Helping My Father with Heart Disease
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. Hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:And remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning everyone from Wales. So I have to go back to Wales, sign a new lease for the warehouse but also to sort my father out. Okay, my father is, I think he's 74 years old. I don't even know his age, I think he's 74 that's bad.
Speaker 1:But he's had like terrible lifestyle, smoker, angina, he's had a heart, triple heart bypass and you know he's put a lot of weight on over COVID, he's getting older, he's always obsessed with work, always working, working, working and he never stops and he's a very stress head, like one thing will set him off and he'll go nuts. So he's got a really stressed life, like I was mentioning in the voicemail yesterday, if your stress is always high, you're like basically fight to flight at all times, it's like gonna weigh you out. Anyway, so you need to lose a good two to three stone, right? So I'm like well, you know, I've helped a lot of women on Live Like Louise lose weight over the years and many people before that etc, etc. But how do I do with my father?
Speaker 1:And it made me cry so like, wow so would I take a different approach and obviously I can't tell him to go on my fitness pile at 74 years old. Obviously I can't just give him his macros and expect him to check-in. The different level of service has come in. I'm like, I came off look at the research. The research shows if the research is insane.
Speaker 1:Ninety percent of people that have a heart surgery, the doctors will say to him look this heart surgery hasn't fixed the problem, this is just like a temporary cure in a way, not a cure, a temporary fix until you improve your lifestyle. And the patients will always say no, no, yes, could give this is giving me a second chance, thank you so much doctor. And then the doctor will be like look and you'll have to improve your life, have to start exercising more, have to eat less, you have to lose weight. And the patients always say yeah, yeah, course yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But ninety percent of them don't change their lifestyle after that.
Speaker 1:Ninety percent of them don't change their lifestyle after having a surgery to save their life and they know they have to do it to survive or to live. So like what the hell is going on in our regard like why it's not happening? So like obviously they know they've got to lose weight, they've known they've got to lose weight before they had a heart surgery so knowing they need to lose weight is not enough. The doctor saying you know you gotta lose weight is not enough. You know you can exercise more, of course they know they've known enough for years.
Speaker 1:So what is like how do you change someone's habits and lifestyle after like such a huge change in like the life like if you have an operation for it. We all say like when we're ill, when I'm not ill I swear to God if I'm when I'm not ill I'm gonna make the most of my life I can't even breathe about as soon as I'm not ill I got a blocked nose, I can't wait to breathe because where is blocked nose gone I'm gonna love my nose forever. And then two days after you've gone a blocked nose you forget you've ever had a blocked nose and you get on with your life. And I think this is part of the human condition that is amazing. The thing is we need it because if we didn't have that condition or that mechanism in ourselves we would never get over death, we would never get over losing people, we'd never get over breakups and stuff.
Speaker 1:It would all build up and we would never get out of it. So it's like a double edged sword where it's amazing that we can forget and move on and we can, you know, live again. But also it makes us forget the moments, those feelings we had at those worst times, doesn't it? Like some of the times, I know some people it's not true they can remember those moments. But with the stats and ninety percent of people don't change their lifestyle after they have a heart surgery and they've had the intervention of doctor tell them they got to do it to survive, it's not this and that's not fixed them, it's just a temporary thing.
Speaker 1:You'd think that they would that'll be shocking them into a new habit and lifestyle wouldn't you? My theory right and this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go back to my I'm gonna know help my father and I think that I have to do it. I have to do it. It's my job. If I don't, if I've helped people before, no offense to other strangers, I can't help him.
Speaker 1:There's a flaw there right and really like I got to build better habits to them and you're not going to get an old person to change your habits unless they've got like support right and also you got to look at like he's got a his partner for example like if she is not helping him change the environment and he's just going back from hospital to an environment where that's his lifestyle sitting down all day, not going for walks, eating the food that's been made for him because he probably can't cook right. He's old, it's time to last last generation. There's no way he's changing habits is there? Of course he's not. So the only way to change his habits is they have to do it as a team unfortunately as an older couple they have to do it as a team because if they don't do it as a team it's not going to work.
Speaker 1:So the first thing go back is I'm gonna you know work out his macros, get him on a higher protein diet, get him walking and actually try and get him to do weights once or twice week because there's a study on weightlifting on older people that shows it can slow down or sometimes in some cases reversed Alzheimer's and dementia, I believe. I'm paraphrasing, but I'll share the link. And it's amazing and the results were like lasted ages because it made these people activate the muscles, the mind muscle connection, it made the brain work in ways they haven't done for years and years, maybe since ever. It made the mind go into the muscle, okay, well I got to do this move my muscle and it made them feel their body more. So they started moving muscles again as opposed to sitting down all day going to sleep, waking up, sitting on TV, not moving anything, the muscles are not being used barely just to walk around.
Speaker 1:So it's got to be a team effort and I think that's probably the main problem when it comes to older people with heart failures is like they don't have the luxury of the time and like the freedom to just go and do and like they just they're older they're settled in their ways. So it has to be a team effort. I'm thinking like what am I gonna do? So I'm gonna set up the macros, I'm gonna get him on a I'm gonna create I'm gonna make a meal, I'm gonna ask him what his favorite foods are. I know he likes a pasty.
Speaker 1:You like a pasty, right? Okay. I'll keep a pasty in per day view or maybe every other day. What are the problem foods? Let's try and work them into his macros, make sure he starts his day off.
Speaker 1:Know, if he eats breakfast or not, I think he doesn't. But if he doesn't eat breakfast, make sure the meal and lunchtime meal is always like settled and the Uganda is for lunch, it's full of veggies and micronutrients. And he has to go walking because he doesn't walk, has to go and walk. He's gonna have to go on at least 2,000 steps a day to start with because he'll struggle with it and slowly build up. But it's got to be the support with it.
Speaker 1:It's got to be. So I don't know if any of you have got older parents, grandparents who have had heart surgeries and stuff like that. Really just letting people expecting someone to have that realize having a heart surgery just to change things on their own is impossible. I think it is if it's a status showing it. So yes, the team effort, team intervention, environment plays a huge role.
Speaker 1:Environment plays a huge role. There was a study right on these soldiers in Vietnam, American Soldiers in Vietnam and whilst in Vietnam something like a huge number, I can't remember the exact number, something like ninety percent of these soldiers were, on heroin. So they were in Vietnam at war, were all taking heroin and the consensus back then was heroin was a drug you can't come off of, you can't like go to rehab of heroin. As soon as you're addicted to heroin that's it. Have to be in heroin forever.
Speaker 1:When those people went from Vietnam back to The United States something like only ten percent of them were still addicted to heroin. Right? Ten percent. And this went against all the scientific literature at the time. The reason was because they went from a terrible environment where heroin was like an escape to America back home to their families where it was nice again.
Speaker 1:It didn't even feel like they needed the heroin. And I'm not saying my father's father's partner's given heroin or like she's a heroin dealer, but you can't like people have got vastly different behaviors in different environments. This is like true, isn't it? Like obvious. Isn't that obvious?
Speaker 1:So if you're not having older generation that change their environment, they're never gonna change your behaviors or willpower, they're too old for that stuff, they don't have it in them. It's hard work anyway when you're younger. It's only 70, so environment needs a change. And, that's my job. I'm gonna investigate, I'm gonna see what we can do, I'm gonna see what environment can be done and built around, see what habits we can build, habits stack in, see what started the day off right.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's the goal for me now to move forward for the next few weeks. Might have helped some of you listening, might not. But if you are struggling, know, look at your environment. You know when you go back to your parents and they give you all the foods that you don't eat and then they fatten you up. It's all environment, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Like if you weren't in that environment, you probably wouldn't have decided to eat all our food they've given you, your grandmother giving you cakes and stuff all the time. So you know environment plays a huge role, so you do need to look into it. And I've mentioned this study many times about the hospital where they put water bottles at the tills and in the, canteen of this hospital I moved the sodas like to bit like in a worse position. I'm just doing that move without telling anyone. Over six months, twenty five percent sales water sales went up 25% and soda sales dropped 11%.
Speaker 1:It didn't even say anything. Didn't tell everyone you need to drink more water. It just made it a bit more obvious that water was there, made obvious water a bit more attractive, a few more points on the way in and out where you could see water, and that drastically changed their behavior. This is actually scary, if this doesn't scare you, it should because that means there's a creator, a Sims maker in the sky who could change a few things about your walk to work every day or like whatever and that could change your behavior entirely and you wouldn't even know about it, you wouldn't even know. I see you think advertising works, you got these billboards and stuff up, they do these things in the tube and this and that and eventually your behavior starts molding into what they want and you don't even know what's happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is scary. So be very aware of your behavior, of your environment, scan it, be aware of it, be aware of your day. Do it today, your one big thing today is to be fully aware of your behavior. What is it? What's your morning look like?
Speaker 1:What are you reading? Who's what are you messaging people? What are they messaging you? Are you sending links you're getting links to TikTok every morning and then you're going into TikTok black hole? You're getting links to Twitter like on your way to work, what's happening?
Speaker 1:Have a look. Advertising on Facebook feed, there's loads of it. So do have a look and you'll be shocked. And I'm not saying you will be able to stop being influenced by the environment, this is impossible, impossible. But we can try and make it better, manufacture a better environment for our goals and make behaviors you want to be proud of.
Speaker 1:That's it. Have a good day, enjoy yourself, just focus today, it's the only day you need to focus on. That's it, one day at a time. And that's it. Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Golf Leer.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today. I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday. I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today. Ground yourself today. Follow the one day at a time philosophy and your life will change.
