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Unlocking the Secrets of Longevity with Dr. David Bernstein

Join Dr. David Bernstein on his incredible journey as he discovers the secrets to aging successfully. Hear how his story of determination and resilience, influenced by his parents and his passion for research, led him to uncover his life-transforming five-step program. But as he reveals his findings, a shocking discovery awaits that could change everything…

Show Notes | Transcript

The best antidepressant ever invented is exercise. – David Bernstein

Introducing David Bernstein, an accomplished physician specializing in internal medicine and geriatrics. David’s mission is to help people unlock the secrets to a long, healthy, and youthful life. As an engaging public speaker and author, he shares his expertise on medical topics with colleagues, the community, and people navigating the intricacies of aging. David’s unique approach combines his extensive experience with cutting-edge research, allowing him to develop a strategy for enhancing longevity and vitality. His warm and friendly demeanor makes his advice both accessible and practical, empowering individuals to take charge of their health and well-being.

In this episode, you will be able to:

  • Uncover Dr. Bernstein’s powerful Power of Five strategy for achieving longevity and maintaining a youthful appearance.
  • Delve into the process of addressing inflammation to lower the risk of heart disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.
  • Realize the invaluable role of exercise in boosting endorphins, improving overall health, and safeguarding against various diseases.
  • Understand the inextricable link between quality sleep, social interactions, and mental and physical wellbeing.
  • Enrich your life by embracing the GRACE principles: gratitude, relaxation, authenticity, community, and exercise for sustained health.

Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy:

The Power of Community with Shannon Procise
In this episode, Shannon describes how people in communities can be more powerful than the individual alone.

Joyfully Managing Midlife Changes with Claire & James Davis
Claire & James explain why changing your belief system is foundational to greater health in midlife.

Trust Your Body, Love Your Body with Oralia Acosta
In this episode, Oralia shares how our thoughts and feelings affect the way we eat.

Resources:

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Email: David (at) powerof5life.com

Join the Soulful Women’s Network here

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Live. Love. Engage. Podcast: Inspiration | Spiritual Awakening | Happiness | Success | Life

TRANSCRIPT

Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. I am so glad to be with you for another edition of Live Love Engage. And I’ve got a wonderful gentleman with us today who I am looking forward to having a discussion with, and I’m going to tell you about him. His name is David Bernstein, M. D. So, he is a doctor. In fact, he is a highly respected, award-winning physician who is board certified in both internal medicine and geriatrics. And he has integrated his experience and practice with up-to-date research to develop a strategy to enhance longevity and vitality. And he’s also an entertaining and engaging public speaker as well as an author. And for those of you listening, he’s got two of his books right behind him, which we are going to talk about during this interview today, but he speaks with, on medical topics with his colleagues and the community at large, with a focus on individuals and families facing the complex problems of aging, longevity, remaining healthy and youthful. And so, we’re going to be talking quite a bit about all those things, I think, today. So, I first of all want to welcome Dr. David Bernstein to live, love, engage.

David Bernstein
Thank you, Gloria. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I’m very interested in what your subject matter is because as someone who is starting to get up there in years, okay. I did celebrate my 60th birthday this year, and I intend to, I would like to go another 45 years. So, I’ve got high goals, I guess you should say, as long as I am healthy and active and all that while. So, when I learned a little bit about what your specialty is, I’m curious because I’d like to ask our guests a little bit about their journey and kind of how they got interested in doing the work that they’re doing now. So, I was wondering, what was it that sort of got you interested in internal medicine, of course, but also but particularly the geriatrics end of the medical spectrum, I suppose.

David Bernstein
Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s one of my favorite topics to talk about because when I was growing up, my dad was an immigrant to this country who fought and was wounded in World War II and was injured and showed me the determination to succeed in life. And that was a really big part of who I am. And he and my mom encouraged me to do something different than what he did in his life, although he was successful as a manufacturer of women’s clothes, that’s not what I didn’t want to be wearing women’s clothes. And my brother chose to do that, not wear it, but manufacture women’s clothes. So, I was encouraged to become a doctor and use my brain, and that was one of my influences and inspirations. Another was my mom’s frustration with the care that her parents, my grandparents, got when they aged because she would come home from visits with them and go into the doctor and said, they don’t know anything. They don’t care. They don’t listen. She said, when you become a doctor, you be nice to old people and be kind and compassionate. And I said, okay, I’ll do that, mom. I listened. And sometime in 1973, I saw a National Geographic magazine, and the cover had a man on it. He was an older looking man, and he was a centenarian. And I read this story cover to cover. I saved the magazine. You can do anything with Google these days. I have a cover of it, and it was written by Alexander Leif. And just today I was writing a letter to the editor about my experience with that article because it prompted me to want to learn about centenarians, about what you can do to live to be 100. And it was decades before the Blue Zones were written about, and that was incorporated into my fabric, along with a speaker at my graduation who talked about being an author. And I said, I want to do that, too. So I went to medical school, and I went to college before that and learned about Gerontology. And then in medical school, I wanted to serve an underserved area, and Geriatrics was one of them. And I have a great career of taking care of older adults. Took a lot of pressure off. I mean, it was like juggling multiple balls at one time because there’s lots of people with chronic illnesses and how to take care of it. But also there were opportunities to talk to people about what made them age successfully. And even though I may have taken care of a patient from the time they were 60 until they were 90 and I was 35 and I aged, I always felt like I was 35. And it responds to what you said a little while ago, Gloria that I continue to think I’m a little person, a young man, and I don’t feel that I’m my age, just like you don’t feel your age, and you just feel like it’s another day. And I’m still this young, vibrant person, and I got to learn what their lives are about and what made them age, successfully or not, if that were the case.

Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. And it was interesting. I’ve got a close friend that I went to college with, and we’re still in touch, and her birthday is actually two days after mine. And she’s like, Gloria, yeah, I don’t feel like I’m 60. I feel like I’m still just 35 or something, because I don’t see that. And I know when I think back to what my parents were like when they were 60, they seemed a bit older. And I know my mom had a lot of more health problems than I did. Fortunately, I’m healthy, but she had high blood pressure and arthritis and all these things. But the other thing I was just thinking of too, though, as you were talking about that getting into this specialty. I was just thinking that it’s actually a really good I guess the timing, perhaps possibly, of you getting into this or when you were born, to be able to come into this, because of all the baby boomers that are of course, they’ve been getting into that category. And like I said, and I’m the tail end of the baby boomer generation now, so we’re all getting up there now. It’s interesting that you said that you also decided that you thought about becoming an author. So, tell us a little bit about that process, because I’m sure you’re busy with your medical practice. And then so when and how did you decide that you’re going to start writing some books? And then we’ll talk more about specifically about those books in particular in a minute.

David Bernstein
Well, some of it was triggered at my graduation from high school when the author came to speak to us. And I’ve been in contact with him, and he’s a very prolific author. He’s been involved in 25 or 50 top 100 books, top best-selling books, because he does a lot of research for people, and he is a ghost writer, but he’s very successful. And I think all of us who have any element of creativity, who practice medicine, think about, well, you can’t make this stuff up, and I got to write about this, and this is really amazing, or this is an amazing story, and I filed them all away over the course of time. That’s the creative part of this. And then I started writing some stuff, and I went to a course for physician authors to learn how to integrate all that stuff into your life and do that. So, I put my mind to it and my effort to it. And the odd thing about it was my first book. It has a funny title. It’s a bit sarcastic. I have some good news and some bad news. You’re old. I thought it was going to be all the funny things that I experienced or the jaw dropping experiences that I had, and I just got more philosophical and more serious about the subject matter. And although in my mind there were a few things in my book that would make you chuckle, most of it were the things that made you think and that this becomes a manual for people as they age. And you and I are both baby boomers. I’m a little bit more advanced than that. And by the way, 10,000 adults turn 65 every day. So, the baby boom is flourishing into this older age group. And I would sit down at my computer and write, and I would write as if I’m talking to high school classmates or college classmates. What do you need to know? What have I learned from my older adults that I can pass along to you so that you’ll have this success pattern rather than this pattern of deterioration? And it was a great opportunity for me. One of the things that’s really interesting about talking to people is that as a doctor, when I would ask people these questions in their minds, they go, wow, he’s really interested in me, and I really bonded with my patients and I really wanted to know. But they also experienced the fact that this doctor is asking these questions about me, and he’s really interested. And you could see it in that interplay when you’re with a patient and it’s like, wow, this is a golden moment. They’re telling me these secrets that I need to know for myself and as an author, and they’re taking it as, wow, he is so interested in my kids and my family and my grandkids, and he has some advice to give me. Wow, this is really special. And so, it was a lot of give and take, but I got a lot out of it.

Gloria Grace Rand
I can appreciate that as having been a patient in a doctor’s office before and to have situations where sometimes I’ve had where it’s like these quick appointments in and out, but to have somebody really be interested in asking you questions; when I have had physicians like that, it is so refreshing. It’s so nice because I know in this day and age especially, it’s so hard with the way our medical system is sometimes, that they really want you to kind of get patients in and out. So, it’s wonderful that you were able to spend some time, and I assume you probably still are doing that and taking time with your patients to find out what they need. Let’s talk a little bit about in particular, I know that the book that I think that you were promoting when we first met is, I guess, your newest book, which is The Power of Five – the Ultimate Formula for Longevity and Remaining Youthful. So share with us a little bit about what is that Power of Five?

David Bernstein
I’d love to. When I was thinking about writing this book, I thought about what can I write to those high school and college classmates that would help them understand what it is that’s the most common illnesses and the things that people are most afraid of? And it was heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, other dementias, Parkinson’s disease, because those people coming through my office would be really concerned that they’re going to live longer and have a much more likelihood of having any one of those diseases, particularly dementia. I mean, dementia really scares and frightens people, and rightfully so. You work really hard, you have this good life and you retire and that happens. The next thought as I worked on how I was going to present this is, what’s the one thread, if there is one, that connects them together and then explain what you can do about it. So it turns out there’s at least one thread that runs between all of them. And it’s this concept of inflammation. It’s this inflammation in our bodies that creates and produces vascular disease, clogging of your arteries. It leads to some forms of cancer. And it’s been promoted as one of the causes of brain injury and brain death and dementia. Then I reflected on, well, what are the things that contribute to inflammation? And there are five of them. I always pick five, like, because five fingers on my hand. And I had a professor in my residency training who said, when you finish with a consultation, leave people five recommendations, because even doctors can’t do more than five things. I’ve always stuck with five. So I’m going to say them fast, and then I’ll go back over them, and they all begin with the letter S. Avoid sweets, avoid stress, get more sleep, sweat and sex. Those five things. So sweets is really all about sugar. Sugar, carbohydrates, starches, and processed foods, because processed foods all have this added sugar or highly processed wheat that is just not as favorable as natural products. So sugar creates this inflammation in our blood vessels, and it’s one of those inflammatory agents. The second thing is stress. Well, stress is another factor that causes the release of cortisol in our bodies, which is a stress hormone. And that’s really good if you want to escape a lion or a tiger that’s chasing you. But when you’re constantly stressed and you have a constant, continuous release of cortisol, that’s a bad thing. And it contributes to these vascular events that I mentioned. And what can a person do about that? Well, you could change your life and move away or quit your job, or separate in a relationship, or learn some of the techniques a person can do to overcome that stress. So, then the third thing is sweat. You notice they all begin with letter S. People can remember. So sweat is really my euphemism for exercise or activity. And inactivity leads to disease and frailty, which is when we were talking a few minutes ago, it’s about, I feel like I’m 30. Well, if you feel like you’re 30, you’ve not become frail. But if you sit for too long and are inactive, you become frail and then sort of get on this vicious downward spiral. So what can be done to avoid that? Well, it’s exercise. Somewhere between 30 minutes a day and 90 minutes a day. 30 is sort of the minimal amount that we’ve measured in science that will promote improvement. And 90 is sort of the maximum above which you don’t have to do anymore. But that would be aerobic and anaerobic exercise, strength training, tai chi, yoga, Pilates, tai chi. Those are among some of the things that I’ve done. And they’re all things that cause release of endorphins and release of other chemicals that are really healthy and but by the way, the best antidepressant ever invented is exercise.

Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s true. I believe that.

David Bernstein
And something I discovered during my research and in listening to people is exercise reduces the risk of cancer recurrence by 35%. So when people are undergoing their chemotherapy, if they want to get an extra 35%, that physical activity that they do is incredibly important and that’s lung cancer, breast cancer, and many different types of cancer will respond to that. So it’s incredibly important to incorporate that part in your lifestyle. And I call these five things lifestyle changes and then sleep. I have a story in my Power of Five book, and you asked me earlier also about filing where I mentioned filing away stories. So, there is a story in my first book that occurred in my 1st year, 2nd year in practice and then there’s a story in my Power of Five book that happened when I was an intern and it was about a patient with sleep apnea. Well, we didn’t know as much about sleep apnea then as we did now. But in my final ten years in practice, I saw so many people with sleep disorders and sleep apnea is one of them. Insomnia is another. So those are two of the things I saw the most of. And sleep apnea has some profoundly negative impact. It raises blood pressure, it disrupts your eating styles and causes you to gain weight. And if you don’t sleep well, you’re irritable and depressed and you have no energy and you’re at risk for atrial fibrillation. And we’ve heard about a politician who’s had atrial fibrillation and many other people who’ve had, he had atrial fibrillation and stroke. But atrial fibrillation contributes to strokes and it’s one of the sort of unrecognized outside of medicine that that’s a major contributor to stroke. So people with sleep apnea need to have that addressed to prevent some really negative consequences. And there’s a fair amount of resistance to people having treatment for their sleep apnea. And I would at least joke to myself that I was able to make a diagnosis of sleep apnea when I walked in a room with a patient and sat down and before my chair was warm, I knew they had sleep apnea.

Gloria Grace Rand
How could you tell that? Wait…

David Bernstein
I was waiting for that. Well, you can look at a patient and men would have a neck that’s more than 18 inches in circumference. And I’m just going to say this funny, the son of a clothing manufacturer learns how to look at people’s necks. And by the way, my neck size has varied from time to time, so I know what an 18-inch neck looks like. And for women it’s a little less, I think it’s 14 or 15 inches. And then you look at their belly and their waistline for a man is above 40, that puts them at risk. And if you say, ah, open their mouth and you look in their throat and you can’t see beyond their tongue, it’s another indications. Then I would look at their chart and I would see that they’re on blood pressure medicine and medicine for diabetes. If they were new patients and if they said anything about they’re being tired, I never asked them if they snored. I just asked them how badly they snored or how bad were the complaints about their snoring, because they never admitted that they snored. Well, I don’t know. I’m asleep. I said, yeah, I know you’re asleep, but the people in the house next door can hear you. It’s a really pervasive problem. It’s correctable with various kinds of treatment, and it makes a difference in people’s lives when you do. And there aren’t many opportunities for a primary care doctor and geriatrician to sort of hit it out of the park when you correct someone’s sleep apnea. And they say, I haven’t felt better. I haven’t felt this well in 20 years. And so it was enjoyable to treat that. And the final S is sex. And you and I also grew up in the same generation, and I learned just by hearing things that sex sells. So I wanted my book to sell, so I put sex on the cover. Younger generations don’t appreciate that like our generation does, but as I would present this information, my wife who supported that would sometimes nudge me with her elbow and say, well, you got to get a little further beyond just the sex part. Sex is really nice and it’s about intimacy, but it’s also about socialization and companionship. And those are some really important things that I read about more and more, and it’s really important for everybody to become sociable. I was listening to a podcast or a presentation this morning, and it was about the importance of engaging in tribal activity and being part of your tribe and having a culture that you’re part of and people you can talk to. It’s important to have a companion who will look after you and there’ll be someone you want to live with and love, but also will say, hey, you got a bad cough. Let’s go to the doctor and get it taken care of so that there’s someone to do it that way. And then there’s the fact that there’s a certain spiritual nature to socialization. And it’s spiritual in that it’s a connection with someone or something. So for other people, it could be a connection with a higher power or relationship that way. And I’ve listened to at least one of your other podcasts where you talked about that. And so the spiritual part of our life is really important. That shouldn’t come as a surprise coming from a doctor, but I know that, and I have observed that in my patients who would talk to me about how they lived their lives and did their devotionals in the morning. And I just had coffee with someone who told me the same thing. So I know that that’s an important component and there’s a certain level of intimacy with that. And the opposite of intimacy is loneliness. And that’s where we get into another health problem and health situation in this country and in the world. And it preceded the pandemic. So before the pandemic, I started reading about loneliness. There are now multiple books written about it that are very good, that describe the situation. And I take it really seriously, and I take it really seriously for myself.

Gloria Grace Rand
You’ve talked about so many things. I wanted to reiterate a couple of the points you made. Number one, because I have had personal experience with sleep apnea in that my husband has had that. And so that’s why I was curious to see how you could tell. And I’m like, yeah, tick that. That’s describes him to T and what was particularly dangerous. And so that’s why I want people to know about this. It’s not so much the snoring. It’s the, he would wake up in the middle of the night choking. So this was before we got because he couldn’t because what it is, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but essentially it’s like you stopped breathing. And he would stop breathing multiple times in the night when he finally did get tested for it. But I mean, before we knew what this was, it was like he would wake up choking and scared me to death because I was like, what is going on? And so got him to doctor to find out. And when he first got the machine that he used afterwards, oh my goodness, it was like night and day, because now he could stay awake in meetings and things like that.

David Bernstein
Well, that was one of the little clues when I would see people and when I said the chair wouldn’t get before my chair got warm, there were like four questions. And it’s like, man, this guy’s going to have a horrible sleep score if he gets a sleep study. And for your listeners, it’s basically like being suffocated. And when people suffocating, it’s like 10 seconds when you start measuring. And then how many times do you do that? And it’s like someone coming up and suffocating. Your heart rate starts racing and then you fall right back to sleep. And then you cycle through that over and over again. And you don’t get into your REM sleep cycle. It’s gone. It’s really hazardous to your health and your brain and your disposition and everything.

Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. So if you have any of this that sounding familiar, get yourself to a doctor, get it checked out, request a sleep study because it could literally save your life. So definitely need to do that. There was one other quick point I wanted to make too, when you were talking about sex and socialization and again about loneliness. And I saw this with my father-in-law when his wife passed on and we had moved from Miami to Orlando, and then he wound up moving to Orlando as well so he could be near his son, my husband. But in that move, he lost the community that he had when he lived in Miami. He was a big part of the church. He used to be an usher at his church. And so when he came to Orlando, he kind of cut himself off from those people. And then, I think probably within maybe a year or definitely no more than two years after he moved here, he died. And I think that speaks to the fact that he wasn’t getting up and doing as much things anymore, any activities, and he certainly wasn’t socializing. I mean, we would go to see him as often as we could, but he wasn’t having the other company of his other friends and things like that. So it is so important. I’m glad that you mentioning that and putting that into your book.

David Bernstein
Thank you for mentioning that. And it does have a profound impact on people. So does losing a spouse. Losing a spouse, I can’t recite off the top of my head the statistics, but when you lose a spouse, there’s a certain percentage of people who die within a year. So that’s part of it. And there was something that you mentioned about your father-in-law that he at least at some point, was involved in his community, and he did lose something. When my parents moved 7 miles from their home, basically none of their friends came to visit, and they had lost those relationships. But the other part of this is that men do worse than women in terms of forging relationships and maintaining those relationships and knowing how to do it. Men go about their lives like I did as a doctor, like in a silo, all by myself. I’d get up, I’d round on my patients, I’d look for a nurse. There’d be no nurse around to talk to. It was me and the patient that was in my silo. I went in my exam rooms that was in my silo. And there was no energy or time to have relationships with fellow men outside of work, or at least it wasn’t a big part of our life. And so men do this really badly and then they retire, and then it all goes really badly because we don’t know how to do what women do really well and have relationships and remember their grandkids and their friends birthdays and all that stuff. And so it’s a real hazard for men to not have that and it’s being addressed. But it’s kind of late in the game for lots of people to figure out how to do that.

Gloria Grace Rand
And I would say it’s never too late, really. So it just requires the determination to get out there and do it and to be able to maybe it’s even calling up someone you haven’t talked to in a long time again, a long time. But following up with them and checking in on them. I know it is not easy, but gentlemen because I know sometimes I do have some gentlemen listening to this podcast. Make an effort. It’s so beneficial.

David Bernstein
It is It’s not trite. Everything you said 100%. Number one, you also mentioned it’s never too late. It’s never too early or too late to do any of the things I’ve mentioned in my Power of Five. And it’s definitely never too late to start interacting with other people. And there are ways to do it. Joining a club and if you’re interested in photography, a photography club. Or learn how to play chess and bowling or golf, or if it’s a woman who doesn’t have those connections, learn to play mah jong or bridge or do something and go to some classes where you’ll be with like-minded people.

Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely.

David Bernstein
That I’ve done my research about and know that it could make a difference in a person’s life because otherwise you’re missing something that may be the most important ingredient in my Power of Five formula is having some kind of relationship. Because that whole thought about being part of a tribe is really important. It brings us back to when we started having genetics way, way back, thousands of thousands of years ago. People lived in tribes, they lived in communities, and that’s incredibly important. And the blue zones, the areas where people live the longest, their integration within the community, old and young, that’s a major component.

Gloria Grace Rand
I had somebody else on the podcast not too long ago who was talking about actually, I’ve had a couple of folks talking about the importance of the older generation, sort of mentoring the younger generation and really making sure that they’re forging those relationships. I think that is so important as we get older that to still take the time to be able to connect with, as you say, your kids or your grandkids or even just other young people. If you don’t have family like that, there’s still other organizations out there that young people need and can benefit from the wisdom of. As we get older, we do start finally getting a little bit more wise with age because we’ve made a lot of mistakes. At least I’m speaking on my benefit. I know I have. We talked before we actually got onto the interview today, before we started recording about that, your other book, because you mentioned you have an acronym which is sort of near and dear to my heart because it’s my middle name. So I wonder if you mentioned that a little bit, just briefly, and talk about what that is.

David Bernstein
Oh, sure. Gloria Grace.

Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.

David Bernstein
My acronym is GRACE. So when I would do those community events and I would ask people – this was another thing I did in my office, but I did it out in the community. And people would mosey into the arena or the theater where I would be talking and I talked to them and ask them some questions and then I would ask the audience questions and. Say, what are the secrets to your long, healthy, and good life? These were people genuinely happy, and they were maturing well. And I came up with five things that was a continuous, I heard continuously, and it was your initials of your middle name, Grace. So people who had successful lives had goals or a purpose. They had something to get up to in the morning. It was a job, it was a hobby, it was a passion for something. And all too often there are people, particularly men who retire and don’t have that passion and don’t have something to get up to. And they’ll just sit around and watch television and expose themselves to banners on their TV screen that says breaking news and breaking news and their brains get wired into all this. It’s really bad thing. But having a goal or a purpose, like one of my patients who was a security guard at a historic hotel where he was the old man, but he solved some of the crimes that happened at the hotel and was proud of it. And he had a beautiful drive down to the hotel in the morning and he got to spend seven or 8 hours away from his wife who would nag him during the day so that he didn’t end up killing her and having to go to prison. And so having that goal or that purpose was incredibly important to him. And the second letter in GRACE is, are it stands for roots. And people who know their roots, their DNA can have a particularly important effect on their lives. If they know they have cancer in their family or heart disease or diabetes, that early on, they can do something about it. It also has maybe a more spiritual component to it in terms of what are the roots of your family, where do they go back? Do they go back to Northern Europe, eastern Europe, Africa, or wherever? So that, you know, your family tree, the tree of the roots on the ground. And that’s important too to people. And then A stands for attitude. And it’s an attitude of gratitude. And my patients who had those experiences and had gratitude were people who are really much happier than people who were mean and nasty. And it’s attitude and kindness. I include kindness in that. And one of my patients, I discovered his prostate cancer and I discovered prostate cancer in many people. But this particular guy would come in at his visits every three months and express his gratitude to me about that I found that and it made a difference in his life. And I would always sort of say, well, the urologist had something to do with it. And he said, no, it was you Dr. Bernstein, and I’m grateful to you. And I would see him light up like this was, made his week to come in and tell me this and what an experience that was as a physician to see that I liked hearing it, but he liked saying it more than I enjoyed hearing it. It was an amazing experience for me, and I learned so much from it. So that’s G-R-A. C stands for companionship. And it gets us back to that socialization. And having a companion and having someone to share a life with or common experiences with goes a long way. And that’s why it’s in both of my books. And maybe you could say the same thing with my last letter in GRACE, which is environment. And environment is how we spend our time out of doors with nature, because that’s important. Is our air clean? Is our water clean? Is it sitting in a polluted environment? Do we have an opportunity to walk in a garden and be right up close with nature and see flowers and butterflies and birds? And it’s also the inside environment, like what I write about in The Power of Five. What is our eating lifestyle, what is our exercise lifestyle? When I put things together, it forms a pentagon. So it’s as if the Pentagon of Grace and the Pentagon of The Power of Five merge at some point because there’s so much commonality in terms of what I observed in people in GRACE. And people can do in The Power of Five to enhance their life, their longevity. And even though I talk about longevity, what’s really important is our health span, not our lifespan, because lifespans are actually shrinking a little bit in this country. But you want to be healthy until you take your last breath. And I’ve experienced both ends of the spectrum. People retired and then they were disabled and they didn’t die and they went on for years and years of disability. And had they only made some better choices earlier in life, they would have a life that went up to their last breath and that’s what people would hope for and delay that final event.

Gloria Grace Rand
You’ve got two good books there, I can tell that with I think they would be good companions, that I think, I think folks should get value out of both of them because I can see it’s definitely complementary information to help people. And you’re right, and I like that health span versus the lifespan because, yeah, there’s no sense living a long time. And I’m even thinking about back to my grandmother lived to be 95, but I remember probably when she was still even in her 80s, she would lament about how she was outliving a lot of her friends. And certainly, I think when she got to be like, 90, all of these things are so important. To be able to still have people in your life, to be able to keep active and doing all of these things. I want to ask you because we’re starting to need to wrap up here, but I still love to ask this question of my guests. So I want to take the time for it. So what are you curious about right now?

David Bernstein
I’m curious about what new projects I’m going to be able to incorporate into my life, what new things I can learn. I was just listening to a presentation about this concept of neuroplasticity, which we haven’t spoken about, but it’s what happens to our brains when we learn something new. And I started writing in the last ten or 15 years of my practice in medicine, and it was learning something new, and it was like learning something new every day. It was, oh, publishers do this and self-publishing does that. And then I have to write this way and I have to do a book proposal or maybe not, and try and get an editor and deal with Amazon. And so that every day was new. And then I published my books and now I’ll appear on podcasts. What’s the right microphone to have and the right lighting and how to deal with when the Internet dies? I’m always looking for the next project that I can incorporate and learn something new from. My wife wants me to learn to play Mahjong with her, and I’ve had one, I beat her, but I played one game with her, and so there’s that. And can I get my golf game better? Can I overcome some of the sleep problems that I have? Because being a doctor for so long and having a phone next to your bed and knowing that it could ring at any minute and that sounds dramatic, but it really deteriorated my sleep patterns, that can I do that? And what kind of physical activities can I continue to do? Those are the things that turn me on and give me something to strive for. I mentioned to you before we started the podcast that I can be pretty competitive and it’s like, what are some of those added on things that I can do in my life that I’m not going to go rock climbing, though, or parachute. I’m a little too into safety for those kind of things.

Gloria Grace Rand
I’m with you. I’m in staying on the ground. Yeah, I don’t have a desire to do that, but there are lots of other things I would like to do. Well, I so appreciate you sharing all this wealth of information with our audience today. It’s been wonderful. And I know that there’s going to be folks out there who would like to be able to maybe get their hands on the books and or follow up with you, possibly, and learn some more about what you’re up to in the world. So what are the best place that people can do that?

David Bernstein
well, I’ll give you a couple of things. First is our website, and I do stuff with my wife who writes cookbooks about healthy eating. So, our website is Power of (the Number Five) Life dot com, and if people want to reach me, they can put the word David@powerof5life.com and they could reach me that way. My books are available on my website, they’re available on Amazon. And if people go to my website, they can download a free seasonal cookbook. With the season coming up for healthy meals, my wife has two options to choose from, or I think she told me you can have both of them. But there’s some healthy eating things that get into the realm of avoiding sweets and starches and all that sort of thing. I have a small little electronic book, Notes on Living Longer, that cover some of the things we talked about today. And I’ve recently launched a power of five life online course. It’s a five-hour course that goes into a lot more detail about what I talked about with you today, with lots of suggestions and PDFs and all that sort of thing that I think can really empower people. And I know I didn’t mention the word intention, but all of the things that I’ve talked about today require intention. That I’m going to make a change, I have to do it intentionally. The food is not going to get dropped off at my house, and the trainer is not going to drag me out of bed in the morning. I have to put my schedule, I have to do it. I have to intentionally make friends. I have to intentionally go to bed earlier and get a better night’s sleep. So those things are incorporated in the course that I do, and my wife is part of that. She does a thing about cooking and eating and about journaling and keeping track of all the things you need to do. And I’m sure, Gloria, you’ve talked about it on your podcast, about the intentionality part of how we make those changes in our lives to make us better and healthier.

Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, sounds like I might have to have her on the show, too. I think at some point, if she’s interested.

David Bernstein
She’s going to launch her cookbook in February, American, National Heart Week or a Heart Month or something like that around Valentine’s Day. So I’ll make sure I get her connected with you, Gloria, I’m sure she’d love to do that.

Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I’m going to check out. I love cookbooks and I love getting recipes, and definitely healthy recipes are up my alley. So I’m going to go on the website and check that out myself.

David Bernstein
On the website is her first book. It’s a smaller version of a book, and we wrote it for caregivers. So it’s for a caregiver bringing a care recipient or care partner in the kitchen and doing an activity together. And there are some healthy recipes in there, too.

Gloria Grace Rand
All right, good deal. Oh, my goodness. We could keep talking and talking for hours. I can see that already. This has been great. So thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate it.

David Bernstein
Gloria Grace, it’s been my pleasure, and especially that middle name.

Gloria Grace Rand
And I also want to thank all of you out there as well for listening and for watching. And I do appreciate all of you and all the kind comments that you leave either on my YouTube channel or on, like, Apple reviews. There’s been some wonderful ones on there, so I appreciate that. And until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.

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About the Author
Known as The Insightful Copywriter, Gloria Grace Rand is also an inspirational speaker, author and host of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast. Prior to launching her SEO Copywriting business in 2009, Gloria spent nearly two decades in television, most notably as writer and producer for the award-winning PBS financial news program, “Nightly Business Report.”

Gloria turned to writing as a way to communicate, since growing up with an alcoholic father and abusive mother taught her that it was safer to be seen and not heard. But not speaking her truth caused Gloria problems such as overeating, control issues, and an inability to fully trust people. After investing in coaching & personal development programs, and studying spiritual books like “A Course in Miracles,” Gloria healed her emotional wounds. Today, she helps entrepreneurs develop clarity, confidence and connection to the truth of who you are, so you can create a business that has more impact, influence and income!

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