop you from being highly physically functional well into old age i went through a long period of chronic fatigue, but with effort got myself back to good health

I'm 69 and have just recently realised that the currently most obvious sign of ageing is that I have started groaning when I stand up, or lift something, or even when I sit down. Weird! There's no pain or anything, the noise just comes out. I don't like it and am going to see if I can stop it. May seem insignificant to you but for me its not really welcomed as its a frequent reminder of incipient old age! lol

Currently 68, had a stent implanted in March, followed by a pacemaker in August to lift the resting heart rate from 27 beats a minute and to stop things pausing for up to 4 seconds at a time. Now walking the pavement and exercising the neighbours dog (staffy mastiff cross) that takes some hanging on to. All in an effort to shed the excess 10 kilo's accumulated whilst not being able to do very much. Expect to be fit enough to get to Whirinaki and photograph blue ducks at end of October. Haven't enjoyed sitting around like a useless lump of lard these last 12 months.

@FrankB That's hard. Enforced inactivity is no fun at all. My best suggestion here is something like Pilates; keeps the body going in a pretty safe and gentle fashion. It's tolerated well especially when recovering from illness or injury.

swimming? cycling? as alternate activities? get into some of the flatter cycle trails when you're better?

Having done a pilates class tonight which gets my pulse up pretty high, it is safe but I reckon some of it is brutal e.g. the plank and some of those endless permutations of abdominal sit-ups. Big fan of it though... I look at some of these trampers in their sixties and seventies and dream of the days when I'm retired and can do this stuff endlessly. Fingers crossed. Margaret Clark set herself the challenge of 80 big days out before she turned 80 over 80 weeks. She finished ahead of schedule. The tramps had to involve climbs of greater than 600 m during the day to qualify and she had a criterion for the bike rides as well. We met her walking out from doing a south-north traverse of Mt Thomas on her own because the walking group said she couldn't come on their trip as she would be too slow so she said, stuff it, she'd do it by herself. Hubby was at the other end to pick her up. @waynowski: well done on coming back from chronic fatigue. If you have the time, I for one would love to hear how you achieved this.

getting back from chronic fatigue talk to www.garymoller.com I went to numerous health professionals, all the others were of no use or were harmful I couldnt find a single useful Gp other than the ones that would approve me for the sickness benefit. if you're using an alternative health practitioner they need to have specialised in chronic fatigue and you should find good references. they can be extremely hit and miss. more miss than hit. i avoided pharmaceuticals and pain killers although i only suffered headaches and not the chronic pain that some suffers are aflicted with so i got away withoug pain killers. theres no one answer for everyone, peoples bodies get out of whack in a number of ways and you have to get correct advise on where you're at to take the correct approach a friend with chronic fatigue had a hair analysis for minerals and his was totally different from mine. my treatment would have made him worse... and visa versa. adrenal fatigue is a common theme among chronic fatigue sufferers and its not easy to treat. any endocrine problem can be a major hurdle to overcome.. its catch 22 as it skews your metabolism , unless you take the right approach to get your metabolism back into balance and the nutrients in it back into balance, you may really struggle to overcome it hair mineral analysis was needed to find out what nutrients i had to put back into my system, i made a LOT of nutritional mistakes following various diets. juicing? its not the b all and end all and made my circumstances worse flooding me with the wrong nutrients, depressing my metabolism... if your grandparents wouldnt recognise it as food when they wre young, then dont eat it. i sacrificed a lot to get better. ate what worked for me and avoided anything that didnt, STRICT avoidance of processed foods. get into good habits for getting to sleep early and sleeping enough, avoid late night tv that drains your nervous system and makes it hard to relax and get into deep sleep quickly. avoid as many people and activities as you practically can who are a drain on your energy. aim for gradual improvements in health or you'll go backwards. dont listen too much to what others say, i was branded as a useless dol bludger and told to get my act together by people close to me. dont stress life, its a vicious circle that drains your energy. remove as much stress as you can from your life.. you cant effectively deal with a stressful and chronic fatigue at the same time. take professional advice on supplementing, or it can be a vicious circle. antioxidants are the only supplements i'd recommend for most people. the rest need to be targeted according to the individual

@waynoswki Very interesting linky to Gary Moller. Lots of reading in there.