New and experienced climbers over 50 #38

Helen, these studies that I am interested in are ALL about peri-menopausal and menopausal women. There seems to be a magical age of 65 when everything changes. All the rules change. The ironic thing – – that thing we would not have expected – – is that protein requirements go UP and the mandate to lift heavy also goes up.  For female specific researchers and physicians have a look at Dr. Stacey Simms, dr. Gabrielle Lyons, Dr. Peter Attila.

Even this morning while out hiking, I heard the words “if you weigh 150 pounds did you have 150 g of protein today?”  so it’s everywhere and whether you quibble over fractions of grams per pound it is a way higher need than we ever knew.  All the reasons start to make sense once you’ve heard them over and over – – “anabolic resistance“, sarcopenia, rebuilding and maintaining lean muscle mass for starters.

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This morning, I decided to finally go check out a crack route called Brain Death.  I 100% failed.   45 minutes of hard scrambling and leaping over tall boulders and I finally realized I was never gonna get there.

What’s that saying – – I haven’t failed I’ve only found 1000 ways that don’t work.  I am deeply respectful of those who have a mathematical brain and I can see how it could serve you well out there roaming on rocks.  I will go back, although it has been suggested that I go back with someone who can lead the way and spot me on some of the taller boulders.

At least I got a selfie.

But what about that Drano? I think that has possibilities.

more fire smoke... 

M M wrote:

Talking about TBIs at a moment that two folks in my life with past TBIs are hitting the bottle hard is good, especially hearing from Buck, Nick and ? that alcohol is out of the diet. From TBIs to depression to early onset dementia, booze is absolutely a terrible thing for folks that suffer from these things. Another friend years ago had the same issue and was beyond help, I don't know if he is 100% better but at the time it was impossible to talk any sense into him even when he was sober. Speaking about sleep being so important,  one thing that these folks all have in common is drinking in order to sleep. 

This was a great post to read.  

I don't think that I have ever drank to excess (but perhaps no one ever thinks that they are when they are doing it?) but I was having one to two measured, one-ounce Scotch drinks every evening since returning from Iraq this last time in December 2023.  I'm very meticulous about this sort of stuff so was careful to never have more.  But it became an "every night" thing, and you know, I think that I justified it to help me sleep.

Then summer July 2024 I saw yet another study, I think it might have been in the BJM, saying that there is no single amount of alcohol that is safe for you.  Not only is it not a positive, it is always a negative so I said, feck it, I"m done.  

I might have some in the future but I've been good since quitting and I feel no need to start again right now or for the foreseeable future.

On another note!  Got out again with my middle daughter Nathalie for her second day in the Gunks!  I planned to lead Southern Pillar for her as it is easy and not too much exposure but then I accidentally led the first pitch of Tipsy Trees!  I told her that we could rap down and move down the twenty meters to the correct climb but she looked at pitch 2 (a bit of an exposed intimidating pitch for the new outdoor climber) and really, really wanted to do it.  So I led it and had a great time and then she followed and did so great.  She was definitely a bit sketched mid-pitch but kept her cool and did wonderfully.  Then we did the final "true" third pitch of Tipsy and I even got the photo of the piton with lichen on it this time!  You can see where I wore the lichen off the last time I clipped it a few weeks ago.

Then we rapped down and did Southern Pillar.  Great day!

Lori, one of the things that has kept me interested in the math area I'm in is the imagery that comes from it, as generated by BASIC programs I have written. I have no artistic talent, unlike my daughter, but these figures continue to fascinate me. None are planned, but arise from intricate processes in the complex plane:

"Dream of Gold"

"Beelzebub"

"Convoluted Gold"

Maya Silver wrote:

I'm looking for someone to write about what it's like to start climbing in your 50s for Climbing Magazine. Did anyone in this thread start climbing in your 50s? Or do you know anyone who did who might want to write about this? Let me know and I'll reach out with more details! 

Hi Maya, I sent you a message about my partner, who started climbing at 57, and who can write...

Thanks for the photo of the pin, Buck.

Lori Milas wrote:

This is one of those times I wish I had joined a commune. I always wondered how it might have gone if I had gotten on one of those buses in San Francisco in 1970 and headed out to build The Farm in Tennessee.  I sure kept up with the midwifery work of Ina May Gaskin, and I felt like I had my four babies under her care. Now she says she is midwifing the elders unto their deaths.

Yeah.  Wife did that. It was a struggle.  Southern Kentucky. No money, no idea what they were doing (pretty much saved by a neighbor farmer who was kind enough to help out the "hippies"). Crap house with crap heat, miles from town with crap cars.  Most people moved away after a couple/few years, but a couple of them still live there 50 years later.  But....lifetime friends and mostly good memories.  The friendly farmer just passed last year.  

I'm on week three (of five) of this bouldering comp. Got a video of one of the problems (not a dynamic one which i suck at).  Figured I'd share. Rule is you have to start with hands and feet on the marked holds, which is why i touch the two holds with my feet at the start.

https://youtube.com/shorts/rq3pTDk7_9M?si=U19oTOnv7rSQXocR

GO

John Gill wrote:

Lori, one of the things that has kept me interested in the math area I'm in is the imagery that comes from it, as generated by BASIC programs I have written. I have no artistic talent, unlike my daughter, but these figures continue to fascinate me. None are planned, but arise from intricate processes in the complex plane:

"Dream of Gold"

"Beelzebub"

"Convoluted Gold"

Um, pretty interesting stuff from a guy who says he has no artistic talent!

It sure looks like art to me.

Old lady H wrote:

Just had estate sale number 2 this weekend. No death, helped move Paul's dad into assisted living. His dad was doing so badly (sedentary, crap diet, not taking meds, which meant not managing diabetes or mental health, nuthin new or unusual with any of that), it put him in the hospital. He's doing VASTLY better now.

So, this is it, now, for that process and all the stuff it produced, and shit to deal with.

Which means I am finally reclaiming my spaces here, and getting it all back in order and on track.

Which means.

Well.

I don't wanna be the usual old lady. Or even an average American of any age. Cuz that just sucks.

It's gym time, looming soon. And gotta get back to cooking my own food. 

Questions.

Can I get that 2-3 days a week strength training with a machine circuit? Think Planet Fitness or Strive room at the YMCA. Can that eventually morph to "lift heavy", or does "heavy" really need to be free weights? Can body weight get there? Like TRX?

Aside to Lori or whomever....

Do these studies that say old people should do strength training and eat protein, etc, include females in the studies?? 

Last, I get a dexa scan Friday. Second one. Firat one, last year, put me in osteopenia. D was low. So doc put me on D, and I went back to being a regular milk drinker.

We'll see Friday.

H.

Garden alert, avert eyes if it bugs you.

Tomatoes. Taste varies, with both "sweetness" and acidity varying among the 1000s of varieties. So, those Sungold tomatoes are addictive, to some. Yellow tomatoes (and some others) are less acidic. Me, I like the bold as brass ones headed toward purple, the old varieties. Cherokee purple, black cherry. But the psychedelic ones are super fun, too, like Green Zebra, which ripens green and gold. There's some large roma types that are red, with green and (almost) metallic gold stripes when ripe! 

Grocery store tomatoes are so sad.

Yes, based on available evidence, circuit training 2-3 days/week should be enough. Body weight exercise, like climbing, is probably fine, too. FWIW, bodybuilders are not known for longevity, and weight lifting isn’t a fixture in long-lived “blue zones”. 

Although many contemporary health/longevity gurus have fixated on the importance of bulking up to stave off sarcopenia (and falls, by proxy), the data shows optimal all-cause mortality benefit from resistance training around 40-60 minutes/week. That’s 2-3 twenty minute sessions, with U shaped, higher mortality in those training less, or more. One meta analysis on the subject

Compare that to cardiovascular exercise, where mortality benefit plateaus at 600 minutes weekly, with no harm until one exceeds 2000 minutes/week. it only needs to be moderate intensity exertion, like brisk walking.

So, 10X as much CV as strength training. This is probably because cardiovascular disease and cancer are far and away the most common causes of death in old people, even though falls occur more frequently as well.

As with lifting, the protein stuff has gone overboard imo. While it’s true elderly people and athletes need more protein than young adults, there nothing that shows non-body builders benefit from protein in excess of 1.6 g/kg body weight daily. The oft-cited 1 gram per pound body weight isn’t evidence based, and there is potential for harm from too much (esp. animal) protein. Blue zone protein intake is typically low, sometimes even less than the RDA of 0.85 g/kg/day.

While I haven’t paid too much attention to gender breakdown in studies of the elderly, you’d expect women would be fairly represented. You guys live 6 years longer on average, after all.

Dave Orsman wrote:

Hi Maya, I sent you a message about my partner, who started climbing at 57, and who can write...

I started at in 2004, when I was 61. and have done a fair bit of writing, mostly technical.

I haven't looked at a climbing magazine for many many years. 

Kevinmurray wrote:

My mom is 103 and lived by herself till 3 weeks shy of 100 and is now in assisted living and while expensive, she has the resources she has thrived there. She has to leave her apatrment to go to the dining hall, does exercises every day and interacts with other people where when she lived alone she was house bound. Do I want to live till 103? Hell no.

Okay but I'm curious to know, why not? Your mom sounds reasonably happy at 103 (maybe she's really really happy!). I imagine that I would be miserable in those circumstances (no climbing, no hiking, no nature, and having to interact with randos.) But people change. Maybe by the time I'd be 103, that'd all be good.

When my mom was in a nursing home, in what looked like unbearable circumstances from my POV, I'd ask her "how are things?". She'd always respond something like "as good as can be expected!", "better than the alternative!" etc.

Lori - to respond to your question about what do people do when there's no one to help them? My mom went on Medicaid in a nursing home. She got lucky by being admitted into a really good place. (You hear about awful, neglectful, or even abusive Medicaid nursing homes.) True, her situation looked awful to me, due to her physical condition, and the fact that her caregivers were basically tasked with doing not much more than keeping her body alive. So far as I understand it, that is what happens when you can't afford to pay for your own care - Medicaid nursing home. She wound up there after a fall (one of several), and she never left because the docs declared it was too dangerous for her to be released, though she always wanted to be sent back home asap. Her desire had been to "die in her sleep in her own bed", quietly. She did die in her sleep, but not in her own bed. Unfortunately, it took a solid 10 years of decline for her to get there. I don't know what it was like from her perspective, but it looked like torture to me. I think she never gave up hope that she could go back home, eventually.

I won't talk about my plans. However, in NY state, the cost of 24/7 nursing home care is well over $100K/year. I think most people won't have that saved up by the time they have to go into a nursing home. The way it works is that your accounts are drained to pay for nursing home care until you are so poor that you are eligible for Medicaid. Then Medicaid starts paying. Medicaid then also takes all your income until you die. I think that some people hire very expensive lawyers to set up trusts that evade the Medicaid rules, but you have to do it early enough to make it work.

Anyway, I don't want to go this way. I hate the idea of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars propping up my poor unhappy body to get a few extra years of suffering. But people are different, and minds can change. I don't think my mom would have wanted any less time on earth.

Now, on to happier topics. I got out climbing in the unhealthy air yesterday! Here's a pic of friend Tim at the top of Betty. He found some shade at the anchors. The sky looks a bit blue, here, but to my eyes it was white and hazy due to the Canadian wildfires.

Buck, Sorry we missed seeing you and your daughter! Next time, I hope!

Permabeta wrote:

As with lifting, the protein stuff has gone overboard imo. While it’s true elderly people and athletes need more protein than young adults, there nothing that shows non-body builders benefit from protein in excess of 1.6 g/kg body weight daily. The oft-cited 1 gram per pound body weight isn’t evidence based, and there is potential for harm from too much (esp. animal) protein. Blue zone protein intake is typically low, sometimes even less than the RDA of 0.85 g/kg/day.

That's all good, but what about elderly athletes? If you're running around all day carrying a pack with gear and rope, might you not need extra protein, at least for that day, and maybe it would help for a few surrounding days as well? I don't think these studies of the average elderly population apply to many of the people reading this thread.
PS Blue zones have been called into question. But my impression is that the Blue zone populations are not highly athletic, though they are mobile and very active compared to western populations.

Jay Goodwin wrote:

Thanks for the photo of the pin, Buck.

I do wish that I had obtained a photo the first time prior to clipping it.

With it completely covered in the lichen, it was very hard to see, almost invisible to my eyes when I was standing just below it on a couple of thin holds. 

I suppose that you can get an idea of what it was like pre-clipping by covering the exposed bit in the photo with your finger or something and seeing how well it blends in.

Pretty cool little piton!

And yes!  It was so hazy yesterday!  Look forward to linking up with you, Dragons!  We'll be there all day next Tuesday, weather permitting!  Thinking of starting with Three Pines and then maybe getting on Sixish and or RMC?

Thanks, dragons.  Your thoughts pretty much align with mine.
Being a student of Ayurveda for many years one core concept has stayed with me—that around the age of 50 continued health becomes a decision. It’s no longer a freebie. I am finding this to be increasingly true with each passing year.

In a way climbing has been a gift because it has made some of my own frailties very evident. During my first couple years here I was continually shocked at the level of exhaustion and misery I would feel after a day on the rock. It was a true assault   I would not have experienced anything like this when I was 40.  And it was that extreme response that  sort of forced me to figure out what was going on – – that or quit.  So I re-learned how to sleep, and I hired a registered dietitian to work with me from a sport and diabetes point of view. With careful notes and observations over many months I finally concluded that it is indeed a protein thing – – I wish it wasn’t. I figured out that I can have no alcohol.  Every corner of my life has required a rewrite, which is fine because I suspect it will only be more so as the years go by. None of us wants to become a frail and unable to navigate our lives.

I love this topic and wish we could all be talking about it but I think many people here just have natural good health and good luck so it’s not so interesting
—-

My new friend here in Joshua Tree is an incredible climber and this is just awful. Not only has he shared his stoke for the hardest classic routes here but recent pictures climbing at Suicide and Tahquitz.  

One was a picture of a route called Insomnia. Now how can you see that and not want to try it?

So my thought is, when Tony heads out to Chicago in a few weeks, I’ll make a trip up to Idylwild and spend a day or two hiking around before heading back up north.

I promised myself at the outset that I would never feel deprived for having started so late or for being so limited. This is a hard promise to keep.

Dragons wrote: "The way it works is that your accounts are drained to pay for nursing home care until you are so poor that you are eligible for Medicaid. Then Medicaid starts paying. Medicaid then also takes all your income until you die. I think that some people hire very expensive lawyers to set up trusts that evade the Medicaid rules, but you have to do it early enough to make it work.

Anyway, I don't want to go this way. I hate the idea of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars propping up my poor unhappy body to get a few extra years of suffering"

Very depressing and much of the reason that my wife and I are less frugal nowadays. Instead of saving everything for the medical mafia were going to spend a few months of nursing home care. buy new cams, good bikes, a new sewing machine, travel a bit and enjoy our kids and grandkids. On a less depressing note my daughter is visiting, she'd rather ride slabs than climb them so that's what we've doing.  On expensive bikes bought with money the medical mafia covets.

I'm with you Dragons (maybe bc I am a dragon also :)). Getting shoved into the institutional system so they can artificially keep my body going sounds like absolute hell to me and has me thinking that eventually I will have to do myself in, not something that I would  think about doing at all otherwise. I will probably just stop eating. The problem is you are not even given the autonomy to do that and people would feel obligated (even legally) to  "help you" and drag you in (one benefit to being isolated I suppose). It is a nasty situation to navigate forcing people to make awful choices to try to maintain some dignity. It bothers me a lot more than the idea of eventual death though I certainly value life and think it should be honored. We are all going to die at some point eventually and we all seem to manage it, so that is not worth being scared of in itself beyond a healthy regard for preservation

Personally, I think the nation should have mandatory service and if you didn't want to do the military or something similar you could do elder care. There is no excuse for a nation of so many billionaires that we can't have better universal care or be able to support families while caring for elders. Ideally there would be an extended family to all pitch in, but that is just not the case for many nowadays and, with all the modern requirements and expectations one person or even two get stretched to the max trying to do it with no help.

I have always liked the idea of communes, but unfortunately you usually end up with a small percent carrying everything and the rest groovin, being slobs and not putting the work in. I would like to see some fresh attempts though. It seems like churches should be doing a lot more to actually care for people with their tax free dollars instead of building mega churches and grifting.

Quick question:  Heading to Rumney on Friday for the first time in over 30 years.  What is the best length rope for the crag?

60's? 70's?  Does a 50 work?

Going with my daughter and we're meeting a couple there so we'll be running two ropes between us and I'm bringing the ropes and Quickdraws!

Thanks!

Multiple crags there, with differing heights. While a 50 would work for some, but definitely not all. 60 should work okay for most, maybe all, climbs ( possible exceptions on main wall), so really depends what you want to climb, but 60 is probably the best choice, though 70 would definitely cover everything. If your goals are Parking Lot, Meadows, 5.8, Hinterlands, Buffalo Pit/Corral,  a 60 will be fine.