My  doctors  have   told  me   that   I   am   a wonder–a miracle. I am the only patient they have that at my age (eighty-four years) is so healthy and active. Most folks guess my age to be between sixty and sixty-five years. Many people have asked me what my ways are for achieving this milestone. What follows is the list of those ways.
         1. Just about everyone tells me that avoiding stress is the hardest thing to do, but I have little or no stress. I have quit everything that I have ever tried that was stressful for me, and I have gone on to aught which is more pleasant and peaceful.
         2. Get about eight hours of sleep every night.
         3. Have a good–a  positive–outlook  or  attitude on  life. Having  a  bad  or  negative  outlook can  have  a  bad  effect  on one’s  health.
         4.    For    the   sake   of   good    and    whole nutrition, eat whole and natural foods, and stick to unrefined or to minimally refined foods. Just eat everything in moderation, and do not overeat. In the case of grains, this means whole grains and whole grain flour. Once, when I was four or five years of age, my mother asked me: “Would you like white bread or brown bread, Vicky?” I then asked her: “Which is better for me, mommy?” “Brown bread is better for you”, she answered. I thereupon told her: “I like white bread better, but if brown bread is better for me, I’ll have the brown bread, mommy.” I have been like that ever since.
         5. Eat many fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
         6. Eat some red meat, but mostly stick to fish, shellfish, fowl, and eggs.
         7. Drink milk and eat milch products such as cheese, yoghurt, kefir, and butter.
         8. Use  no  sweetener, or  use  it  sparingly.  If  you use  a  sweetener,  use molasses  or  a whole sweetener like honey
or like sugar cane syrup or sugar beet syrup. The syrup has the vitamin-and-mineral containing molasses in it.
         9. Get some physical exercise every day. If you do not get it as part of your work or play, then get it by walking, or jogging, or doing gymnastic exercises.
         10. Keep your mind active.
         11. Do not smoke.
         12. Do not indulge in harmful recreational drugs.
         13. If  you  drink alcohol,  only  do  it  socially, and  limit  yourself  to  one  or  two  drinks  at  a  time. (That  should  hopefully  be enough to loosen you up enough to be a good dancer!) Drinking in order to cover up one’s woes–one’s woebegone feelings–can lead to bodily damage and even to death by body organ failure. (When my maternal grandparents went to social functions, if alcohol was served, they would carry their drinking glasses around, unemptied.)
         14. You    can    boost your   happiness     by making a habit of looking forward every day to doing something special. This could be aught such as having a cup of tea (or two, or three…!) every day at tea time (four o’ clock in the afternoon). You could also look forward to eating a special meal, maybe once a week. This meal might bring back happy memories by being a kind of food that your parents or your grandparents fed to you, when you were a child. It could hopefully take the place of harmful habits like alcohol abuse.
         15. It  may  be  that one’s  gene alleles influence the propensity for a longer or a shorter life, but this propensity can be helped or hindered by a healthy or an unhealthy lifestyle. One’s lifestyle and one’s genes (or, to use the common expression: one’s blood) may also influence one’s physiology, and also whether or not one looks to be younger or older than he or she is.
         16. As for psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs: some people use them recreationally, and so be it, but doing so makes one not fully aware of the surroundings and of what is going on–of what is happening. With reason, this mental state is called being “spaced out”, and psychologists call it being “depersonalized”. As for me, I prefer to be fully aware. As an example: when the occasion arises, I want to be fully aware of what I am a-doing to her, and of what she is a-doing to me!
         The lifestyle guide given above is working for me. Your nutritional needs may be different, due to your medical condition or to your genetic  inheritance. There are no guarantees, and every one is different. I can still hike up and down the mountains, and I can still high-step across the dance floor with pretty women. Ah, the good life! Or as it is often said in Italian: “La dolce vita!” I wish, dear reader, a long, healthy, agile, and active life for thee–for you.