Where the Heck Is the Fountain of Youth?

Almost heaven. No, I'm not thinking West Virginia, which is very pretty but is not on my radar today. I think almost heaven would be a day that I could move around without everyday aches and pains. I'm working on it.

I know I'm not the only one who hurts. It seems like most of the commercials I see on television have to do with relieving some kind of pain, but I'm not sure if there are any magic pills for the many people of all walks and all ages who suffer the aches of everyday life. I know I'm not alone.

I'm one of those people who loves to exercise, but has been forced over time to do less and less. But I still do something everyday because I know it's important to keep moving. I would be lost without exercise.

I started jogging back in the late '60s while a freshman at Erskine College, which is in the quaint town of Due West, S.C. That year, I made the varsity basketball team, mainly because several scholarship players had some problems and some promising walk-ons quit. I made the team really by attrition. I didn't play at all, but had a ball just being a part of the team. Most fun I ever had.

However, when the season began, practices became less tough because we were playing, two, three times a week. At least some were playing. To be frank, I was doing a lot of sitting and watching from my good seat on the bench. And then there was the eating. We would eat pre-game meals and post-game meals thrown in with pancakes for breakfast and the night trips to the local diner. I was beginning to look like the team blimp — or as Coach Myers used to say, "Tom, you're nothing but a lard-tailed guard."

So I decided to start running. I was sort of like Forrest Gump. Everybody wondered what the heck I was doing because this was before the jogging craze, but I was having fun and finding a good way to stay in shape, and the pounds came off.

As the years moved on, I started work at WRAL, working the crazy hours that are television, but I always managed to somehow find a way to exercise. Running, though, gave way to walking in the late ‘80s as I began to have trouble with my legs and also was having a lot of pain in my neck, back and shoulders because of a couple of ‘70s car wrecks.

Ah, the word “pain.” It's something that so many of us have to deal with and live with and try to overcome. Most of my adult life I've been afraid of it, afraid that the next step might be the big injury, or if I tried to pick something up, I wouldn't be able to stand the pain that I knew would come to my back and neck. I wouldn't try exercises that the therapist said would help because I was afraid of them. I'm gradually trying to change this, but it's not easy. Fear still rests in a corner of my brain, but I know that years of doing nothing have not helped at all.

A year ago, my longtime physical therapist told me that if I didn't start to move more on my own, she wouldn't work with me any more. Thus began my quest for better health.

I wrote about it in this space last summer, and a year later I'm still on that quest. I fight pain and stiffness every day, but I'm less afraid of them and have found ways to thumb my nose at them. Pain is like a bully: if you back down from it, it will get you.

Just over a year ago, after a lapse of some 25 years, I started shooting basketball again, and I'm still at it. I can't jump more than an inch, but just being out there takes me back 40 years. Mentally, it refreshes me and shaves the years away. I do have to fight through some stiffness and, of course, pain (after all I am 59 with prior injuries), but it's fun just to be out there playing. I don't play long because I don't want to overdo it, but long enough to bring me true joy. I even wish that the sound of the bouncing ball would attract some neighbors over for a game like it did in my youth, but I guess that doesn't happen in this century.

Playing basketball has loosened and strengthened my neck, back and arms and also improved my exercise walk. I also stretch each and every day. My hamstrings, each of which has been torn before, are especially tight, but I'm working on them. Stretching has also helped the nerve pain in my left leg. My wife, Julie, who's a yoga teacher, has also helped me with other stretches that have been quite useful. I'm actually probably more flexible now than I was in high school.

The best thing that I have going is probably my diet. Over the years, as I've burned less calories exercising, I've had to cut down on my food intake. I eat basically fruits and vegetables and try to stay away from salt, which I think very much stiffens the muscles and joints.

Seven days a week, I make a huge grape-juice smoothie. I juice the fresh grapes myself and mix it with bananas. In the afternoon, I may have a quart of orange juice, but more likely just a big bottle of water. For supper, I usually have a vegetable plate with some brown rice and drink lots of water. When I eat right, I have energy, I feel light and alert.

Now, I'm not perfect. I'm a sucker for soy bacon bits, but I've done pretty well staying away from bread. However, as I walk through the snack section at Whole Foods, the corn thins sing to me like the sirens in the Odyssey. They’re trying to lure me astray.

So far though, on the whole, it's working for me and I don't feel deprived. As a matter of fact, I feel I eat so much, I call myself the fattest vegan there is.

So as another football season comes and another year passes, I will try to keep moving and at least hold my own and somehow try to outwit the evil that is pain and stiffness. I've learned that what you don't use, you may lose.