Email from Gallege de Silva.
A 97 year
old Doctor has this to say...
At the age of
97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's
longest-serving
physicians and educators. Hinohara's magic touch is legendary:
Since
1941 he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in
Tokyo and
teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing. After World War II, he
envisioned a
world-class hospital and college springing from the ruins of
Tokyo
;
thanks to his
pioneering spirit and business savvy, the doctor turned these
institutions
into the nation's top medical facility and nursing school. Today he
serves as
chairman of the board of trustees at both organizations. Always willing
to try new
things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including
one
"Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million
copies. As the founder
of the New
Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life,
a quest in
which no role model is better than the doctor himself.
Doctor
Shigeaki Hinohara
Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember
how as children, when we were having fun, we often
forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that
we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best
not to tire the body with too many rules
such as lunchtime and bedtime.
All people who live long regardless of nationality,
race or gender share one thing in common:
None are overweight... For breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk
and some orange juice with
a tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great
for the arteries and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch
is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too
busy to eat. I never get hungry because I
focus on my work. Dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and
rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean
meat..
Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full
until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital
work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to
attend the Tokyo Olympics!
There is no need to ever retire,
but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65. The current
retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when
the average life-expectancy in Japan
was 68 years and only 125 Japanese were over 100 years
old. Today, Japanese women live to
be around 86 and men 80, and we have 36,000
centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will
have about 50,000 people over the age of 100.
Share what you know.I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100
elementary-school children, others
for 4,500 business people. I usually speak for 60 to
90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.
When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some
surgery, ask whether the doctor would
suggest that his or her spouse or children go through
such a procedure.Contrary to
popular belief,
doctors can't cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary
pain with surgery I think music and animal
therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.
To stay healthy, always take the
stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time, to get my
muscles moving.
My inspiration is Robert Browning's poem "Abt
Vogler. "My father
used to read it to me. It encourages
us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to
try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we
can finish it while we are alive. All we see is an
arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the
distance.
Pain is mysterious, and having fun
is the best way to forget it. If a child has a toothache, and you start
playing a game together, he or she immediately forgets
the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need
of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke's we
have music and animal therapies, and art classes.
Don't be crazy about amassing
material things. Remember: You don't know when your
number is up,
and you can't take it with you to the next place.
Hospitals must
be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every
patient who
appears at their doors. We designed St.... Luke's so we
can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the
corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I
was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20,
1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of
the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a
terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. We accepted 740
victims and in two hours figured out that it was
sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one
person, but we saved 739 lives.
Science alone can't cure or help
people. Science lumps us all together, but
illness is individual. Each
person is unique, and diseases are connected to their
hearts. To know the illness and help people, we
need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.
Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when I was 59
years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight
from Tokyo to Fukuoka. It was a beautiful sunny
morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane
was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army
Faction. I spent the next four days
handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor,
I looked at it all as an experiment and was
amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.
Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than
they could ever do. My father went to the United
States in 1900 to study at Duke University in North
Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes.
Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am
stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the
problem.
It's wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years
old, it is easy to work for one's family and to achieve
one's goals. But in our later years, we should strive
to contribute to society at large. Since the age of 65,
I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours
seven days a week and love every minute of it.
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