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Richard Helppie
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm your host Rich Helppie. We've got a great guest and a very fascinating topic that affects all of us. We've all heard about wellness, we've heard about exercise, and we've got one of the premier pioneers in preventive medicine from Dallas, Texas, Dr. Kenneth Cooper. Dr. Cooper, thank you so much for joining us on The Common Bridge.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Richard Helppie
The Common Bridge, of course, is at substack.com; please go to substack.com, put The Common Bridge in your search engine, consider a subscription, either free or paid. We're available on most podcast outlets, on YouTube TV, and of course, at Mission Control Radio, on your Radiogarden app. Everybody's concerned about health; whether you've got the gift of great health, whether you work on your health, we can all improve our health status; absent a serious illness or accident, sometimes people don't think about that. We know some of the formula; it's about diet, it's about exercise, it's about rest, and maybe more. But for the past 63 years, Dr. Kenneth Cooper has been instrumental in preventive medicine. He is credited in his first best seller with the term "aerobics" and "aerobic exercise" and how that fits in. Today we're going to talk about modern medical scientific fact versus fad-ism. Again, welcome to The Common Bridge, Dr. Cooper, it's so good to see you.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Thank you. To start, I would like to introduce myself as being Dr. Kenneth Cooper, born March 4, 1931 so I'm now 91 years of age, and still practicing medicine on a regular basis. And I hope and pray that what these people learn today will enable them to enjoy the same type of quality and quantity of life that I'm doing at 91 years of age. Let's go back to my early years because I was born and raised in Oklahoma City. And I did compete in athletic endeavors during my high school, and actually, during my college years. But there was a controversy because when I was running track and playing basketball during my senior year, my father, a practicing dentist, along with other physicians and dentists and medical professionals at that time, thought I may be killing myself by exercising too much. Because back in those days, this is the 1940s - 1946 to 1949 - the popular theory was the Athletic Heart Syndrome; if you exercise too much, the heart gets large and muscular, then when you stop exercising, it converts into fat, and then you die early. That was what I had to fight in my early days. So my father didn't rebel completely; to an extent he allowed me to continue with my basketball and my track career, but he never saw me play basketball, he never saw me running track because that was his way of rebelling. Now my mother, actually, she promoted everything I did. The theory there was that the big heart, as I said, was going to turn into fat. But that big heart wasn't...we found out later [it] wasn't because of the enlarged muscular heart, it was because of a dilated heart. That meant the ejection fraction - the amount of blood that you pump out with each beat - was getting larger as the heart dilated. That's the reason the resting heart rate goes down, which is one of the principles of aerobic conditioning. Average American male has a resting heart rate of 72, average American woman about 78, but as you get an aerobic condition that drops into the 40s and the 50s because the heart is working less hard in meeting the body's needs. Not only were they afraid of the Athletic Heart Syndrome, but the old theory was, you have only a certain number of heartbeats and once you burn up all of those heartbeats you die. That was what I was fighting during my high school years. Then I got into college and I ran track at the University of Oklahoma. I was successful during my senior year [of high school] in being undefeated in the one mile run and almost set a new record for the state championship when I won it in 1949 and they awarded me a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma. But of interest too, was the whole concept of how much conditioning was necessary to become an outstanding track athlete. In my high school years I pretty much trained on my own and I was running 30, 35, 40 miles a week. Once I got into college the theory was - because a four minute mile wasn't broken during that time, 1952-1956; it was broken in 1964 by Sir Roger Bannister, the first one to break the four minute mile and that was May the sixth, 1954, I'm talking about 1952-1956 - the theory in college was you need to be a sprinter to be able to break the four minute mile. So we concentrated on running sprints from the quarter mile to the half mile, lots of sprints and we were discouraged from running too much, like 25 to 30 miles a week, because you take the spring out of your legs. Because of that I didn't bring my time down that much, I only ran a 4:18, [that] was my fastest time in college. I was 4:30 in high school. And now we find later all those sub four minute milers running 50 to 100 miles a week. But the coaches wouldn't let us do that because that would take the spring out of our legs.
Richard Helppie
That was an early exposure to a fad versus scientific fact. Have you seen other fads come and go over your time?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Yes, we didn't have any data at that time to prove what I've been saying. But then when I got into medical school, it was still the same situation; you shouldn't exercise too much because it would be dangerous past 40 years of age. We would actually tell our patients - if you can believe this - if you've had a heart attack and live in a two storey house, you have to move to a one storey house, because you can't walk up and down a flight of stairs anymore. We were condemning people to early graves and didn't know it back in those days. That's how little we knew about the scientific value of exercise. But now we have people running marathons who have had a heart attack. So going on; we had that controversy in the early years and then the book came out in March 1968, book "Aerobics"; so I coined the word, as you mentioned before. Then again, the professors' words get to me; they said that, Coop's going to be full of dead joggers if people follow Cooper's recommendation; you can't run past 40 years. I faced all these various things, I had that to overcome with some scientific legitimacy. So we fought that battle, even when I was in the military and we had to develop technology...I transferred from the Army to the Air Force to go into the space program. I did work for NASA. At NASA one of the first things that Dr. Bill Thornton and I - [he] later became an astronaut - and I did, was to develop the technology where we could read an EKG on an exercising subject. Because back during the 1960s the technology had not developed so we could see the EKG. It was too much heart effect. We were so antiquated back in those early 60s, the way we got our heart rate on exercise on somebody on a treadmill, we'd stand beside them, count their pulse for 15 seconds and multiply by four. That's how antiquated we were. So we had to get the smarter technology, of which we did. And we were able to get beautiful EKGs when a person was in the weightlessness of space or extra vehicular, or whatever it may be, and then also develop technology where we could pick up heart disease long before you could pick it up with a resting EKG. So again, we pioneered that and that became modern medicine, modern technology for cardiology. Because remember, stress testing wasn't used back in those days because they thought it was dangerous. Even when I established my practice here in Dallas in 1970, I had to go before the Board of Censors; they were going to run me out of town because I was doing something as dangerous as treadmill stress testing. [Inaudible] presentation to the board that night defending what I was doing. I'd done this in the Air Force - I'd done 10,000 runs in the Air Force - to prove that you could use diagnostic stress testing that could save lives. As a result we've done over 300,000. By the way, [inaudible] and the second person telling him to have a treadmill stress test - the chairman of the Board of the Censors - now it's ubiquitous everywhere. [Inaudible] I keep saying for diagnostic cardiology, we've done over 3,000 high performance treadmill stress tests successfully and only 16% have been abnormal equivocal; only 5% knew they had a problem. So 11% of 300,000 tests, we've been able to show that heart disease - and keep in mind it was never picked up resting EKG or with a stress test - but remember the most common first symptom of severe heart disease is sudden death. People don't realize until it's too late. So saving thousands of lives, routinely seeing 125 patients per week. That's pretty much the maximum we can see in our clinic here with our 32 full time positions.
Richard Helppie
That's an important thing that sometimes people said, well, you know, I feel fine. I don't need any intervention. But this is where we get into prevention. So what type of data should a person understand about themselves?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Well, first of all, we have what is called getting "Cooperized" which is a whole system of things from body weight, adequate sleep, proper nutrition, all these things. But the most important thing is you get 30 minutes of exercise, collective sustained, most days per week. We did an amazing study. We published this several years ago and we followed 28,000 people for a period of 25 years. They came to the clinic at age 50. We got their Medicare data from 65 to 75 years of age, and the only thing that we followed during that 25 years was their time on the treadmill, their level of fitness: very poor, poor, fair, good. We took the top 40 percentile, compared the bottom 40 percentile; 20 percent were women; they're all healthy, followed them for 25 years. And within the 25 years we found those people - that top category of fitness, top 40 percentile - had 36% less Alzheimer's and dementia, than those at the bottom category. They had 40% less chronic kidney disease requiring dialysis than those in the bottom category, and they had a 40% reduction in the cost of health care from 65 to 75 years of age. No one's ever before documented that you could prevent Alzheimer's or dementia. We spend way too much of our health service dollar trying to treat disease when the secret is trying to prevent it in the first place. You can't prevent Alzheimer's or dementia; oh, yes, you can. You can't reduce the cost of healthcare; yes, you can. We spend twice as much money as anybody else in the world on healthcare. We are ranked 43rd in longevity; too much care too late. We spend way too much of the health service dollar on desperate measures that often prolongs death - not life - a miserable few days.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Dr. Cooper, so when you think about the things that affect a person's health status, or perhaps their early death: genetics, environment, socio-economic status, diet, exercise; what things in your experience are controllable and how much impact do they have? Can they overcome genetics and socio-economic status?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Your longevity is not the result of your genetics, it's what you do for your lifestyle, because it's only about 10% genetic. Your weight, your height, your blood pressure, all these various things, these are things that you can control. We know that, but people are ignoring that. They don't appreciate the value of preventive medicine. When I was in medical school, we were taught that preventive medicine is a Cinderella of the medical profession because there's no profit in health. And many physicians still feel the same way. That's why preventive medicine is not accepted. They just don't want to do this. I wasn't trained how to do it, I didn't know anything about exercise or diet. I wasn't taught that in medical school. I learned that in two years at Harvard School of Public Health; that's where I learned what I'm talking about. Now, I didn't learn that at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, those six years - I don't know anything about it, I don't have time to do it, and I can't get paid for it - that's the excuse that they give me why they can't be involved in preventive medicine. But if we can just take these concepts of preventative medicine we can dramatically change the whole field of medicine. Because one thing we know about, that we need to concentrate on, is chronic inflammation. Physicians are concentrating on acute inflammation. That's all you're taught in medical school. We know chronic inflammation is related to a whole long list of medical problems, top of which are Alzheimer's and dementia. You can have amyloid plaque and tau protein on the brain and never have any problems. We all get that as we get older; we have to have something that ignites the fire that causes that to become symptomatic and that is chronic inflammation, repetitive type inflammation, things of this type. We measure that by the C-reactive protein. Most physicians aren't measuring that. We know these people in the top category fitness we followed for 25 years, they were lean and trim and had a low C-reactive protein. They have no signs of chronic inflammation, compared to those in the other category and the big thing was they were lean and trim and active. So the best way first is to identify chronic inflammation, measure C-reactive protein, and get the people lean and trim. That's the first thing; avoiding tobacco, avoiding air pollution, all these various things, fast foods, all these things, this whole list of things. Now listen, there was a book by Dr. Kopecky from the Mayo Clinic, entitled "Live Younger, Longer" and the whole book is about chronic inflammation. I should have read the book because I've been talking about this for years. What we need to concentrate on is something that's been ignored by modern medicine.
Richard Helppie
So for my audience, which is more of a lay audience, certainly there's physicians, clinicians, scientists and people that have looked for different ways to battle disease. So chronic inflammation...this is, I have a sedentary lifestyle, I'm eating foods that are causing a spike in sugar...what is a chronic inflammation? How do I know I've got one? Or how do I know I'm clear of one?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Well, you test. If you get your physician to have it performed, that's called the C-reactive protein. It costs about $65. Just recently, one of my friends was going to his physician, he said, well, Dr. Cooper said I should have - and this is a board certified internist here in Dallas - I want to get a C-reactive protein. And he [the doctor] said, why? He said, because that's a way of measuring chronic inflammation. Oh, that's Cooper, forget about that, you don't need that. And that was just recently among a qualified physician here in Dallas. I'm still fighting the system to try to get the mindset away. They're preparing a documentary of my life. I want the listening audience to know that, because I'm trying to do three things. I'm trying to push this documentary to go to physicians to change the attitude about the price of medicine, about too much care too late. I'm trying to get medical schools away from just being [inaudible] that's all we do in medical schools, and broaden that to the whole concept of wellness. We talked about at the beginning getting fit; adequate sleep and all these various things. And the third thing I want the people in the world to know [is] that your health is your responsibility; it's not the responsibility of the government, it's not the responsibility of the insurance company, it is [being] responsible for what you do for yourself. No drug can replicate the benefits of an active lifestyle. I'm offering a program here - we're offering to the 150,000 patients that come to our clinic - a lifestyle that is getting results. We're now able to prove that we followed 100,000 patients who came to this clinic for at least 20 times in the past 45 years, and we find they're living ten years longer than the national average and they're squaring off the curve. They live a long, healthy life, the fullest, then die slowly within six months of the time of a diagnosis. So they're squaring off the curve. The cost of health care is going down on these people because they're squaring off the curve. When people are 65 years of age, the cost of health care just escalates rapidly; we can slow that down. So our men are averaging 86.5 years; I'm 91 years of age. Our women are averaging 90.4 years and that's ten years on the national average. So we can increase your life expectancy by ten years, we saw reduction of Alzheimer's and dementia 36-40%, and reduced the cost of health care by four percent. Why aren't we listening to that? So this is going to try, in this documentary that is coming up. The first are sent to medical schools and the second we have for people of the world. I recently gave a presentation at the United Nations. This was September 11, 2019. They asked me to come and speak to 150 people from around the world. And I talked about this; it is cheaper and more effective to prevent disease than it is to find a cure. That was so successful, they wanted me make a documentary of that to get around the world. We were going to work with them at first, but because the funding didn't work out, I'm funding this myself. We got the first one already available, to be released within the next few weeks, entitled "The Power of Prevention."
Richard Helppie
Will people be able to get that on your website?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
They can go to CooperAerobics.com and get these things I'm talking about. You give us a couple of weeks; we have a 20 minute portion on there now that's very dramatic, talks about things we're talking about. And we'll soon have the 40 minutes. The 20 minute version, that will be available on YouTube, you can get that by going to CooperAerobics.com. It'll be on social media.
Richard Helppie
So Dr. Cooper, Americans are bombarded all the time with messages from the Big Pharma ads; take this pill, you're going to get these results. I know on my personal social media feed, I hear people telling me follow this program or that program, you're going to be healthy. Everybody gets on a new year's resolution. So Dr. Cooper, for our listeners, our viewers, and our readers around the world, what are some of the things they could do right now, maybe the top four or five things, to improve their health status and maybe avoid some of this chronic inflammation?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Well first of all, find out what your situation is. Most people get their blood pressure taken. That's number one, that's the major card of heart disease and strokes. And number two, they can get their body mass index by getting their height and weight and go into computer and find out whether they're above or below 25, because less than 25 is what you want. 25 to 30 is overweight and we have 70% our American population now overweight or obese. We only had 36% in 1990. We have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes since 1990 that is unparalleled. And then they can easily get their blood studies done to test for diabetes. You can get a dipstick and get that to check your urine for diabetes, a very simple thing, and get a blood sample that you can have your cholesterol measured, get your lipid profile measured, all very inexpensive. All this can be done for about $25, very simple, and those are the things we're dying of; the major things. Ideally, what we have is comprehensive examinations with the CT scans and coronary calcification - that's the ultimate - but by doing this we have made scientific out of this whole field of preventive medicine. That's why people are living ten years past the national average. But people around the world, if they just remember that no drug can replicate the benefits of an active lifestyle. So my basic recommendation is "five is fine, nine is divine;" the number of servings of fruits and vegetables you should be consuming on a daily basis. Average American is 3.1 for adults and for children is 1.6. You should eat five to ten servings of fruits and vegetables every day, you should get at least seven hours of sleep per night, you should get 30 minutes sustained exercise most days per week. We found that people don't even do that. Moving up one block on the fitness scale they increase their life expectancy by six years but your [inaudible] goes up by 58%. If you move it up to the top category, fitness goes to the nine year increase and only 65%. The best return on your fitness investments is avoiding inactivity; just walking places - get ten minutes here, five minutes here, get 30 minutes collective, sustained [exercise] most days of the week. Those are the most important recommendations I can give. Get your body weight down and your blood pressure under control, [inaudible] diabetes and avoid inactivity and you might be surprised to see the results.
Richard Helppie
And I think that particularly in this country that we have embedded a sedentary lifestyle. Let's drive, let's get a place that's close. It's a long walk into the movie theater where I've got a 32 ounce soft drink that is loaded with sugar and then I'm going to go sit and watch a two hour movie. I think what I hear you saying is maybe substitute that with go for a one hour walk and get yourself an apple and do that consistently and look at the results you might get in your body mass. Now Dr. Cooper, there are people like me, I'm not a very good runner, never have been a great runner. I'm not saying I'm slow but the last time I went out jogging, I got a ticket for loitering. So it's kind of on that scale. What do you say to people like me that are a little more compact, in reasonable shape? Can yoga or weightlifting substitute for some of the more rhythmic exercises?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
You want to be aerobically fit first, but you don't want to avoid weight training. We have a recommendation here when you're in your 30s and 40s you have 80% aerobic and then 20% muscle conditioning, but by the time you're 55 or 60 years of age, you should almost be half and half. You can be cardiovascular fit but you can't pick up a sack of groceries without pulling your back out when you're 50 or 60 years of age. I'm 91 years of age, my routine now...I ran for 40 years and 30,000 miles, ran the Boston Marathon twice and all that, but I broke my leg snow skiing back in 2004. But I didn't give up exercise. I had to give up running but I didn't give up exercise; I transitioned slightly because fitness is a journey, not a destination. So every day before I go home, I spend 30 minutes on the exercise bicycle, I spend 10 minutes doing a circuit weight training program, and then go home and walk my dog. That's my routine now in my advanced age and why I'm enjoying good health, because I keep telling you that exercise is the foundation of the prolonged life and quality of life that you want. So we've been able to prove this out. I established my research institute six months before I saw my first patients, December 1970. Because I had to have good solid research to bridge that gap between fad-ism and establish its legitimacy. I'm happy to say we have now published over 600 papers in peer reviewed journals and the results are too impressive be ignored. That's why the world is coming to us now - what can I do to duplicate what you've done with your center there in Dallas? We have proven exercise can be successful. They told me some 52 years ago, you can't - with my little office and two employees trying to get started here in Dallas, as I mentioned before, the Censors - that I'd never be successful taking care of healthy people [because] people see their physicians only when they're sick, not when they're well. Look what happened. Our whole success here has been on the strength of showing them my beliefs: number one, divine intervention because there's been so many times over the past 52 years [that] I needed to make a decision. I wanted to go one way, I went the other way. If I had gone on the way I want to go, I wouldn't be here today. Number two is a fantastic staff. I tell [inaudible] the CEO is going to be just as [inaudible] as the staff makes it; we have a fantastic staff. Number three we prove it is more cheap and effective to prevent disease than to find a cure. And number four; very important - if people realize they have a need [and] you provide a service, get the results they want, they'll make you successful [in] any field, 74% of our patients are return patients. We now have the largest database in the world proving the value of exercise. [People say] you've never experienced what I experienced; oh yes, I did, because when I went through medical school and pre-med, obviously being concerned about exercising too much, for six years - during my medical school years, internship - I did nothing but gain weight. I went from 160 pounds to 204 pounds because I was under stress during that time. Obesity is the most common manifestation of stress. I didn't sleep much going through internship and all that. I just didn't have any time to exercise. So at 29 years of age I went waterskiing for the first time in six years. I'm halfway through a slalom course, up here at Lake Texoma and I got hit with an arrhythmia - 29 years of age - inactive, done nothing for six years, an outstanding athlete in my early career. They got me to the hospital. By the time I got there the heartbeat had come back to normal. They discovered what we call a superaventricular tachycardia. A very thorough diagnostic workup said the only thing wrong with you, doctor, is you're out of shape. There I was 29 years of age.
Richard Helppie
29 years old. You're a former college athlete with impressive results and in a short period of inactivity and stress, a completely different health status, which I think is instructive to our audience. Now, I understand how the exercise program and more fresh fruits and vegetables is good for cancers and bringing cardiac deaths down. You're looking at a fairly healthy population of the people that are on the program from the Cooper clinic - and I encourage everybody to look up the Cooper clinic and all the affiliated businesses. We've had a pandemic where we're about to enter a period of herd immunity, any insight to that healthy population in terms of how their bodies reacted to the exposure to the COVID virus?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Okay, before I talk about that, let me finish up by saying that when I was overweight, inactive, the diagnostic work-up: I was pre-diabetic and I was hypertensive at 29 years of age. I lost the weight within six months and ran my first marathon a year later. All that disappeared. I hadn't planned on going into preventive medicine. I planned on being an ophthalmologist, something like that, when I finished my military career, but such dramatic change happened in my life, I said, this is a whole new field of medicine, I should concentrate on it. That was the epiphany of my life that changed my career. It's where we are today. Going on now, with COVID. I've been very interested during the pandemic of what we could possibly do to reduce deaths, at least, and hospitalization. I've been concentrating on the importance of vitamin D. I'm writing articles for Decision Magazine - Billy Graham, Franklin Graham organization - started about a year ago talking about that. The first was published, "I got His Hand On My Life", I had a byline in there. My recommendations for people - [the magazine] goes to 10 million people around the world - what you should do regarding vitamin D, because we know that people of color are five to seven times more likely to be hospitalized, and two more times more likely to be death [sic] than people of lighter skin. Why? Because they can't manufacture vitamin D. We measure vitamin D and Omega 3 in all of our patients; have done this for many years, and we find that the people of color run in single digits, like the 9s, 10s, or 11s, the low teens, which should be 40-50, we know [this]. I take 7,000 units a day to keep my blood level up to about 65, between 60 to 68. And we found when you get your vitamin D level up - something you can do - because remember, it's not the virus itself that causes the problem, it's the body's response to the virus called a cytokine storm, which is well proven, and the only thing that can suppress the cytokine storm is vitamin D; no drug has yet been developed that can protect us from that cytokine storm. I discovered this in 2017, in an article published in the British Medical Journal, and they talked about the relationship with chronic inflammation, respiratory problems and vitamin D deficiency; it's a clear correlation there. What are people dying of? It's because of pneumonia from the COVID infection. So I put those two together, started looking at this and we started doing a study. We studied 3,000 patients from our clinic, we had 176 they came down...they were diagnosed with it and not one single one died, no one was hospitalized. I can't guarantee if you get those vitamin D levels up by taking least 2,000 units a day - you get that very easily - that you're not going to come down with a problem, but you have a tremendous possibility of not dying from it and not being hospitalized. I even came down with COVID myself after doing everything right, immunization. It was the Omnicron and [I] picked [it] up in a hospital from being there. But it lasted only five days, I had no symptoms. My wife had the same thing. Because we've been immunized, we had our vitamin D levels up, it kept us from being hospitalized and dying. At 91 years of age I'm in a high risk category. But remember too, the number one risk factor for coming down with COVID is being over 65 years of age and number two is obesity. Now keep that in mind. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin so that if people are overweight it gets in the fat and doesn't get out to give them any benefit. So that's why there's a relationship, I'm convinced, between obesity and COVID-19.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
That's very interesting that it's the vitamin versus the strain on the pulmonary system and the cardiovascular system. And I can tell you this; so far I have not tested positive for COVID although you know many times I've been exposed and been tested on more occasions than I can count. Part of my vitamin routine is D3 every day; I don't know if that's the reason. When we think about vitamins, there are schools of thought [that] the human body can get everything it needs from its food sources or D3 from the sun if you're a particular genetic makeup or a particular location. What has your research said about vitamins and, if you don't mind sharing, what is your personal vitamin regimen?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
We have our own vitamin line that we started years ago because it's guaranteed purity, guaranteed to do something and guaranteed to be absorbed. Because before the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act of 1994 the government had no control over that. So what the vitamin said on the label may not be what they have inside. [Inaudible] that they weren't absorbed. They go out the same way they came in. So we created the Cooper Complete vitamin line; you can go to our CooperAerobics.com and see the line of vitamins that we have which are guaranteed pure, they're guaranteed to do something. I take all vitamins, I take a multivitamin formula; I take four, twice a day. We've got a single vitamin that is one of the best vitamins in America today according to several sources that have said this, it is called the Cooper Complete Basic One. So you can take that and then take the separate 5,000 International Units of vitamin D. 7,000 IU total for what I'm taking. That should give you the best protection, very inexpensively, for COVID-19. I can't tell you it is going to protect you from it, I can almost guarantee you though, you're not going be hospitalized or die from it. So I take vitamin D [inaudible]. We measure Omega 3, too; I just heard this week that Omega 3, Vitamin D, and exercise can reduce cancer cells by 61%. I don't have the final figure on that yet, they sent it to me just this week. It's been published, that fact. I've said, for years, you eliminate obesity, inactivity, tobacco and alcohol, you reduce cancer deaths by at least 50%. Now, introduce exercise, you reduce it by 60%. Again, why aren't we emphasizing the preventive aspect of preventing cancer deaths, but preventing cancer in general. So all these things are basic requirements, what you do for yourself, because I said, it's what you do for yourself, all the things we recommend at being Cooperized. We've been on several of those things, they can prolong your life and improve the quality of life.
Richard Helppie
I hope that my audience will appreciate the amount of value that they can apply right away. But they need to know more about the Cooper Clinic and the Cooper Hotel and all of the things that are inside of your network. If a person said I want to do everything, you know, the Cooper Aerobics, Cooper Spa, Cooper Hotel, Cooper Clinic, the 600 people you employ, the hundreds of thousands of people that you've seen, where would they go to learn about this?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Go to CooperAerobics.com. That's our website. We have a lengthy website there; tells you about the vitamins, tells you about how to get an appointment here at the clinic, and gives you information how to get information coming from our Cooper Institute on a regular basis, CooperAerobics.com. We just published a major article, by the way, how we're having an impact on the world, and this is surely true. We were asked to collaborate with NASA, and look at these astronauts that have been in space for weeks or months or whatever it may be, and compare them with our Cooper Center longitudinal study. That's our special study where we're following these people for a period of now 52 years. We could match them almost perfectly; levels of fitness by time on the treadmill much like walking [inaudible], and are they dying early. This is a long term study with these astronauts versus our people and there was no increase in death rate for these astronauts going into space. That's having impact on the world. Because the possibility of having spaceflights for people other than astronauts in the future; is it safe to do that; yes, it's not going to shorten your life. It's been published recently in a major medical journal. So that's how we're changing the way that medicine is being practiced in the world. We have a legacy dinner here every year. And last year, we were celebrating my 90th birthday and all. We talked about the things that we've done at the Cooper Institute that have actually changed the way medicine is practiced in the world. And that [the legacy dinner] can be available if people want to sign up for that too. By going to our website, CooperAerobics.com, is a way to get started knowing what we do here. We invite the people to come in, we invite them to read our articles, all the things, my books that I've published and the articles I'm publishing, because, don't die of something stupid. I was on the radio for eight and a half years and that was one of our mottos: Don't die of something stupid. Keep in mind, the most common first symptom of heart disease is sudden death. Don't ignore that; [if you] wait, too late. We've had George Bush's example. He talks about that, how going through Cooper Clinic saved his life. We've talked about this in the documentary that will be coming out because he didn't realize he had severe [disease], we picked it up here. We got him in the hospital in a very short period. It's not magic, as I said, I'm sure they saved his life.
Richard Helppie
I love that advice. Don't die of anything stupid. I had a board member one time when I was a chief executive and every time he'd leave the board meeting, he'd point at me and say don't do anything dumb. I think that's great advice all the way around. Dr. Cooper, second to last question for you today. What you've done is so well researched, it makes so much common sense and it would make people happier, it would make our healthcare spending less. Are there any policies that if you could recommend to the federal government or state government or municipal governments and say, look, here's a policy you need to enforce or put into place? What would you advise them to do?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
I would advise insurance companies to pay attention to what we're doing because we don't take insurance, we don't take Medicare at the clinic and yet we have more patients than we can help. If we had done that we'd have been so controlled by the government we couldn't do what we're doing the way of research. So again, trying to get insurance companies to start covering preventive medical [inaudible]. I think that's the beginning of a trend we can see. Insurance companies won't pay for these exams, or this kind of stuff, they aren't doing that. You can't rely on the government to help you. They're not going to help you. What you do for yourself is going to make the difference in this whole situation. So I hope that what we've talked about today is something that made people realize that what you're going to do - whether how long you live and how well you live - is what you do for yourself from this point on. It's like 50+ [in age] straight on through, two things: concentrate on your weight and concentrate on your level of fitness. By avoiding inactivity; collective and sustained 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week. Lose weight; you can lose weight, but you can't do it just by exercise, you are going to have to get control of your diet. There are many ways you can go, get [inaudible] and you go on television and have weight...you can lose weight. Don't ignore your obesity because you can't be obese and be healthy; it leads to cancers, leads to all these various diseases, Alzheimer's, it's related to COVID-19, all these various things. Don't ignore these things. And I tell my people, walk your dog whether you have one or not, keep that in mind too. It's a very important recommendation.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
I love that; walk your dog whether you have one or not, rain or shine or here, in the great state of Michigan, snow or ice as well in certain periods of the year. Dr. Cooper, anything that we didn't cover or any final closing thoughts? This has been absolutely fascinating. It's an honor to have you here.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper
Well, again, if people aren't reading Decision Magazine, then you can go there, Decision Magazine, and get a subscription. I write articles every other month. I've done it all last year. I'm doing it this year, and I'm keeping people up to date with these Decision Magazine articles. They go around the world, as I mentioned. I've had some unbelievable responses from people telling me the value of these articles. So the last one was can you prevent cancer? Can you prolong life? Can you do these things? What about vitamin D and Omega 3? What about those things; that all comes on the articles that are published on a bi-monthly basis [in] Decision Magazine.
Richard Helppie
We've been visiting today with Dr. Kenneth Cooper, one of the pioneers in preventive medicine, he speaks from experience having faced health challenges - today 91 years old, works every day, works out every day, and a few simple things that we can all do to improve our health status. And I hope every reader, every listener, and every viewer of The Common Bridge will embrace some of these good healthy habits. And so with my guest, Dr. Kenneth Cooper; inviting you to join us on Substack, look up The Common Bridge on substack.com, on your favorite podcast outlet, on YouTube TV, and at Mission Control Radio on your Radiogarden app, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
Transcribed by Cynthia Sylveri
The Pioneer of Wellness and Preventive Healthcare