Taking Care of Your Brain While Increasing Your HealthSpan by Counting Your Steps ... for Linda and Roy

Health span.  Increasing the span of healthy/active living.

Step #1

An excellent way to keep your brain healthy for 120 And Beyond is daily exercise and the Mind Diet as described HERE by the Mayo Clinic.  The human brain makes up 2% of body's weight but consumes 20% of the body's oxygen supply.  Our brains high oxygen demand is so important that it employs drastic measures like fainting to restore circulation and proper oxygen delivery to the brain.

My cardiologist has ordered me to 5-6 days of cardio per week [includes walking]. Cardio vascular activity, like walking or cycling stimulates the heart to increase blood flow and 20% of that increased oxygen supply is gobbled up by your brain!  I'm up to about 5 days of cardio per week.

My wearable device tracks my daily steps then sends them to the Activity App on my phone. This works for androids too.  From there, I enter the daily total on the custom spreadsheet below.  This spreadsheet tallies my steps by the week month and year.  I've been tracking my steps since September 17, 2015.

Why bother?  Beginning in 2015 my step count averaged between 103,000 to 124,000 steps per month. Along the way I noticed a tendency to want to increase my monthly step count and I'm betting that will extend my health span further into the future.  

In June of 2021, I challenged my family to track steps with me by posting our steps onto a spreadsheet. That month my total was 224,056 steps. 

June: 224,056

July: 308,973  

August: 351,486    

September: 334,383

Once other family members were part of the process, my numbers jumped an additional 100,000 steps per month. 

It takes three months to change a new behavior into a habit.  I’m testing this hypothesis. I wonder if these new numbers are sustainable.  If so I expect an accompanying increase in health span.

Now I have more of an incentive to go out and walk or spin ... even when I'm feeling a little lazy. I frame it this way:  each day I exercise for an hour adds an additional healthy and active day onto my health span lifespan.  I've been called an optimist but hey... that's not a bad way to conduct business.

I've created a Steps Counter Spreadsheet Template for public use...

I'll post the link here.  Stay tuned.