97 YEARS OLD DOCTOR

**ராஜா** · **ராஜா** Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:30 pm

97 YEARS
OLD DOCTOR & THIS IS WHAT HE HAS TO SAY

At the
age of 97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's
longest-serving physicians and educators. Hinohara's magic touch is legendary:
Since 1941 he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in
Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing.
After World War II, he envisioned a
world-class hospital and college springing from the ruins of Tokyo; thanks to
his pioneering spirit and business savvy, the doctor turned these institutions
into the nation's top medical facility and nursing school. Today he serves as
chairman of the board of trustees at both organizations. Always willing to try
new things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including
one "Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As
the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a
long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor
himself.

97 YEARS OLD DOCTOR 97years

Doctor
Shigeaki Hinohara JUDIT
KAWAGUCHIPHOTO

Energy
comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all
remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or
sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best not to
tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.

All
people who live long regardless of nationality, race or gender share one thing
in common, None are overweight... For
breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a
tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arteries and keeps my
skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too busy to
eat. I never get hungry because I focus on my work.. Dinner is veggies, a bit of
fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat..

Always
plan ahead. My
schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital
work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo
Olympics!

There is
no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than
65. The
current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average
life-expectancy in Japan was 68 years and only 125
Japanese were over 100 years old. Today, Japanese women live to be around 86 and
men 80, and we have 36,000 centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will have
about 50,000 people over the age of 100...

Share
what you know. I give
150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500
business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay
strong.

When a
doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor
would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a
procedure.
Contrary to popular belief, doctors can't cure everyone. So why cause
unnecessary pain with surgery I think music and animal therapy can help more
than most doctors imagine.

To stay
healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take
two stairs at a time, to get my muscles moving.

My
inspiration is Robert Browning's poem "Abt
Vogler." My
father used to read it to me. It encourages us to make big art, not small
scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we can
finish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our
vision but it is there in the distance.

Pain is
mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. If a
child has a toothache, and you start playing a game together, he or she
immediately forgets the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of
patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke's we have music and animal
therapies, and art classes.

Don't be
crazy about amassing material things.
Remember: You don't know when your number is up, and you can't take it with you
to the next place.

Hospitals
must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every
patient who appears at their doors. We
designed St.... Luke's so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the
corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a
catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when
members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the
Tokyo subway. We accepted 740
victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them.
Sadly we lost one person, but we saved 739 lives.

Science
alone can't cure or help people.
Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique,
and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people,
we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones..

Life is
filled with incidents. On
March 31, 1970, when I was 59 years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight from
Tokyo to Fukuoka. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane was hijacked by
the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. I spent the next four days
handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor, I looked at it all as an
experiment and was amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.

Find a
role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My
father went to the United States in 1900 to study at Duke University in North Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes.
Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they
would deal with the problem.

It's
wonderful to live long. Until
one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one's family and to achieve one's
goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since
the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days
a week and love every minute of it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“For out of danger
and pain heaven-bliss shall come, Time's unforeseen

97 YEARS OLD DOCTOR

97 YEARS OLD DOCTOR

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