Rolando Rosas 9:38
you were at the right place at the right time, and those types of things we don’t know we’re going to be there right when an event can turn and have such a big impact like that. Obviously it made an impact on you and left that much of an impression that you’ve become sort of like an evangelist for that type of thing.
Dr. Mike Perko 9:59
Yeah. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Why? Because you and I were talking before we started taping the show is, man, when you get older, you just want to keep things simple, right? We don’t have to complicate things with videos and how tos and all this type of stuff. The 500 process works like this. We work with an organization. We’re in six YMCAs right now in the Greensboro area, and it’s very simple. We have the coach, or the person who’s running the after school program or something, do a 22nd script, right? Basically, what that coach did. We’re all in this together. Show me how to do a fist bump. We’re going to do this every time. We either do something great or we are challenged and we don’t succeed, but we’re going to do it so many times that it becomes expected, and part of our culture, the person in charge reads a 22nd script, and all their job now is to make sure that it’s maintained. That’s it. Man, no, no video, no certifications. It’s really easy. And who doesn’t like yesterday? Are you ready? Yesterday was National Kindness Day. Now I’m not a fan. I’m not a fan of one day of the year being the day that we have to do do a little something like give someone a fist bump. So you can see the focus is on changing the culture, not just having one person be sort of the kindness person. Do you know what I’m saying?
Rolando Rosas 11:12
Yeah, Indeed, indeed. And I just want to say this for those folks that are listening to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or one of those other audio platforms. If you’re hearing bird sounds, it’s because Dr.Mike is talking to us while we’re taping this right outside his home, and you could see trees, and he’s got birds and all kinds of other stuff this. Like, nature, like it just, I feel like going, Ah, just, just, just hold on a second. I got so afraid. Just takes me back and just relaxes me, like puts me in the like, a different mode, while just looking at the scenery and listening to those birds. So just know why that’s happening for those folks listening on the audio platform. You know that takes me to another point, Dr.Mike, is that you and I have had the chance to talk a few times, and you made an impression on me about aging and mental health and how we all want to live and prosper. But that’s not exactly what’s happening you and I talked a little bit about that. What are we getting wrong when it comes to this area of Aging and Longevity?
Dr. Mike Perko 12:18
So we’re not getting anything wrong, to be honest with you, okay, it’s where we start the process. I saw a quick little snippet yesterday. If you’re not exercising in your 30s, right? You’re gonna manifest that in your 70s. Okay, there’s a great statistic. Very large proportion of our population has musculoskeletal issues, and by that I mean knee pain, hip pain, back pain, okay, it’s a massive disability that’s compensated through insurance companies and musculoskeletal issues. If by the time you are in pain at 35 ready, it could greatly impact your life, where you may lose an entire decade of life. Now, let me explain that.
Rolando Rosas 13:05
Whoa, yeah. Bring it up. Bring it up. Yeah, starting to scare me, by the way. So,
Dr. Mike Perko 13:12
so let’s, let’s assume this pain is chronic. Okay? You weren’t in a car accident or something like that. It’s arthritis, right? You’ve got some degenerative arthritis in your knees, your ankles, your hips, and it slows you down. Now let’s remember that when we say that we work for a living, we don’t actually go out and shovel dirt anymore or crops. When we work for a living, we sit down, we adjust our keyboard, we turn on our audio and technological equipment, and we sit so just as a function of our society,
Rolando Rosas 13:42
those folks that are listening and want to see it, we’ve got it featured on our video side,
Dr. Mike Perko 13:47
so we’re already sitting and that’s gonna, you know, exacerbate the lack of mobility that we have. But here’s the message that I’m trying to send you, when we’re in pain, we move less Okay, so it hurts even to walk or to lift weights and do the things we know that will allow us to live healthful lives with strong bones and et cetera. So when we stop exercising because of pain, we gain weight. So now we’re dealing with some obesity, and the comorbidities are the things that also happen when we’re obese. All right, high blood pressure, cholesterol may go up, pre diabetes, metabolic syndrome, all of these types of things. So it’s a catch 22 if we’re not moving. And moving, Ashley is a great pain reducer, but by the time we’re 35 we can almost project how we’re going to die. And I don’t mean to scare you, but we can see that down the road, we’re going to start to get sick, and if we really, really don’t work for a living. And I had a former student who studied truck drivers long haul over the road, truck drivers eight to 10 hours a day in a cab with no access to sports equipment and stuff like that, they’re going to. Die a decade earlier. That’s one occupation that leaves the planet earlier than others as well. But here’s an important point, and it’s kind of off to the side, but it’s not really. When my student would ask these truck drivers, he studied them every night at a truck stop for six months, and he would ask them, who is a person in your profession that you feel values you and in your work as a truck driver, who’s the person that makes sure that they know that you know you’re a part of the organization. And without fail, almost every single one of them said the dispatcher, the person who’s telling me where I have to go that day. That’s as high on the food chain that they felt valued. I mean, they had bosses, they had all sorts of other people, but because of that, they really felt that their quality of life was not as great, and they’re sitting all of that put together, man, they’re gonna age. And really, I think what you’re talking about when you’re aging is, how healthy will we be, how functional will we be? Those are the types of things that we need to talk about. You and I had a conversation. I don’t mean to spill the beans a little bit here. You and I had a conversation. Had a conversation about the benefits of walking, because we’d like to keep it simple, right? Okay, walking, walking is the single greatest thing you can do to ward off or stave off, ENT and Alzheimer’s. Very simple reason why, when we’re walking, we’re creating blood flow and oxygen, and that goes right up to our brain and keeps our brain healthy, right? If it has blood and oxygen, it’s gonna, it’s gonna function for a much longer period of time. When we’re sedentary, it’s not getting the blood and oxygen it needs. And it like anything else, it has a lifespan. So that’s the good news. But Rolando, I’m gonna add one more thing. One more thing, walking is great, but don’t have it be the sole, the sole metric for staving off aging. If you can get down on the ground, and I know you have a son man, get down on the ground and roll around with him, because what we call groundwork, just bending over, sitting down, getting back up, will help build our bone and also add to the equation of living longer. So word off of aging is, keep moving. If you can, Don’t stop. Keep moving. If you can, the guy, half of us gonna have musculoskeletal
Rolando Rosas 17:06
issues. It sounds so simple in like I believe how, if I’m just listening, you’re okay, walk, get on the ground. Do bear and crab walk and frog walking kind of thing. I’ve been seeing something on the internet floating around that as well, and how it helps mobility. Because once you get older, you mean, you tell me you’re the researcher, when you get older, sometimes falls, falling has more damage to the body and to your health than a lot of other things.
Dr. Mike Perko 17:36
When you fall at what we call it, the old, old that’s people over the age of 8485 obviously, our bones have become more brittle. We had a chunk in life where we could make those bones really strong, and there’s a point at which afterwards we can continue to do some of the things they recommend, that they’re still going to become more porous and more brittle. That’s why, you know, we need to get on the ground and put some resistance on those things. And it is simple. You don’t have to YouTube this. You don’t have to find the expert in crawling on the ground. Just do it. Just get on the ground and pick up litter and rake some leaves. This is stuff Dave’s from the Great Northeast man. He knows about raking leaves. This is one of the greatest exercises you can do. One of my favorite sayings is a man or woman who chops their own wood is warmed twice. Interesting, right? So you get warm, chopping the wood, and then you get warm, burning the wood. Get out there and just do some Don’t complicate. You don’t have to go to YouTube to know that walking and moving around a little bit is going to be good for you.
Dave Kelly 18:33
So I didn’t realize that I’m doing better than I thought, and that my dog is my personal trainer. I have a little dog every morning, I’m on the ground, I’m stretching, yes, she’s stretching. And then first thing I do is we go outside for a walk, and it’s early in the morning, getting fresh air. I’m moving around, and I guess chopping my own wood. I chop my own wood, man, I know you got a gym membership. I’m feeling good. All
Dr. Mike Perko 19:02
right, you’re living the dream. Now, look, if there’s a hill in your neighborhood, take that dog up that hill, and you will benefit even more,
Dave Kelly 19:09
which is hysterical, because one of the walks we take is around the circle, and I always go the way where it’s the nice incline going up, because if I go the other way, I’m going down the hill, so I try to challenge us and go
Dr. Mike Perko 19:23
good, up there. Good, interesting. Who needs more than that? You know, if you like to lift weights, if you like heavy work on the weekends, gardening and stuff like that, I by all means, if you’re functional and can do it, that’s my recommendation.
Rolando Rosas 19:36
You’d mentioned something else to me, that there’s a word that by time you hit 40, doctors use that they’d never used with you before. Tell me what that word is. Hopefully it’s one word, not two.
Dr. Mike Perko 19:51
Yeah. Up until about the age of 40, people are usually what we call, you know, in good shape. Now they don’t have to run marathons or anything, but. Body systems are all functioning really well. Okay, I tell my students in my class, ages 18 to 21 I’m like, you’re in the best shape of your life. And they look at me like I have two heads. And I go, No, your body systems are in great shape. You get a cold on Thursday, and by Sunday, you’re already feeling better. Usually, though, if you look at societal if you look at insurance charts, when people begin to show signs of sickness. It’s usually in our fourth decade. He hit 40, and that’s the first time a doctor who’s taking your blood pressure is going to say, Huh, it’s not a medical term, oh. It’s because, you know, they’ll say and, yeah, gosh, you know, this reading is a little higher than it’s been before. So right about our fourth decade of life, our body systems, which have really enjoyed good health, begin to not function as well. And what happens is we spike up a little bit, and then our doctor will prescribe something when they give you a statin or a little put you on a little blood pressure medication, and we come back down, buddy, we never quite go back down to that original level, and that is the process that we go until we leave the planet between the ages of 75 and 80. Now what I’m talking about is called compression of morbidity. Morbidity is our sickness, right? If you say you have a more morbid sense of humor, it means you have a sick sense of humor. Dave, can we compress? What does it mean to compress? It just means to show shorten, to tighten, to squeeze something. Can we compress? Sickness, absolutely. I’ve just described it for you. Walk up some hills, walk your dog, walk, get on the ground and roll around a little bit. You would be amazed. You would be amazed at how it delays, and in some cases, can even prevent the onset of the things that are going to take us away from our loved ones.
Rolando Rosas 21:45
Wow, didn’t you say that you were taken aback by your height and weight when you went in and they gave you some news on that you want to share that? Or
Dr. Mike Perko 21:56
do I ever sure? Yeah, thanks so much for
Rolando Rosas 22:01
reminding me. Yeah. So I believe it, but that’s I find that amazing. I’m sure that other people run into that, and so it may help some others that when they hear,
Dr. Mike Perko 22:09
yeah, oh, I’m sure I’m helping everybody in this listening to this podcast, yeah. So on my 40th birthday, here I am. I’m running. I was doing marathons, and really thought I was in pretty good shape, and I was except for one thing, the doctor comes in. He says, he goes, I got good news and I got bad news. I’m like, what’s the good news? He’s, oh, your blood works fine. He says, gosh, everything’s looking good. I go, what’s the bad news? He goes, you’ve shrunk by a quarter of an inch, and it ain’t gonna get any better. I listen. I prided myself on being five six my entire life, and now I’ve got to say the dreaded five, five and three quarter, and that’s what happens. Is when we get older, we just begin to shrink down. The spongy part between our spine and our bones begins to compress. Is
Rolando Rosas 22:58
that evolutionary to preserve energy, I’m not sure, but, or is that just we degenerate as we get older. It’s an
Dr. Mike Perko 23:05
inevitable. We’re only made to be on earth for a certain number of years, right? We’re just only made. Our heart is a muscle. It only has so many times it can beat. Now the good news is, in the 1900 can either of you guys guess the average age of death in 1900
Dave Kelly 23:24
I’m gonna say that like I’m gonna say 37
Dr. Mike Perko 23:29
great, great guesses, both of you. It was 47 right? Because we were dying of infectious diseases. We were dying of flu and tuberculosis and those types of things, man and with great medical discoveries and vaccinations and immunizations, we were able to double that. So now it’s about 75 to 8075. For men to 80 for women. The bad news is that’s slowing down and actually maybe even reversing, right? We could be leaving a little bit earlier. But the question is, I don’t know the answer, evolutionary. Do we get shorter, I would imagine we don’t know why we age, and people can poke holes in that all day, but we do not know why we age, but we know that there are age associated changes right now, age 40, we have to go to Walmart to get those reading glasses right. Also maybe some or we can what we ask people, What are you saying? There’s some associated changes with aging that happen hearing sight. Are a couple of them just slowing down. Slowing down doesn’t have to happen, but,
Rolando Rosas 24:30
well, that’s an important question. You know, as you’re getting to 40 or approaching 40, are there things that we could do to slow it down or delay the aging process?
Dr. Mike Perko 24:41
Well, of course, and it’s the things we’ve talked about being a little more present in the moment, which is really, really hard to do, that’s like saying today is National Kindness Day. It’s just one one day. It takes time. It takes practice. Now, you are a function of a couple of things. You are a function of your parents, a function of your genetics. You’re a function of your zip code. Okay, all right, so where you’re born in your zip code either means that you had access to a lot of good resources, health care, good schools, all of that. If you’re not born in an area that has a lot of resources, you’re not going to get the types of developmental things that you need. And that’s just a function of our culture in our society was called social determinants of health, and the World Health Organization has adopted this term, social determinants of health. So think about that, not medical determinants, not evolutionary determinants, but social where you’re born and your zip code is going to dictate whether you have access to a hospital or not, whether you have access to good schools or not, whether you have access to a grocery store or not. So all of these things play into how long we’re going to be on Earth and also in what shape we’re going to be in.
Rolando Rosas 25:53
You know that you mentioned who and their organization that gather information and for public health reasons to disseminate that information. One of the things that that I had the pleasure of asking you prior to this was, when we were talking about public health, you had said something about the seven Surgeon Generals getting together and having an event, and you’re saying you, I think you’d mentioned to me that there’s a thing that they absolutely were all crystal clear on. What was that thing? I
Dr. Mike Perko 26:25
just want you to see this, right? So this is part of the presentations I give to community organizations that deal with kids as tomorrow’s future community member, employee and youth coach is on your playing field today. That’s why Rolando, when you ask me, Mike man, is there anything we can do about healthful aging, I’m going to tell you right now, yeah, we need to invest much more so in our kids and helping them feel like they’re members of the community, resource wise. But let me lay out this so all seven living Surgeon Generals were invited to Yale, and all of them got together and put a statement out to the public. And what they said is, we are releasing this statement because of the number one public health challenge in America, and it’s mental health, and it’s specifically the future mental health of our kids. So I’m going to read this to you because it is so powerful that it guides me. Okay, health does not occur in a doctor’s office or in a hospital, it occurs where we live, where we learn, where we work, where we play, where we pray, everything that we do health happens in communities that are connected, that are supportive of women and minorities, that have child care and that have good educational opportunities, social determinants of health right there. Rebuilding our interconnected social fabric requires a deeper look into our relationships and how we show kindness and support, right? How we show kindness, not one day a year. We should really focus on building those stronger communities. Here it is with the small moments of human connection that make a huge difference in how we feel and in how the people and how people feel around us. Boom, that’s it, ladies and gentlemen, this is what the Surgeon General’s have said, is the single most important aspect of our future communities.
Rolando Rosas 28:12
So doesn’t sound complicated either. Gets back to the simple thing,
Dr. Mike Perko 28:16
it does not sound complicated at all, but
Dave Kelly 28:19
it sounds too simple. Where’s the healthy eating habits? Where’s the reduced screen time?
Dr. Mike Perko 28:28
Yeah. And you know what? If we break it down in those ingredients, and we go to YouTube and we look for all the answers, man, we’re not going to find it. What needs to be done. What needs to be done is to rebuild this idea that we are connected in the communities that we live with, right? We’re building six foot privacy fences, but we know we’re only talking to people that we know. I heard a funny comedian recently say Halloween is the greatest holiday in the year because it’s the one time we get to visit our neighbors, right? We go knock on their door for candy, and it’s the one day we say, Oh, hey, man, how you doing? Yeah, so this is from now, remember, Dave, this isn’t necessarily a function of the parts, it’s a function of the whole So, yeah, we’re going to manifest some blood pressure issues because of the way we eat and by our not exercising. But if we only focus on those, the mental health issues for our kids. And I’m going to quote a line from a movie, if you remember the movie Jaws, and if you remember when Sheriff Brody was about to put some chum in the water and the shark showed up for the first time, he turned and looked at Hooper, and he said, we’re going to need a bigger boat. That’s the problem we’re dealing with. We’re not necessarily dealing so much with, sort of the smaller things. It’s the hull the bigger boat is. We have no clue. Man, we do not know the size of the net we’re going to need for future generations because of the things we don’t know the outcomes of. Don’t know how social media has affected 10 year old kids 20 years from now. We don’t know how school shootings have affected kids 20 years from now. So when I say it starts in the communities, yeah, let’s get the communities connected, and then let’s have this, Dave, and this is just for you, a walking bus stop where parents or guardians or grandparents, whoever take their kids half a mile to the bus stop, so they get a half a mile walk, and they also get some social connection, right? And then we reverse that at the end of the day, and we go pick them up a half a mile. So they just walked a mile, because PE is a mandatory in school. So dude, I am with you. I am right on your side, but to me, this was the essence of where we need to start.
Rolando Rosas 30:40
It’s great to be in a country where people that have all of those seven individuals have a lot of degrees and a lot of experience and a lot of time, and they could have pointed to anything and said, This is the number one threat, right? But to get that many, and it crosses several different social and political spectrums, to get that many Surgeon Generals on one stage, and for them to say, this is what we need to do. It’s really amazing that that hasn’t gotten more air time. Man, it’s breathtaking. And maybe because it’s not something that you can patent and say, you know, I’m gonna put this pen and then stick it on me, and presto, magic happens, right?
Dr. Mike Perko 31:25
Yeah, that’s the heavy lifting that that’s where we can keep it simple, because to rebuild our communities. And when I say rebuild, I don’t necessarily mean instruction contracts, but just the idea that we’re all in this together, that we can smile and we can wave and not have bumper stickers on our cars that separate us. Those are the types of things that that are gonna be the hard thing to do, but it’s gotta come again, not from a community one community leader. It’s gotta come from everybody who’s invested in where we live. So one of my goals is to have Greensboro be the first Greensboro, North Carolina, be the first 500 Fist Bump community recognized by our governor and et cetera. And how do we do that? Well, we begin with this very simple idea of connecting at schools. The minute they get off the bus, bam, man, it’s great to see you today. Have a great day in the classroom that comes from the bus driver, the teachers, then the car line, and it also will come on the sports fields, right? It also will come at the after school programs. If we get 50 or 60 organizations invested in just this simple act, these kids who are going to be our teachers and our police officers and firefighters and mayors 15 years from now will already have that connection. We don’t have to start from scratch.
Rolando Rosas 32:39
I love that a former guest, just, I love that we need a bigger net moment, he had said something, and we were talking about AI and automation, and he says, We’re just not thinking big enough or for businesses, we’re not thinking big enough on what we could do with this technology. Maybe we’re not thinking big enough when it comes to how can we have the greatest impact on our society. And yeah, we go to the Teck right? We go to the toys, we go to the flashy things. We go to the injectable pens. Right? Now, seems to be what’s on the minds of a lot of people, but a simple thing and starting earlier is key, and I think needs a little more air time. Dr. Mike, we live in a society where people do want the fix. And there are people that are older, you know, they don’t have the luxury of, you know, saying, I wish I could have started this when I was 20, and they may need something a little bit different. You shared with me that a heart attack, the numbers on it are staggering in terms of the financial toll, and it was an eye popping number. And we actually looked into a little bit on this Orey pull up that asset with an actual bill. So we were able to find someone was quoted on Kaiser Health News who actually was billed a six figure amount, 100 and almost $109,000 for this heart attack that they had, and it was featured there a jolt to the jugular. You’re insured, but still owe 109,000 so insurance company covered something like 55,000 but they still got a bill of almost $109,000 and this was in 2018 so today that I don’t think that figure would be lower, probably be higher, maybe 121, 30, or even $150,000 staggering, and I can’t imagine the cost that spread all around as a result of this bill,
Dr. Mike Perko 34:44
yeah, and I remember you and I had a great conversation about this, and it went something like this, Monday morning, 5am heart attack. That seems to be one of the more popular times to have it you’re laying in your bed, because it’s not you. You. But you’re laying in your bed and you hear an ambulance Scream by your neighborhood and stop close by. So what are you gonna do? You’re gonna go, you’re gonna look down the street, see where it stopped, and you’re like, oh, man, I hope everything is okay. So let’s say that neighbor had a heart attack. All right, the meter has already begun. In terms of cost, an ambulance was not free. There’s going to be a cost to that. Let’s say they’re rushed to the local facility which is capable of handling a cardiac emergency, right? You’re rushed into triage. You’re immediately sent into surgery. A physician is available, but they’re a cardiologist, so that’s going to incur a cost. Your surgeon is going to cost a large chunk of this. You’re going to be saved. Your life is going to be saved, and you’re going to be sent to the ICU, where you’re going to have recovery, and then you’re going to be put on cardiac rehabilitation, get that heart straw. But in that week, oh, by the way, let’s say you didn’t have a facility social determinant of health. Let’s say you didn’t and you had to be blown somewhere where that facility existed. That’s a cost that you will incur. So in a week’s time, a heart attack, which is right, part of the most normal way for us to go is heart disease. It’s different for men or women, but heart disease is still the number one killer. Pretty amazing, that cost is going to hit you like nothing’s ever hit you. So it’s expensive to be sick. Can we compress morbidity? Sure. But you know what Rolando you and I also talked about something else. Do you remember we talked about the price of a heart attack that doesn’t happen? Remember? What are the things that we can do? I say go to your doctor, not when you’re sick, but when you’re healthy, so that you can maintain that part of my job is working with corporations and worksite wellness. And our hardest people to get to participate are our most high risk people who are sedentary, obese, have some sort of recreational habit like smoking or drug use, family history. That’s five, right? There five risk factors for a heart attack or something else, they’re the hardest ones to get into our programs. So let’s just start when everybody’s fairly healthy and maintain that
Rolando Rosas 37:09
looked at that Bill and when we’re talking about this in our production meeting, I was just imagining myself just a person that opens an envelope and all of a sudden, you know, you’re back home right afterward, and the shock, you’re like, oh, what? I thought I had insurance on this. I thought I was covered. Yeah, if it’s 100 plus. So you’re talking about 100 let’s call 150 insurance pays 50. That’s about 30 some percent. That’s nothing, not nothing, but that’s not the whole chunk. You’re on the hook for 75% of the bill, 70%
Dr. Mike Perko 37:49
that’s crazy. That changes your life forever. Yeah, yeah,
Rolando Rosas 37:53
and I can’t imagine why, and it is a daily occurrence. We’ve read something like heart attacks cost the country about a billion dollars a day a day in terms it’s staggering, and we’ve done a lot. Yeah, there it is. The CDC Foundation put a price tag of about a billion dollars a day in medical costs and lost productivity. So you can imagine, again, we’re talking about team sports earlier, if you have employees, especially if you’re a large organization, you have employees on the regular that this is happening to so I can’t I’m a little bit shocked that more of the larger employers aren’t doing more to address this. Just even from a productivity perspective, you’ve got your team members that are, you know, leaving and coming and going just as a result of this and the aging population, I would imagine this is probably going to get worse unless some major changes are made.
Dr. Mike Perko 38:53
You know what? Let me jump in here, because you’ve just opened up a can of worms and a vital can of worms, but I want to make sure I’m hearing you. Said, I’m amazed that companies aren’t doing more. Tell me what you mean by more.
Rolando Rosas 39:05
As an employer, right prevention like what we’ve been talking about. We know this is happening. We know that healthcare costs are extremely high. We know that the largest of the companies have a lot more control when it comes to the health care in our country and how it’s managed. As an individual, there’s this, I can do my own part. But as a company, as a let’s just say I know, like Amazon, they’re a large employer. Walmart, they’re a large employer. They can have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people by changing their own work policies, as well as saying, No, collectively, this is out of out of hand. We need to do something about this. And I’m sure if you got a round table of the top 100 CEOs and they say, Hey, we’re going to tackle this. We’re going to make this like our going to the moon project, because this is not sustainable. We can’t run our companies in. If some of our best people are off the field and on the sideline right and the costs are unmanageable, I can’t guarantee anything, but I bet that with those 100 most influential CEOs sitting at a round table saying we’re going to go and tackle this, something will come out of it that would be productive for a lot millions of people in this country, and that would have a ripple effect on whether it’s lifestyle changes, whether it’s work schedule changes, whether it’s how insurance companies put incentives in place to try to do what you’re saying, which is, hey, let’s start earlier, but at the same time, we’d still be left with, what do we do Today for those that are already further in age.
Dr. Mike Perko 40:45
All right, man, tell you what, you couldn’t have set that up better. So let’s talk about moonshot. All right. So, by the way, this is what I do. In fact, I’ve just written the fourth edition of the seminal textbook in this very area. It’s called worksite health promotion. Some of you might know it as worksite wellness, but I was asked to co author on the fourth edition of worksite health promotion, which is in the textbook that colleges and professionals use to help run these wellness programs. And when we do risk assessments at these companies that you’re talking about, we find out that there are people in three different buckets of risk. One, are those high risk people? Right? We don’t get them on walking programs. We don’t get them with a nutritionist. We get them the help they need and get their conditions managed, right? We get them with their primary care physician and say, We need to manage these conditions before we do anything else. So that’s high risk, medium risk. Yeah, those are the people we get into our walking programs and Dave for better eating and all of that, and exercise, that’s what we do. But remember, there is a population of risk that we still want to work with, and it’s young employees, because they’re asymptomatic, they don’t have high blood pressure, they don’t have cholesterol problems, they don’t have pre metabolic syndrome, but they sure as heck are doing the types of behaviors which will eventually lead them down the roof. So my moonshot would be for all of these 100 CEOs to invest in their communities, right? Let’s build some more recreation centers that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Let’s have every school sponsor a class or a grade at the YMCA, let’s do more to build that community when they’re younger. I mentioned earlier that physical education is no longer a requirement in school. So what do we expect people to do? Many people can’t afford gym membership, so my moonshot would be investing in the communities, because they will be my future employees, and they’ll be healthier, and by the time they come into my system, we can manage it and not wait for it to happen, not wait for the people to shrink, okay, and not wait for people to hit 40. So that’s my moonshot, and I’d be happy to sit with that group. In fact, I’d be happy to lead that darn group and move them in that direction. I’m ready. Let’s do it now, even though we have an organization, and I’m hanging my head in shame because I’m a member of the organization, right? The American Association of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, that’s the membership organization that set standards and stuff, but the states began to replace physical education with other blocks of things, right, the different types of classes, et cetera. And I think there’s maybe one or two states that still require physical education in their schools to graduate as a requirement. So once that was no longer part of our day. And listen, my daughter loved PE, loved it so much, and then it became not mandatory, and she was just so sad because she loved you as part of her life. And I know millions of kids feel that same way. It’s just not required by the states anymore, and we didn’t fight hard enough to make that happen. Yeah, and I hang my head in shame, because I was part of that.
Dave Kelly 44:01
I graduated high school in 96 back then, it was still like, I remember, a group of kids would fail. They had to go to summer school classes because they failed the PE credit. I’m like, you have to go to summer school because you forgot your gym clothes every Wednesday for the 10 o’clock PE, and it was like, I saw it every single year, there’s always a group of kids, and they failed, and they had to go to summer school. And it was because of PE, when did that get pulled out? So that was 96 that was still in there. So my son recently, he’s like, Dad, we didn’t have to do PE in high school.
Dr. Mike Perko 44:39
So Dave, you were part of that last group in the 90s, especially if you’re from the northeast, they hung on a little longer. But there are very few states that require health, health information, health education and Physical Education anymore. Yeah, yep, you were one of the last
Dave Kelly 44:54
crazy and it was one of the things. It was the one thing that kind of broke up the school day most. Is that I knew thought PE was fun. It was nice to connect. It was nice to have some competition, sometime, get out some of that aggression, and then go back about your day. That’s a shit was bull. I’m
Dr. Mike Perko 45:12
going to give you my opinion. And of course, this is just my opinion, but it was at a time when we were looking at standardized test scores and looking at where we may have been, second or third in the world or fourth in the world in math and science and things like that. And when a school board gets together and has to decide about curriculum, if there’s pressure to do better in certain test scores, then some things may be on the chopping block. In my opinion, it was those softer but yet vital
Rolando Rosas 45:42
classes? Yeah, it’s come at a great peril, I think, because even if it’s just a block of time and day where you know you’re out, you have younger folks that are in class, third, fourth, it doesn’t matter what grade in and you’re out there, walking, moving, running, playing, wakes like you’re saying blood flow to the brain. People that are school boards, I would imagine a lot of them are very smart people. A lot of them are very educated, and they’re open to science. I’m struck by the fact that we haven’t reevaluated this part of the education system.
Dr. Mike Perko 46:19
Well, yes, yes. And we live in a world with competing interests. But if we could have a school board meeting that had a walking meeting where we would literally walk around the track and talk about what was important, maybe that may change their minds when they realize how good they feel after that walk and we say, Hey, man, this is it. This is what we’re asking, just people that can get some 90 minutes of exercise a week, 150 minutes per week is what we’re recommending, which is a pretty low level. I get six to 700 and I’m just fairly active. I don’t crunch the miles out. But anyway, man, yeah, this could be a whole nother podcast.
Rolando Rosas 46:53
You know, Dr. Mike, you’ve said so much today. I really appreciate everything you’ve brought to bear when it comes to this topic, is there anything else that you want to say that maybe we forgot to say or missed out on?
Dr. Mike Perko 47:07
I am in the trenches with college students, and it re emphasizes my mission. My dad is 99 and I hope that I live as long as he has, so that I can continue with this purpose. I wholeheartedly believe, and I’m pretty seasoned, I’m wholeheartedly believe that if we wait too long for people to enter a system that’s going to be helpful. We talked about people becoming employees of employers who now are got religion about helping people stay healthy these behaviors, we can do free cholesterol checks, and we can do free blood pressure and free memberships to gyms. But the things that have led us to have a little bit of high blood pressure, to have us have high cholesterol, etc, began way, way, way back here, and I have not seen a concerted effort other than lip service, of putting the money where their mouth is, and helping kids start their life in a way that by the time there are community members, it’s a great life, and they’re not scrambling to pay $109,000 after a week of being sick of an illness that most of us are going to have a little bit of. So that’s all I could say, is, if you guys could help me spread the message about the importance of recognizing that the kids is when it starts, if we want to have a healthy future,
Rolando Rosas 48:36
we will do our part. We will do our part, and we’ll do what we can to keep spreading that message. And I ask that as you gather more information, more things, and you’re developing these programs, you come back on. I love talking to you. You know, dropping knowledge, you drop knowledge on on our program here.
Dr. Mike Perko 48:54
Listen, you guys are more than gracious, more than cordial. But I have to ask if I’m on, I think Saturday Night Live, you get a jacket if you’ve been on five times, I’m just saying
Rolando Rosas 49:03
right now, you get a Letterman. You get a Letterman. Letter You’re right. So we can say jacket at number five, that’s when you can put it all together.
Dr. Mike Perko 49:13
And the stubby, sweet
Rolando Rosas 49:16
I want to thank our guest, Dr. Mike Perko, for coming in to What The Teck? and dropping some serious knowledge today, I know that I found it insightful, and hopefully you can take that back to your organization and maybe use some of this information to make even a small difference, because a small difference will add up over time. And if you’ve been enjoying this information in this podcast, I want to invite you to go ahead hit that subscribe button, because it does a lot for this channel. It helps us bring other wonderful guests, like Dr.Mike Perko, and if you really want to support us, we’ve got links in the description to different business services that we offer. You know, Global Teck, Worldwide. We help. Businesses tackle complex IT solutions. So if you’re looking for a trusted business partner that’s been around for over 20 years, take a look at us links in description, so that if your business, you can go ahead and take advantage of it. I’d be remiss to say if you thought that what Dr. Mike Perko was interesting, you may want to check out what Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller uncovered by doing this one thing with a manufacturer that changed their employees and that one thing helped increase their profits. Find out why in that episode, wherever you consume your podcast, whether you’re Apple Spotify or YouTube, go ahead and check that episode with Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller, so thank you for joining me, Dave and Dr. Mike and I will see you next time.
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