Last summer a friend from Northern Europe (Latvia) visited and I was intrigued when I asked him how old he was.
Now this particular friend, (His name is Janis, pronounced Yah’–nis), like many persons from this geographic area, is highly active. He boats, swims, (he even cuts a swim-lane in the ice in the winter followed by a hot sauna, of course….we are talking the north country here), hikes, rides motorcycles, practices as a marksman, skis (with his 89 year old mother. I happen to know her age), flies a seaplane, flies a jet, is a businessman, has sat on the City Counsel of Riga (the capital), is a prolific surgeon,… .well you get the picture. To say he is energetic is an understatement.
So when I asked him his age, he paused for a moment. “I don’t really know,” he replied. Turns out, he knew the year of his birth and the month. He stated the day of the month he was born, but quickly corrected himself to a different day. But he did not keep track of the numbers of years he had been alive. He did not know the exact ages of his 3 sons, either. I doubt he knows how old his wife is.
Years ago, Dr. Michael Roizen and his team put together a list of factors to calculate a score for determining “your real age”, or physiologic age. The concept was wildly popular. So the whole thing got commercialized, sold, then resold, to profit off all the attention.
