SURVIVING HEALTHCARE DR. JAMES SMITH TELLS HIS SECRET TO LIVING PAST 90--DIET, EXERCISE, AND AVOIDING ALL MEDICATIONS
He is an old friend and at 69, I am the young friend.
He wrote to me on 2/18/23:
Greetings, Dr. and Ms. Yoho:Today, with my Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, I walked the entire length of Fair Oaks Boulevard for the Black History Parade without pain or strain.You are both the source of my ability to achieve this goal.Robert, you introduced me to the powerful medicine of exercise. It took away the pain I had suffered from birth until I met you and your health coaching.Ms. Yoho, you introduced me to the healthy eating that I am devoted to.At 90 years old, I feel good, very good. And I continue to thank you. You vitalized my life.—A grateful James
This story began in 1978 when my wife (then married to someone else) met Dr. Smith at the Altadena funeral of another nurse who worked at Huntington Hospital. I did not arrive in Los Angeles until 1981. I trained and got a job in Emergency Medicine, then started a private practice. Around 1985, I saw Smith’s son in my clinic and did not charge him.
Our families occasionally ran into each other. Dr. Smith was a Ph.D. psychologist with a local practice. When I saw him in my office once, he was having trouble walking up and down stairs. He also told me about his lifelong back pain. I was a Board Certified Emergency Physician, and my neurological examination skills were amateurish, but his only problem seemed to be deconditioning.
I invited him to my gym once and showed him how to use the exercise machines for two hours. I told him he needed to weightlift two to three times a week for 45 minutes. The plan was to use each machine once, spend less than an hour, and perform about 20 sets of eight repetitions each.
I lost track of him for eight months, then he came in one day and told me that all his pain and trouble walking were gone. He had been going to the gym twice a week and loved it.
During the last decades of Smith’s career, he was invited to join the California Medical Board and then the California Bar. These bureaucracies oversee the professional practice of law and medicine here. I thought at first he might have some influence to protect my group of surgeons against the anti-competitive practices of the Plastic Surgery associations. However, Dr. Smith said that when he was appointed to each position, the politicians explained the facts of life. Their rules were that you did as they told you, or you would be fired.
The second part of the story started during my enthusiasm for Dr. Greger and his vegan diet. My wife and I got the “bug,” she became a vegan chef, and we were strict about it for over a year. During this time, Dr. Smith caught the vegetable “disease” from us, and I gave him a copy of Michael Greger’s book, How Not to Die.
Our family eventually migrated into other dietary patterns after I lost strength from eating all those vegetables. (I explained my conclusions about diet in other works, including Hormone Secrets and several blogs.) But Smith persisted and felt great as a vegan. As we all aged, we stayed in contact, and my conclusion about him was that he was part of the ten percent who could successfully adapt to Michael Greger’s eccentricities. But after my experience and closely examining the literature, I could no longer regard Greger as a trusted authority.
Dr. Smith has steadfastly refused to use over-the-counter or prescription drugs. He does not even take Tylenol (acetaminophen) for his shoulder arthritis. During my recent podcast with Paul Thomas, MD, I was informed that this drug has significant health hazards and should not be used long-term.
For the rest, see robertyoho.substack.com.