Joe Signorile, cont'd

Joe Signorile

How do you prevent falls? It's not possible, is it?

Right. It's absolutely impossible to prevent falls. In fact, when we work sometimes we say are we potentially increasing the probability of falls because our people get more mobile. As they get more mobile, they don't need their walkers as much, they move along more quickly. As that happens we say to ourselves, "Well, gosh, doesn't that potentially increase the probability of somebody falling?"

I don't think that's a problem we have to worry about. The problem that we have to worry about is what are our abilities to make people feel more independent. One of the things that I can think back on is how well I moved as a child. I try to still move that way and I know that when I get to be eighty, ninety - wherever I wind up I still want to move that way.

So, that's the kind of thing we're after. That's how come we're after the agility, the movement patterns, the speed that we're working on right now. That's really what we all want. I think we all want our independence. We want to be able to move the way we did. We want to recapture that youth for as long as we can - or at least postpone the aging for as long as we can.

Tell me about the aging curve.

Right now if you look at the aging curve, here's what we see - we see this curve that goes up as we begin to mature. Then around twenty-five or thirty we start to see these little drops. Then somewhere in the fifties, which unfortunately is where I am right now, we're supposed to see this big, exponential drop off where we just fall off the side of the cliff. All functions go down; the muscle patterns go down. Everything goes down. This is what we've got for the population. That's where I'm supposed to be headed. That's where we're supposed to be headed. I don't believe that.

What we're really after is the ideal aging curve. The ideal aging curve may be kind of funny to think about. That says, "I get to be twenty, I slide right across 'til I'm ninety and boom, I'm gone." We're looking for something in between those curves. We know that through our training we can shove ourselves back up closer to that ideal aging curve. We may not be able to get there, but I'm gonna make it to where as many people as I can reach get as close as they can and they don't notice the difference.

Signorile and a client

And to a twenty year old looking at that long, long straight line that we imagined, what do you say to them? A man and a woman.

I'd say probably the same thing that my mother said to me: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Right - everyone knows that one. What that really means is this - it means start now. Start now and get the insurance policy. We all buy insurance. So, exercise can be insurance.

So, exercise can be insurance for the woman who is heading towards osteoporosis 'cause she'll increase her bone density when she's younger. More bone to deal with later on. Exercise can be the insurance policy for the person that wants to move better when they get to be eighty or ninety years old. Because once the levels are up high enough - when they're approaching forty, fifty, sixty - now, they're already a jump ahead of the game.