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.
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.
Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara by JUDIT
KAWAGUCHI
Judit Kawaguchi loves to listen. She
is a volunteer counselor and a TV reporter
on NHK's "Out &
About." Visit her blog here.
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