For fifteen years, I received an envelope from the company health screening center every year. Every year, I opened the envelope, glanced at the summary page, and as long as there wasn’t a big red stamp on it, I shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it. Fifteen envelopes. Fifteen years of data. … Read more
3 AM. Bathroom. 4:15 AM. Bathroom. 5:30 AM. Bathroom again. I know the exact layout of my apartment in complete darkness. Fourteen steps from bed to bathroom door. Sharp left to avoid the dresser corner. Two steps past the washing machine. I could do it blindfolded. I basically do, every single night. At my … Read more
Last summer, I carried four grocery bags from my car to the kitchen. Two in each hand. Maybe 8 kilograms total. By the time I set them on the counter, my arms were shaking. Not sore. Shaking. Like I’d just finished a workout. Except I hadn’t worked out. I’d carried groceries for 30 meters. … Read more
Every morning, I walk down the stairs from my apartment. Fourteen steps. And every morning, my knees announce each one. Click. Pop. Crack. Click. Pop. Crack. My wife says she can hear me coming from the bedroom. She doesn’t need an alarm clock. … Read more
Nobody warned me how fast blood pressure after 50 can creep up—until mine hit 145/95. 145/95. Two numbers. That’s all it took to scare me more than any fastball I ever faced in professional baseball. I was 55 years old, sitting in a plastic chair at my annual health checkup (건강검진, geongang-geomjin), watching the nurse … Read more
3:17 AM. I know the exact time because I stared at it every single night for ten years. Not sometimes. Not occasionally. Every night. My eyes would snap open at 3:17, my heart already pounding, my brain already running through tomorrow’s board meeting or next quarter’s revenue forecast. I would lie there, staring at … Read more
My father turns ninety this year. He still walks every morning. Not ten thousand steps. Maybe two thousand on a good day, three thousand if he’s lucky. But he walks. In the worn leather shoes my mother bought him fifteen years … Read more
I was a professional baseball player who became a corporate executive and retired at fifty-five. For two years after retirement, I searched for what to do next. At fifty-seven, I opened a health supplement store — not because I had a grand business plan, but because I needed a reason to leave the house and … Read more
Six months ago, my doctor gave me numbers I couldn’t ignore. These are the health lessons after 50 I wish someone had told me at 40. High blood pressure. Pre-diabetes. Dangerous cholesterol levels. I had spent 30 years neglecting my body — drinking even when I knew my liver was struggling, telling myself I could … Read more
145/95. Two numbers. That’s all it took to scare me more than any fastball I ever faced in professional baseball. I was 55 years old, sitting in a plastic chair at my annual health checkup (건강검진, geongang-geomjin), watching the nurse unwrap the blood pressure cuff from my arm. She wrote the numbers on my … Read more